The Lord Mayor’s number plate
» EVERY so often, when there is talk of budget cuts down at the Council House/City Hall, someone will suggest that we could get a few grand by auctioning off the registration of the Lord Mayor’s car.
AE1, right? That’d earn a few quid from some rich individual with the initials AE, right?
Sometimes the suggestion will be accompanied by a query as to whether the Lord Mayor needs a car anyway. Even back in the 1970s –when the mayoral ride was a big black Daimler - a Liberal councillor observed that since going around on a bicycle was good enough for the King of Norway, then the Lord Mayor of Bristol could make do with a Mini.
The number plate AE1 was the very first in Bristol, though it was not originally the Lord Mayor’s. There were relatively few horseless carriages on Bristol’s roads when, in 1904, registration plates for motor cars and motorcycles became compulsory, Thomas Butler got in first, registering his Frenchmade four-cylinder 12hp Clément car.
Butler was son of industrialist William Butler, who had made the family’s fortune with his tar company in Crews Hole, and so was one of the relatively few Bristolians who could afford a car back then.
Under the original system “AE” denoted that the vehicle had been registered in Bristol. Two years later, there were over 500 Bristol registrations, and by August 1911 there still weren’t that many vehicles on the city’s roads – 1,600 cars.
What popular memory tends to forget, or ignore, though, is that while we might be preoccupied with the rise and rise of the motor car, motorbikes were even more popular – because they were affordable. In 1911 there were twice as many Bristolregistered bikes as cars.
The numbers rose inexorably. There would be 32,000 vehicles of all types registered in Bristol by 1939.
Butler’s car is long gone, and once it had, AE1 was allocated to a motorcycle, which in turn was scrapped in the 1920s. We don’t know if it went to any other vehicle after this, but the Corporation doesn’t appear to have acquired it for our leading citizen until 1957.
Until the 1990s, the Lord Mayor would travel to particularly grand occasions on the civic horse-drawn carriage, which in the postwar years was usually kept, along with a couple of horses, at Ashton Court mansion. For less important engagements s/he was driven around in the limo.
As many former Lord Mayors will tell you, the chauffeurdriven car was one of the greatest perks of your year in office, as you never have to worry about being over the limit or having to call a cab.
Now they don’t even have a designated chauffeur anymore, though one of the Council staff will do the driving. Whether or not the driver will hang around until 4am outside the Club Whoopee on Whiteladies Road while the LM is engaged on urgent civic business will probably have to be the subject of a Freedom of Information request.
The cars themselves have gotten smaller, too. Last we heard, it was a little eco-friendly runabout on lease. If the Greens take control of the city in May’s elections it’s possible that the next vehicle to bear the time-honoured AE1 registration will be a rickshaw.