Lieutenant Commander William George Boaks DSC (25 May 1904 – 4 April 1986) was a British Royal Navy officer who became a political campaigner for road safety.
Boaks contested Walthamstow East as an independent candidate for Admiral, or the "Association of Democratic Monarchists Representing All Women".
To publicise his campaigns, Boaks initially used his Vauxhall 12 car, which he named Josephine and painted as a zebra crossing, complete with loudspeakers and placards.
[2][3][12] The armoured bicycle included a camera for taking photographs of motorists breaking the law[12] and featured an eight-foot flagpole with sloganeering banners.
[12][better source needed] In September 1952, Boaks was fined twenty shillings at Bow Street Court for using a motor vehicle for advertising.
[21] On 2 April 1955, before the start of an England-Scotland football match at Wembley Stadium, Boaks stopped his van outside and refused to move until all the spectators had crossed the road in front of it.
[12][19] On 1 October 1955, Boaks stopped his car at the Strand, and was convicted again of obstructing the highway, and incarcerated for a week in Brixton Prison.
[22] On 13 July 1959, Boaks entered the Bleriot Race to travel from Marble Arch in London to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris by any form of transport.
[24] Boaks subsequently submitted further applications to Lambeth London Borough Council, including a proposal to build an underground hangar for eight civil defence helicopters.
[12][better source needed] He also sued the London Evening News for libel after it falsely claimed he was living on National Assistance on 18 March 1966.
[21] After revisions to electoral law allowed candidates to have a six-word description of their candidature on the ballot paper, he eventually settled on "Public Safety Democratic Monarchist White Resident".
[33] Boaks subsequently stood in all of the local by-elections for Merton London Borough Council between 1974 and 1978 as "Air Road Public Safety White Resident".
[12] At the Glasgow Hillhead by-election in March 1982, he received just five votes, a new record low for a candidate in any British parliamentary election.
[16] He was a major advocate of pedestrian and non-motor vehicle traffic rights, and a need for additional care in road safety.
[16][21][41] Boaks' political views tended towards an increasing distrust of the establishment, fuelled by his frequent court appearances[citation needed].
[citation needed] He also said on at least one occasion that he believed that homosexuals should be debarred from the Civil Service, as he thought they were more vulnerable to blackmail by foreign powers.
[citation needed] Boaks was contemptuous of the NF, having stood against a number of its members in the 1950s and 1960s when they belonged to more openly neo-Nazi groups, such as John Bean's British National Party, Colin Jordan's White Defence League and Oswald Mosley's Union Movement.
[citation needed] The "White Resident" tag was also a means of more easily attracting media attention during the heated debate over immigration in the 1970s in the UK, in order to push his "Public Safety" agenda.
[citation needed] Boaks's stance led to his becoming the first promoter of ethnic minority candidates in United Kingdom elections.
He would then grab the questioner's hand, slap a pound note into it and say: "Now find 149 more of those [the deposit then being £150] and stand as a 'Black Immigrant' candidate for what YOU believe in.
[48] As a result of complications from the head injuries he sustained, he died of pneumonia and heart failure at St George's Hospital in Tooting on 4 April 1986.