"I wonder whether you realise how much you and the Observer must be largely responsible for Nelson's life?" Mary Benson wrote to David Astor in 1964. Astor had edited the Observer since 1948, changing it from a stuffy, Tory-supporting organ into a non-party, liberal-minded newspaper, famed for the quality of its writing. Mary Benson was a South African-born writer and anti-apartheid activist who had returned to her native country five years earlier to run the Treason Trial Defence Fund, set up after the mass arrest of African National Congress leaders, including Nelson Mandela.
Although Mandela had been sentenced to life imprisonment in a separate trial, and was about to start his incarceration on Robben Island, his sentence had been commuted from death by hanging, partly as a result of the Observer's coverage of the trial. "In the UN and in Washington, people were tremendously inspired by the various articles," Benson continued, "and the fact that so great a newspaper was pointing to the stature of the man and the significance of the case hugely impressed people of significance."
Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, loomed large in Astor's Observer. He attributed this in part to his hero and mentor George Orwell, who had urged him to concentrate on the decolonisation of Africa now that the Indian subcontinent had achieved independence. Anthony Sampson, who reported regularly from South Africa for the Observer, suggested that Astor's interest in black Africa was, in part, a reaction against his overbearing mother, Nancy, who had grown up in Virginia and treated black people with condescension. "So you work for my son David, with all those niggers and communists?' Nancy once asked Sampson. Also noticing the contingent of German-speaking emigres at the paper in the postwar years, she described the Observer as being "written by Germans for blacks". Whether or not Sampson was right, Astor was aware Africa had been much neglected by the British press, and set out to remedy matters.
In 1948 DF Malan's National party won the general election in South Africa, so paving the way for apartheid, and Astor warned of what lay ahead in an eloquent leader, The Meaning of Malan. From now on, the paper would keep a close watch on South Africa, and Astor's interest in the subject was complemented by committed and well-informed journalists on the paper. Colin Legum had left South Africa in 1949 to fight apartheid from outside, and remained under a banning order until 1989: he was, according to Astor, "a pioneer in persuading the educated public to take an interest in Africa". Anthony Sampson joined the Observer in 1955 after spending five years in Johannesburg on Drum magazine, and covered the treason trials for the paper, together with his colleague Cyril Dunn: "We are very grateful for the Observer's continual and excellent reporting," Benson told Astor.
Nor did Astor restrict his activities to professional journalism. In 1953 he published Trevor Huddleston's article For God's Sake Wake Up, lambasting the South African regime. He befriended and encouraged campaigners such as Michael Scott and Benson, and did his best to defuse the explosive rows that broke out between Canon Collins, who raised much of the funds for the defence in the ANC treason trial, and his fellow clerics, Huddleston and Scott. He funded the Africa Bureau, set up in 1952 to explain Africa's problems and needs to the world at large. And when, in 1960, Harold Macmillan set out on his "winds of change" tour of Africa, he published an open letter from Alan Paton to the prime minister urging him not to give any support to apartheid when in South Africa.
In 1960 Mandela went underground, organising protest strikes and reluctantly abandoning the ANC's policy of non-violence. The following year he slipped out of South Africa, travelling round Africa before arriving in London in 1962. "I've come to thank you for all your paper has done for our people," he told Astor when they met in the Observer offices, with Legum and Michael Scott. Astor introduced him to the Labour and Liberal leaders Hugh Gaitskell and Jo Grimond, but neither had heard of him. Back in South Africa, Mandela was arrested under the Sabotage Act, and put on trial with three of his ANC colleagues. Astor wrote to Rab Butler, the foreign secretary, urging him to do all he could to "save the life of the outstanding African leader in South Africa, and also one of the most moderate … He has a high standing with the heads of government in the rest of Africa, and has made a favourable impression on all who have met him." Butler thought intervention would prove counter-productive.
Life on Robben Island was a brutal affair, but Astor was determined to make it more bearable for Mandela. He got in touch with the high commissioner in Pretoria, arranging for Mandela to be sent books by Arthur Koestler, Churchill and others. These were followed by a supply of legal textbooks, so enabling Mandela to study for a London University law degree. By 1970, the British ambassador reported, Mandela's cell was brimming over with some 2,000 books.
Astor resigned as editor of the Observer in 1975, but his involvement with South Africa was far from over. By the mid-80s the Free Mandela campaign was in full swing, and the business world was having second thoughts about South Africa – led by Consolidated Gold Fields, Cecil Rhodes's old company, and hitherto the staunchest defender of the status quo. Astor and Sampson arranged meetings between ANC leaders and British bankers, businessmen and Tory politicians brave enough to risk Mrs Thatcher's disapproval. Astor lent the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay to Oliver Tambo; guests at a lunch included George Soros and Evelyn de Rothschild as well as Thabo Mbeki and Tambo. Astor wrote to his old friend Henry Kissinger, asking whether "you might be able to use your great influence to persuade Americans to take a more realistic view of the ANC". And, at Tambo's request, he funded and helped to set up a body that would provide training in business and administration for young ANC members.
He did not overlook Mandela, who in 1982 had been moved from Robben Island to a maximum security prison outside Cape Town. Always the most generous of men, he provided Winnie Mandela with funds, and arranged Mandela's grandson's schooling; and when, in 1990, Mandela was finally released, he must have known that he, and the Observer, had done all they could to bring about change in South Africa and destroy the evil of apartheid. But he had no illusions about the future. The important thing, as far as he was concerned, was for his fellow liberals to recognise "the right of the Africans to majority rule, even if that majority is not liberal".
Jeremy Lewis is working on a biography of David Astor, to be published by Jonathan Cape.
