How Battersea Gave The UK ‘Its Own Barack Obama’

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United Kingdom on 2018-01-30 04:01Z by Steven

How Battersea Gave The UK ‘Its Own Barack Obama’

Londonist
2017-03-21

Will Noble


John Richard Archer began his mayoralty with a cheeky dig at his detractors

He has been described as Britain’s Barack Obama. Except John Richard Archer was elected to power almost a century before the 44th US president. And his seat wasn’t in Washington DC, but Battersea, London.

Born in Liverpool in 1863, Archer’s rise to political stardom was by way of being a naval man, medical student and photographer. In the early 1900s he set up a photography studio on Battersea Park Road. Ironically, it’s said he didn’t allow photographs taken of himself without consent, leading to some papers purposefully publishing dated images of him.

Voted onto Battersea’s council in 1906, Archer was elected Mayor of Battersea on 10 November 1913. He won by a single vote; the margin may have been slim, but the result was monumental. (Though the first mayor in London to be black, Archer was not the first in the UK. That was Allen Glaser Minns of Thetford, Norfolk, elected in 1904.)

Not everyone was pleased for Archer; during his campaign, and following his victory, he was battered with the kind of racist abuse and cockamamie conspiracy theories that will sound familiar to those who’ve followed politics in recent years…

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Election of the first black mayor

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United Kingdom on 2012-02-26 22:40Z by Steven

Election of the first black mayor

Daily Mail
1913-11-10

Source: mytimemachine.co.uk

Coloured Mayor—Majority of One at Battersea—Dramatic Speech

For the first time in the history of this country a man of colour has been elected mayor of a borough. The honour has fallen to Mr. John Richard Archer, a photographer, of Battersea Park-Road, who by thirty votes to twenty-nine was last night elected Mayor of Battersea by the Progressive Party. His opponent was Mr W G Moore, a West End tailor.

Mr Archer has hitherto kept secret the place of his birth. Last night, on donning his chain of office, he revealed the secret in a dramatic speech. He said:

“I am a man of colour. Many things have been said about me which are absolutely untrue. I think you ought to show the same respect for me as you would a white man. I am the son of a man who was born in the West Indies. I was born in a little, obscure village in England that you may never have heard of–Liverpool. I am a Lancastrian born and bred.”

“MY MOTHER WAS IRISH”

“My mother [here Mr Archer spoke with great emotion] was just my mother. She was not born in Burma , as some newspapers stated. She was not born at Rangoon . My mother was Irish.”…

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