Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Robert Clarke

There’s a throaty rumble of a Harley Davidson engine as Robert Clarke pulls up outside Blind Owl coffee shop on Feeder Road.

The location is important to the Reform mayoral candidate, who wants to highlight Bristol’s industrial heritage, which he believes is under threat from development.

As he waits for coffees across the road, overlooking the Feeder Canal, an anti-lockdown sign catches his eye. Clarke didn’t put it there, but he is 100 per cent behind the message and is running in the mayoral elections on May 6 on a platform of campaigning for Bristol to be the first city to proclaim “there will be no more lockdowns under any circumstances”.

More on that later, but first the late entrant in the mayoral race has something to get off his chest.

“Look over there, this industrial landscape around us and old industrial buildings – all this, they are looking to knock down and just devastate the whole area. That industrial landscape is really important for Bristol’s historical past.”

Robert Clarke is running on an anti-lockdown platform – photo by Ellie Pipe

Gestering at the stretch across the canal, Clarke refers to Silverthorne Lane where plans have been approved for a major redevelopment to include hundreds of new homes, offices, shops, student accommodation and a much-needed secondary school.

Developers have promised to preserve at least some of the historic listed buildings as part of the scheme, but Clarke fears corporations cannot be trusted not to ruin the heritage of the area. Saying “they can change the goalposts very quickly”.

Born in Bristol, the Reform candidate grew up in Gloucestershire before returning to the city of his birth as a 16-year-old punk, living in various squats through the mid to late 70s and into the 80s, when he says there was a real counterculture in the city. He says it was punk that politicised him at that time and he joined the Anti-Nazi League.

Clarke works as a self-employed jobbing labourer, SIA security, an English language teacher and naturopath. He has lived a transient life, living and working abroad for much of his adult life, and has covered many miles in the Harley he bought in America, working at one point as a stagehand on shows for the likes of Bob Dylan, Madonna and Lady Gaga.

Back in Bristol, the mayoral candidate hopes to appeal to the city’s “maverick spirit” with his anti-lockdown agenda.

Reform was initially launched as the Brexit Party in 2018 by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage before being rebranded earlier this year. Now under the leadership of former Tory member and businessman Richard Tice, the party has forged a pact for the London elections with actor turned activist Laurence Fox, who is running for the role of London mayor.

How does the anti-immigration rhetoric of Farage and other members associated with the party’s history square with someone who was a member of the anti-Nazi league and has lived and worked in countries across the world?

“The Reform Party is a libertarian party,” says Clarke. “It’s really important to get that word down. A libertarian believes in free speech, free thought, free will, and it is also a democratic party because it stands for proportional representation.”

He also argues that the EU has nothing to do with free movement, saying: “You might have to have a visa, you might have to show your passport when you cross borders, but I’m old enough to have hitchhiked all the way around it when I was 19, and there is absolutely no  hindrance to anybody moving in Europe, or working there.”

Clarke, argue “the cure is worse than the disease” – photo by Ellie Pipe

On to his primary and perhaps most controversial policy of being anti-lockdown, Clarke continues: “We will be a completely lockdown-free city and we will not accept inhuman diktat from London. These lockdowns are inhumane – look at the deaths, people losing their work, the broken relationships. The cure is worse than the disease.”

The Reform candidate has attended several rallies for the cause in London and is against any form of vaccine passport system being introduced.

What would he say to those who are vulnerable to Covid-19 or lost loved ones? And what about the pressure on the NHS?

Clarke believes the mainstream narrative and figures have been manipulated by Westminster and argues avoiding lockdown would not have led to more deaths or overwhelmed the NHS, saying: “It wouldn’t have done because they didn’t use any of the Nightingale hospitals, the people that I know that work in hospitals say the hospitals are half empty.”

As part of his manifesto, the Reform candidate has pledged to ensure the population is prescribed Vitamin D for free.

So, is he also against the Covid vaccination programme?

Clarke is clear that he is not an anti-vaxxer but he does not believe vaccines being used to fight coronavirus are vaccines “in the classical sense”. Would he have one? On that, he refuses to answer, saying his personal medical affairs are his own business.

On other policies, Clarke says he is pro-industry and pro-business but he wants the city to be properly consulted on all major projects.

He is also not a fan of the clean air zone, which comes into play in October, arguing it risks penalises “working-class people” who rely on diesel vans for work.

Main photo by Ellie Pipe

Read more: Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Alastair Watson

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