At a meeting of a district council in 1928, a newly elected member stood up and gave a speech in which he proposed a motion that was bound to antagonise nearly everyone in the room. James Arthur Harley, the only black councillor in the Leicestershire town of Shepshed, confronted a sea of white faces and accused them of corruption, of taking backhanders, and insisted that they resign forthwith.
In view of what he described as the “unfair completion, undue influence, sly bribery, and insidious corruption tainting the atmosphere of so many local government bodies in nearly every nook and cranny in England”, Harley urged his colleagues “to resign his office of councillor in common honesty rather than remain on the council to grab all he can for himself while in office”.
Harley’s words were outspoken, eloquent — and
