Deputy mayor asked mixed-race teenager which tribe he was from

A deputy mayor is facing calls to resign for asking a mixed-race teenager "What tribe are you from?" Roger Kimber was judging a pupils' business competition when he asked the 16-year-old public schoolboy the question.

Barrie Phillips, the boy's father, said he was "disgusted" by Mr Kimber's attitude and called on him to step down from his post as deputy mayor of Rushmoor Borough Council in Hampshire. Mr Phillips said: "These are not words you expect to hear these days. It is like something from a bygone age. I am disgusted by it.

"The deputy mayor was there as an official person speaking to schoolchildren. People look up to people like that in a position of responsibility. It is completely unacceptable. He should resign."



The deputy mayor has since apologised for his comments, which were made at an inter-school Young Enterprise competition. He said he did not intend to offend the boy, a pupil at £7,800-a-year Salesian College, an independent Catholic school in Farnborough, Hants.

In a statement issued by the council, Mr Kimber said: "I would like to offer my sincere apologies to Mr Phillips and his son. It was not my intention to cause offence or to upset anyone in any way. I am very sorry if I have done this and I have written to Mr Phillips to offer a personal apology."

The council deemed the situation so serious that its non-political chief executive Andrew Lloyd even stepped in to defend the 69-year-old Conservative councillor, who has sat on the council since 1982. Mr Lloyd said he thought Mr Kimber had possibly mistaken the teenager for a boy from a Nepalese family, in which different religious castes are sometimes referred to as tribes.