EXPLAINER: Corbyn's placard wasn't about protesting apartheid. It was about defending his right demonstrate. His communist fringe group had been explicitly told by the ANC (African National Congress) not to demonstrate on their behalf as they didn't want him in their movement.

Corbyn & the Revolutionary Communist Group were thrown out of AAM (Anti-Apartheid Movement). AAM wanted nothing to do with him.

The photo and arrest was to defend "his right" to demonstrate not the rights of S Africans.

Read the placard again: "Defend the right to demonstrate"

They regarded his politics as toxic and vain. It is an example of his toxic white saviour attitude that he still has, where he believes that as a middle class white englishman he is far better placed to solve issued like apartheid than the actual African National Congress.

So the idea that photoshopping this placard somehow erases black struggle is nonsense, when a) the "black struggle" at the time vehemently opposed Corbyn's placard and b) the placard is about defending Corbyn's right to demonstrate, not actually about the black struggle.

Lastly, the photoshopped image was satire and Corbyn's record as an anti-peace campaigner is something that is open to scrutiny and ridicule. To threaten a critic of Corbyn with loss of employment is in line with the kind of totalitarianism he was espousing in the photo.

h/t @TimesCorbyn for most of the investigative work here

Further reading https://twitter.com/DavidBennun/status/1197473321450975233?s=19