Swansea’s longest-serving councillor has joined Reform UK, the party his daughter represents in the Senedd, more than half a century after he first stood for election.
Richard Lewis, the Gower councillor, is now listed as Reform UK on the council’s register of members. It makes him the party’s only councillor in Swansea, a position his daughter held until she was elected to the Senedd in May.
That daughter is Francesca O’Brien, now Reform’s Member of the Senedd for Gŵyr Abertawe. Her father has sat as a Liberal Democrat, a Conservative and an Independent, and has campaigned or stood for the Referendum Party and UKIP along the way, making Reform the fourth party label he has carried on the council, Nation.Cymru reported on Wednesday.
He first stood for the council as a Conservative in 1969, the year Swansea became a city, and was elected for Uplands in May 1973. He has represented Gower for around 25 years.
Lib Dem in 2012, Independent in 2017, Conservative in 2022: the Gower councillor’s party record
Lewis held Gower as a Liberal Democrat in 2012, won it again as an Independent in 2017, and stood and won as a Conservative in 2022, before returning to the Independent benches and now joining Reform.
His switch comes four months after the Conservatives took back his daughter’s old Mumbles seat in a by-election, with Reform third. That contest followed O’Brien’s own move from the Conservatives to Reform in August 2025, when she became the party’s first councillor in Swansea.
The 2004 Lord Mayor row over Bangladeshi immigration, and the chains he wore in 2010
Lewis has been a controversial figure on the council for decades. In 2004, as Deputy Lord Mayor, he was due to be inaugurated as Lord Mayor at the Brangwyn Hall when the council dropped him over remarks about Bangladeshi immigration in an election leaflet, as was reported at the time.
The leaflet described a meeting with the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh, whose office had issued 38,000 visas the previous year. “I am sure he is a very talented man, however I do wonder where his loyalties lie … to Bangladesh or to Great Britain,” Lewis wrote.
All five political groups on the council complained to the Local Government Ombudsman, saying it would be “inappropriate” for him to become Lord Mayor while the complaint stood. The All Wales Ethnic Minority Association called for a boycott of his inauguration.
Lewis denied the leaflet was racist. “All I have done is report the figures and a statement of fact,” he said.
“Whether people like the facts or not is not my concern and whether I am suitable to be Lord Mayor or not has nothing do with it.”
Fellow Gower Independent Margaret Smith took the chains for 2004-05 instead. Lewis did get his turn: he was Lord Mayor in 2010-11, with his wife Angela as Lady Mayoress, attending more than 1,500 events between them.
Kattoys, a compulsory purchase and the daughter who followed him into politics
Lewis ran Kattoys, a cash and carry on Oxford Street selling everything from cards to toys, until around 1989. It was the compulsory purchase of the family business’s building that took him into politics, his daughter said when he marked 50 years as a councillor in 2023.
The site became Marks and Spencer, which closed in May after 69 years on Oxford Street and now stands empty.
“Even at my wedding at the Oxwich Bay Hotel in 2011, instead of giving me a glowing speech as father of the bride, all he talked about was the issues the marquee had from the planning department,” O’Brien said then. “He has been so passionate about Gower, the people and the businesses people operated from there.”
O’Brien followed him onto the council as the Conservative councillor for Mumbles in 2022, and in May took one of Reform’s two Gŵyr Abertawe seats in the Senedd. She is now the party’s shadow minister for local government, housing and planning.
Reform’s Senedd group has had a turbulent autumn, with leader Dan Thomas quitting in September. Neath-born Helen Jenner took over the following week.
Lewis’s move gives the party a seat in the council chamber at the Guildhall again, 53 years after he first won one.
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