As editor of the Daily Dispatch, he was known for befriending fellow activist Steve Biko, who was killed by police after being detained by the South African government.

Woods continued his campaign against apartheid in London, and in 1978 became the first private citizen to address the United Nations Security Council.

[2] His parents ran a trading post in Transkei, a tribal reserve, which the South African government would later designate a bantustan.

When he started his law course at the University of Cape Town in 1952, Woods supported government policies that separated the races, but was wary of the heavy hand of the Afrikaner National Party.

During his legal studies he started to question the separatist views he grew up with, becoming politically active in the Federal Party, which rejected apartheid and drew its support from liberal English-speaking whites.

While working on the Western Mail in Cardiff, Woods became friends with colleague Glyn Williams, who later joined him on the Daily Dispatch and eventually became editor himself.

The family had settled into a comfortable life in East London, and in February 1965, at the age of 31, Woods rose to the position of editor-in-chief of the Daily Dispatch,[3] which held an anti-apartheid editorial policy.

As editor, Woods expanded the readership of the Dispatch to include Afrikaans-speakers as well as black readers in nearby Transkei and Ciskei.

Woods integrated the editorial staff and flouted apartheid policies by seating black, white, and coloured reporters in the same work area.

Woods found himself tiptoeing around, and sometimes directly challenging, the increasingly restrictive government policies enacted to control the South African press.

Nevertheless, Woods continued to provide political support to Biko, both through writing editorials in his newspaper and controversially hiring black journalists to the Daily Dispatch.

He made it undetected by South African customs and border officials to Lesotho, where, prompted by a prearranged telephone call, his family joined him shortly afterwards.

That Easter, Mandela came to London to attend a concert at Wembley Stadium to thank the anti-apartheid Movement and the British people for their years of campaigning against apartheid.

At nearly three hours long, the film also featured appearances by John Thaw, Timothy West, Julian Glover, Ian Richardson and Zakes Mokae.

In the last year of his life, Woods gave his name to support an appeal to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square outside the South African High Commission, where anti-apartheid campaigners had demonstrated during the period of the apartheid regime.

[10][11][12] The 3-metre (9 ft) high bronze statue of Mandela was eventually erected on nearby Parliament Square, Westminster City Council.

It was unveiled by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, on 29 August 2007, in the presence of Woods' widow, Wendy, Nelson Mandela and his wife Graça Machel, and Richard Attenborough.