Royal
Mail has used part of the painting by Paul Clarkson which hangs in Liverpool Town Hall, and which was used on the front cover of Nubian Jak Community Trust's book published at the end of John Archer Role
Model Project undertaken in four Wandsworth secondary schools in the winter of
2010/11. I was involved in that Project.
I
am currently working on putting together a programme of events, including talks
and walks and publishing a mini-book looking at Archer’s life in its Battersea
context. Details are available from me and will be updated in the British Black
History EDigest I compile: at sean.creighton1947@btinternet.com.
Here
is my slightly edited assessment of Archer which I gave at the event which
followed the unveiling of the Trust’s plaque to Archer on Battersea Park Rd on
15 December 2010, at which the school pupils read out their writings about hi,
and performed a song and a dance inspired by his life.
"The people in this
country are sadly ignorant with reference to the darker races ....'
This
is what John Archer said in his Presidential address to the African Progress
Union in December 1918.
The
work of hundreds of community, cultural history activists have been slowly but
steadily redressing that balance within contemporary Britain in relation to the
Black contribution to the development of Britain over the last 500 plus years.
Through its plaque programme in London the Nubian Jak Community Trust makes an
important visual contribution.
John
Archer is a key figure in the story of the Black contribution in Britain in the
early part of the 20thC.
·
He represented Battersea's white
working class on the Council and the Board of Guardians
·
He championed the rights of the poor,
the unemployed and First World War ex-servicemen
·
Originally thought to be the first Black
Mayor in Britain he seems certainly to have been the first black Mayor for a
Council in London
·
In 1929 he was a Parliamentary
Election agent as was another Black British labour movement activist Bill
Miller in Plymouth.
But
perhaps more important than any of this was his deep anti-racist and
progressive outlook. He knew which side of the political argument he was on:
against injustice whether on racial or class grounds, the importance of local
government in the creating of a fairer society that could help meet a wide
range of needs that capitalism was not providing for the majority of
people.
His
views began to be shaped when his parents took him as a child to see a play
based on the anti-slavery novel Uncle Toms' Cabin, and appear to have been
reinforced by his religious faith.
When
he came to Battersea he had a choice to just lead an ordinary life or become
politically involved either through the Progressive or the Municipal Alliance
or the socialist groups that were critical of the Progressives. He chose the
former because it most mirrored his views. He chose to be a supporter of John
Burns who been imprisoned for his role in the Bloody Sunday Trafalgar Square
free speech demonstration in November 1887. Five years later Burns was
Battersea's Member of Parliament, and from the end of 1905 an independent
labour member of the Liberal Cabinet through to his resignation in protest at
the declaration of war in 1914.
With
the Liberals having split off from the Battersea Progressive Alliance during
the War, Archer became a leading figure in the newly formed Battersea Labour
Party & Trades Council, which swept into control of the Council in 1919.
John appears to have been elected the Labour Leader. He remained a leading
figure until his death in 1932.
But
there is another side to John Archer – his personal life about which we know
very little. We know he had a brother Arthur and a sister Mary. All we know
about Arthur is that he was in touch
because he was able to get down from the Wirral area to be at John's hospital
bedside and be with him as he died, and remained for the funeral and presumably
to wind up his affairs. From about 1906 John had set up as a commercial
photographer first at 208 and then 214 Battersea Park Rd where the plaque is.
He would close his shop to attend day time meetings of the Guardians thereby
losing business and income.
He
was a good friend of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the Black British composer and
musician. John regarded his death in 1912 as a great loss to him because of
their friendship and to the race. Living with him at the time was Jane Roberts,
the widow of the first black President of the independent African Republic of
Liberia. He wrote that she was like a granny to Margaret and him, and he found
her death in January 1914 difficult to bear. He did not smoke, he did not
drink, and seems to have liked swimming. He read and believed in the continuing
value of learning.
When
he came to Battersea his wife was Margaret, a black Canadian from Halifax in
Nova Scotia. She was his Mayoress. They do not appear to have children, which
must have been a great sadness. At some time between the end of 1914 and the
end of 1922 she seems to have died, although we cannot find any record of her
death. In 1923 now 60 John seems to have re-married.
Imagine
the tensions that must have existed in the relationship. Bertha Elizabeth was
nearly 30 years younger. It is in the
following period after the marriage that John tries to reduce his political activities. However, there are big
issues he would have found it difficult to disengage from: the General Election
of 1924 when once again he supported the dual Labour/Communist Party member
Shapurji Saklatvala as the Parliamentary candidate, the defence of the
Battersea Party against the growing pressure from the National Labour Party to
ban Communists from membership leading to the Battersea Party being thrown out
of the national Party in February 1926, the split after the defeat of the
General Strike in May 1926 with Saklatvala following what was seen as his
betrayal of Labour, the rebuilding of new Battersea Party organisations leading
to Archer being Election Agent in 1929.
It
is 1929 that Bertha last appears in the electoral register. She is then
believed by another family living in Battersea to have left Archer and set up
with a younger man. Perhaps she could no longer cope with John's absorption in
politics. If that is the case then it must have been a devastating blow to
John, and may have contributed to his growing bouts of illness leading to his
death in July 1932.
His
life resonates with today. He too saw massive cut backs in public spending in the early 1920s
and again when the Great Depression hit and Labour Prime Minister Ramsay
MacDonald formed he National Government
in 1931. Used to having been in a political culture where open air masstmeetings
and demonstrations were part of normal experience, having been at a
demonstration in the 1920s and seeing what he regarded as the outrageous attack
by the police on peaceful demonstrators, being a strong believer in the public
service role of the local Council, being a supporter of working class access to
higher qualifications, I think it is clear what his views and actions would be
today.
But
despite his fundamental differences with them and his passionate opposition to
the policies they advocated, his Conservative political opponents were
magnanimous towards him at his death.
Their Leader Frank Abbott stated: 'Mr. Archer was very
sincere and honest in his convictions and he always stood up for the party he
represented.'
While Councillor Carpenter:
'said that Mr. Archer was a man of great integrity and
sincerity. .... Although on many
occasions he had had most bitter arguments with Mr. Archer he had never sat
down without knowing that if they differed in principle they agreed as men.'
