During the years 1948 to 1994, the British reaction against apartheid did not simply grow steadily in response to a gradually increasing consciousness of apartheid's repugnant realities. Nor was British opinion always neatly divided between antagonism towards apartheid by a progressive Left, and tolerance of apartheid by a racist Right. Indeed, the most striking things about the pattern of British attitudes towards apartheid are the intensity of British criticism of apartheid by both the Right and the Left during the 1950s and early 1960s; the speed with which the unity of British opinion dissolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and the extent to which British attitudes had intensified and diverged by the 1980s. Overall, the pattern of the British public reaction against apartheid was one of rise, ebb, and resurgence.

To a certain extent, the pattern of British attitudes does correspond to the pattern of repression and resistance in South Africa, with the periods of greatest unrest – first in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then in the late 1970s and 1980s – stimulating the growth of British criticism. Likewise, the relative quiescence of the years 1962 to 1975 coincided with British tolerance or indifference. Yet this does not fully explain either the strength and unity of the early British response to apartheid, or the deep divisions in British opinion that emerged subsequently.