Talking about the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) Students' Union (in https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/03/british-understatement-letter-to-school.html) has brought back the memory of another letter I'd typed up for them.
Bank X (which I shall leave unnamed) had dealings with South Africa at the time (1978 when I first went into SOAS). Apartheid was in place in South Africa then, so the SOAS Students' Union launched an appeal to its members to try and make life a bit difficult for Bank X, as a protest.
Members were asked to collect all their loose change, in the lower denominations preferably, take them to the Russell Square branch of Bank X, and get the staff to convert them to notes.
I think this was just before coin-weighing machines came into common circulation, so it'd take the staff time to count up the small coins. This would mean queues building up and other customers getting disgruntled.
I was very touched by this show of solidarity with the people affected by the apartheid policy in South Africa, which is another country.
On the same note (oops, word play -- not intentional!), I also witnessed a small anti-apartheid parade near the old Arsenal Football Stadium in Gillespie Road one afternoon, complete with banner, small drum and chanting.
There were only about a dozen people, 20 at a stretch. It was a quiet residential area away from the main roads. No football game was taking place that day. I am, therefore, not sure why the group decided to hold their protest march along that side street. I was nonetheless moved by this display of support for the South Africans who were suffering under the apartheid policy, even more so when I saw that most of the protestors were white people.
(London, 1978 / second half of 1980s)
(from googling)
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Modern electronic count-by-weight coin machines, widely used by banks to streamline cash handling, gained prominence around the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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