John
Archer was born in Liverpool on 8th
June, 1863. His father, Richard Archer, was a ship's steward, who
had originally arrived in England from Barbados. His mother, Mary
Archer, was an Irish immigrant.
Archer
worked as a seaman and later claimed that he had gone round the world
three times and lived for a time in the West Indies and the United
States. After marrying a black woman from Canada, Archer returned
to England. He established a successful photographic studio in Battersea.
He also became involved in politics and became friends with local
radicals such as John Burns, Tom
Mann and Charlotte Despard.
In July 1900 Archer attended
t he
Pan-African Conference held at Westminster Town Hall. There were 37
delegates from Europe, Africa and the United States. Those attending
included Samuel
Coleridge Taylor,
John
Alcindor,
Dadabhai
Naoroji,
Sylvester
Williams and
William Du Bois. At the conference a large
number of delegates made speeches where they called for governments
to introduce legislation that would ensure racially equality. Michael
Creighton, the Bishop of London, asked the British government to confer
the "benefits of self-government" on "other races as
soon as possible".
After the conference the
Pan-African Congress wrote to Joseph
Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, suggesting that black
people in the British Empire should be granted "true civil and
political rights". Chamberlain replied that black people were
"totally unfit for representative institutions". Sylvester
Williams responded
to this by writing to Queen Victoria
about the system "whereby
black men, women, and children were placed in legalized bondage to
white colonists". The letter was passed to Chamberlain who replied
that the government would not "overlook the interests and welfare
of the native races."
In November 1906 Archer
and Sylvester
Williams
became the first people
of African descent to be elected to public office in Britain. A member
of the Liberal Party, Archer won a seat
on Battersea Borough Council whereas Williams won in Marylebone. He
was re-elected three years later and in 1913 became one of the candidates
for the office of mayor. This caused a great deal of controversy and
the election campaign was featured in the national press. One man
wrote to a newspaper and claimed: "It has always been that the
white man ruled and it must always be so. If not, good-bye to the
prestige of Great Britain."
Despite these racist comments
Archer won by 40 votes to 39. Archer told the council: "You have
made history tonight. Battersea has done many things in the past,
but the greatest thing it has done is to show that it has no racial
prejudice, and that it recognises a man for the work he has done."
Archer's political views
moved to the left during the First World War
and in 1919 he was elected to the council as a member of the Labour
Party. However, his attempt to be elected to the House
of Commons in the 1919 General Election
ended in failure.
In 1919 Archer went to
Paris as a British delegate of the Pan African Congress. Two years
later Archer chaired the Pan African Congress in London.
In 1922 Archer was the
election agent for Shapurji Saklatvala,
the Communist Party candidate for North
Battersea. Archer managed to persuade the local Labour
Party not to oppose Saklatvala and he won the seat in the 1922
General Election. Archer eventually broke with the Communist Party
and in the 1929 General Election he was election
agent to the successful Labour Party candidate.
Archer held a variety of
political posts being president of the African Progress Union, a member
of the Wandsworth Board of Guardians and governor of Battersea Polytechnic.
John
Archer
died in July, 1932.
(1)
John Archer, Wandsworth Borough
News (14th November, 1913)
I am the
son of a man who was born in the West Indian islands. I was born in
England, in a little obscure village, that probably never was known
until this evening, the City of Liverpool. I am a Lancastrian born
and bred, and my mother - well she was my mother. She was not born
in Rangoon and she was not Burmese. She belonged to one of the greatest
races on the face of the earth. My mother was an Irishwoman, so there
is not much of the foreigner about me after all.
(2)
John Archer, speech an the
inaugural meeting of the African Progress Union (1918)
I greatly
dislike bringing coals to Newcastle, and in addressing you tonight,
as one born in England, I fear that is what I am doing, but I take
courage from the fact I will not accept second place with any here
for love of my race. I am, and always will be, a race-man. That
feeling was born in me when quite a little boy in my natal city,
Liverpool. A famous company of American Negroes were playing that
soul-stirring Negro tragedy Uncle Tom's Cabin. I saw the play, and
from that moment the seeds of resentment were planted within me
that have resulted in making me the race-man I am. Too long, much
too long, has the Negro race suffered. "Mislike me not for
my complexion, the shadowed livery of the burnished sun." Why
should he suffer because of that shadowed livery? As the Prince
of Morocco pleaded to Portia, so the Negroes of today plead. I raise
my voice tonight against that plea having to be made in future.
We are living in stirring times. We have seen the end of the greatest
war in the annals of history, a war that marks an epoch in the history
of our race. Side by side with the British Army, for the first time,
our compatriots from Africa, America, and the West Indies have been
fighting on the fields of France and Flanders against a foreign
foe. A war, we have been repeatedly told, for the self-determination
of small nations and the freedom of the world from the despotism
of German rule. The truth of that statement will be proved by the
way they deal in America with Afro-Americans, in France with their
Negro subjects, in Belgium with their Congo subjects, and in Great
Britain with India, Africa and the West Indies. We shall be told
the old, old story. Africa is not ready; the time is not ripe; they
are not sufficiently advanced. According to some critics the Negroes
will only be ready when the Angel Gabriel sounds his trumpet. I
do not know when that great day will come, but I am hoping it is
far distant, because we are inaugurating tonight an association
which I trust to be the parent of a large number of similar institutions,
whose sole reason for existence will be the progress of our African
race.
I have said according
to some people the African is not ready. Upon whom, then, can
the blame be placed more equitably than the white race? What have
they done, what are they doing, to rectify the great wrong inflicted
upon our forbears? The children of the white race today owe a
great debt still to the children of the darker race. We are hearing
a great deal about indemnities on the one hand, reparation on
the other, that the Peace Conference is going to demand from Germany.
I venture to submit each delegate to the Conference this proposition:
"Keep your minds on the patent fact that Negroes have been
associated with you in bringing about the possibility of this
great conference of the nations who are so desirous for the world's
freedom."
I suggest by way of
installment they put down a motion for the better treatment of
the coloured races under their rule, greater facilities for their
educational advancement in pan payment of the debt they owe to
them. It is rather significant to me that India is the only country
of the darker race which will be directly represented. One of
the greatest blots upon the escutcheon of the white race is their
enslavement of our people in America and the West Indies. The
discovery and colonization of America were primarily for greed,
and this dominant principle was illustrated in different stages
of the growth and development of the country. Spain, which in
the sixteenth
century was not only a worldwide Power, but one of the greatest
of modern times,
bore a very important part in the conquest and settlement of the
New World. It was mainly her merchantmen that ploughed the Main,
her capital and
the patronage of her sovereigns that led. The Dutch and the English
followed in the rear. Settlements in North America and the West
Indies were made
by her sons early in the sixteenth century, but it was one hundred
years after, at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, that the English
made the first
permanent settlement within the continental limits of the United
States of America.
In the early voyages
it was not at all remarkable that Negroes were found as sailors,
though slaves. It is well authenticated that among the survivors
of the Coronado expedition was Estevan, a Negro, who was guide
to Friar Narcoz in 1539 in the search for the Seven Cities of
Cibola. The celebrated anthropologist, in The Human Species,
strongly intimates that Africa had its share in the peopling and
the settlement of some sections of South America. The exception
but proves the rule that the Negro came to the New World as a
slave. He was stolen from or bought on the West Coast of Africa,
to add to the wealth of America by his toil as bondman and labourer.
Large numbers of Negroes were imported by the Portuguese, but
I am more concerned with what England had to do with this traffic
in human beings.
The English gentleman
Sir John Hawkins made three trips to America from the West Coast
of Africa between 1563 and 1567, taking with him several hundreds
of the Natives, whom he sold as slaves. Queen Elizabeth became
a partner in this nefarious traffic. So elated was she at its
profits that she knighted him, and he most happily selected for
his crest a Negro head and bust, with arms pinioned. It was a
lucrative business, and though it
at first shocked the sensibilities of Christian nations and rulers,
they soon reconciled themselves, not only to the traffic, but
introduced the servitude as part of the economic system of their
dependencies in America. That it became a fixture after its introduction
in these Colonies was due to the prerogative of the Home Government
rather than to the importunities of the Colonists - especially
because it was a source of revenue to the Crown.
(3)
John Archer, speech an
the inaugural meeting of the African Progress Union (1918)
Now about the objects
of the African Progress Union. The objects are to promote
the general welfare of Africans and Afro-peoples, through
such agencies as may be deemed best; to establish in London,
England, a place as 'home from home' where the members of
the association may meet for social recreation and intellectual
improvement, where movements may be promoted for the common
welfare, and where members may receive and entertain their
friends, under the regulations of the board of management;
to spread by means of papers to be read and addresses to be
given from time to time, and by means of a magazine or other
publications, a knowledge of the history and achievements
of Africans and Afro-peoples past and present; and to promote
the general advancement of African peoples.
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