Andrew Fountaine (7 December 1918 – 14 September 1997) was an activist involved in the British
far right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
. After military service in a number of conflicts Fountaine joined the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
and was selected as a parliamentary candidate until his outspoken views resulted in his being disowned by the party.
He was subsequently involved with a number of fringe rightist movements before becoming a founding member of the
National Front in 1967. He had several roles within the party and was involved in a number of internal feuds until he left in 1979. He briefly led his own splinter party before retiring from politics.
Early years
Born into a land-owning
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
family who had resided in ancestral
Narfold Hall,
Fountaine was educated at the Army College in
Aldershot
Aldershot () is a town in Hampshire, England. It lies on heathland in the extreme northeast corner of the county, southwest of London. The area is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council. The town has a population of 37,131, while the Alders ...
and was the son of Vice Admiral
Charles Fountaine
Vice-Admiral Charles Andrew Fountaine, CB, DL, JP (25 May 1879 – 24 March 1946) was a Royal Navy officer during the First World War.
Fountaine was born at Narford Hall, Norfolk. He joined the Royal Navy in 1893, and was a Lieutenant when in e ...
who had been Naval ADC to
King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...
. One of Fountaine's ancestors was an art collector. Fountaine drove an ambulance for the
Abyssinians during the
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression which was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Itali ...
. He also attended
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
studying
natural science
Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...
s.
He then fought for
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
's forces during the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
, before enlisting in the
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
as an
ordinary seaman
__NOTOC__
An ordinary seaman (OS) is a member of the deck department of a ship. The position is an apprenticeship to become an able seaman, and has been for centuries. In modern times, an OS is required to work on a ship for a specific amount o ...
during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. During the war he was appointed a
temporary sub-lieutenant. He served in the
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
as Gunnery Officer on the aircraft carrier
HMS Indefatigable, attaining the rank of
Lt-Commander, before being invalided out after a
Kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
attack in April 1945.
Conservative Party
During the 1940s, Fountaine also became involved with the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
, with his speeches becoming one of the highlights of the annual party conference, such as during the 1948 conference when he denounced the
Labour Party as consisting of "semi-alien mongrels and hermaphrodite communists".
[R. Weight, ''Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000'', London: Pan, 2003, p. 539] In 1949 he was chosen by the Tories as their candidate for
Chorley
Chorley is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Chorley in Lancashire, England, north of Wigan, south west of Blackburn, north west of Bolton, south of Preston and north west of Manchester. The town's wealth came pr ...
in Lancashire at the next general election. A speech to the Tory Party conference that same year was considered to be
antisemitic
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
, however; and, as a result, Party Chairman
Lord Woolton
Frederick James Marquis, 1st Earl of Woolton, (23 August 1883 – 14 December 1964) was an English businessman and politician who served as chairman of the Conservative Party from 1946 to 1955.
In April 1940, he was appointed Minister of Food ...
disavowed his nomination.
[S. Taylor, ''The National Front in English Politics'', London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 61] Nonetheless, no official Conservative candidate was nominated to take his place, and, as a result, Fountaine finished only 361 votes behind the winning candidate, Labour incumbent
Clifford Kenyon.
John Bean
Having left the Conservative Party, Fountaine launched his own group, known as the National Front Movement. However, this came to nothing, and so he became a member of the
League of Empire Loyalists
The League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) was a British pressure group (also called a "ginger group" in Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations), established in 1954. Its ostensible purpose was to stop the dissolution of the British Empire. The League ...
. He would follow
John Bean
John Bean may refer to:
* John Bean (cricketer) (1913–2005), English cricketer and British Army officer
* John Bean (politician) (1927–2021), long-standing participant in the British far right
* John Bean (explorer) ( 1751–1757), Canadian e ...
out of this group, and was a founder member of the
National Labour Party. Officially the leader of the NLP, Fountaine fulfilled this role because he presented a more respectable image than Bean, being a landowner in Norfolk, although actual control lay with Bean. Fountaine remained a strong supporter of Bean and supported him in his later struggles with
Colin Jordan
John Colin Campbell Jordan (19 June 1923 – 9 April 2009) was a leading figure in post-war neo-Nazism in Great Britain. In the far-right circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly "Nazi" inclination in his open use of the st ...
in the earlier
British National Party
The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and its leader is Adam Walker. A minor party, it has no elected representatives at any level of UK gover ...
(BNP) in the 1960s, with Fountaine acting as party president. It was during this time that Fountaine's land was used for 'Spearhead' drilling exercises under the supervision of Jordan and
John Tyndall
John Tyndall FRS (; 2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist. His scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the p ...
.
Fountaine would later claim that during this time he regularly phoned the home number of
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
in order to tell the Prime Minister to do more to stop immigration although he also added that Macmillan would hang up as soon as he heard Fountaine's voice.
National Front
Along with the rest of the BNP Fountaine became a founder member of the
National Front (NF), although problems developed from the outset owing to his fractious relationship with
A. K. Chesterton
Arthur Kenneth Chesterton (1 May 1899 – 16 August 1973) was a British far-right journalist and political activist. From 1933 to 1938, he was a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Disillusioned with Oswald Mosley, he left the ...
.
[Walker, ''The National Front'', p. 86] Nonetheless he was the party's first parliamentary election candidate in
Acton Acton may refer to:
Places Antarctica
* Mount Acton
Australia
* Acton, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra
* Acton, Tasmania, a suburb of Burnie
* Acton Park, Tasmania, a suburb of Hobart, Tasmania, formerly known as Acton
Canada ...
in a
by-election in 1968.
Alarmed by the
protests of 1968
The protests of 1968 comprised a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, predominantly characterized by popular rebellions against state militaries and the bureaucracies.
In the United States, these protests marked a turning point for the ci ...
, Fountaine believed that revolution was sure to follow in continental Europe and, fearing similar protests in the UK, told NF members to report to the police in order to offer their services in the event of revolution or civil war.
Chesterton, who had no desire to hand details of the nascent movement to the police, promptly expelled Fountaine although the latter obtained a court order overturning the expulsion and at the 1968 party conference challenged Chesterton for the leadership. In the interim, Fountaine's credibility had been attacked by John Tyndall in the pages of ''
Spearhead'' magazine and with his reputation damaged he was easily routed by Chesterton's 316 votes to 20.
After a confrontation with Chesterton in which he told Fountaine to submit to his leadership or leave, Fountaine walked out with two of his closest supporters, Gerald Kemp and Rodney Legg, who joined him in resigning from the National Directorate of the NF.
Fountaine largely disappeared from view for some years after this, although during the internal struggles of 1974, which saw Tyndall as leader pitted against a newly emerged group of populists, pro-Tyndall elements claimed that Fountaine had secretly been conspiring with
Roy Painter Roy Painter (born 1933) was a former leading figure on the British far right.
A cab driver, he was a leading member of the Conservatives in Tottenham and had stood as a candidate for them in the Greater London Council. A supporter of Enoch Powell ...
, at the time recognised as the leader of the populist faction. Despite this, Tyndall subsequently courted the support of Fountaine following the election of
John Kingsley Read, who had emerged ahead of Painter as populist leader, as NF Chairman. Fountaine agreed to work with Tyndall, and at the 1975 conference proposed one of Tyndall's favoured ideas, changing leadership elections from the existing system of National Directorate members only to a party-wide vote, a motion that was narrowly defeated. In November 1975, Tyndall was expelled from the party while Fountaine and
Martin Webster
Martin Guy Alan Webster (born 14 May 1943) is a British neo-nazi, a former leading figure on the far-right in the United Kingdom. An early member of the National Labour Party, he was John Tyndall's closest ally, and followed him in joining ...
were suspended for their part in recent machinations, although all three were reinstated by court order the following month. Kingsley Read and his supporters would break away to form the
National Party soon afterwards.
Fountaine returned to public notice under Tyndall and was adopted as the party's candidate for the
1976 Coventry North West by-election. His campaign secured only 3% of the vote in a city where the local branch had been divided by the National Party split, although Fountaine did at least beat Kingsley Read.
Fountaine's alliance with Tyndall did not last, however, and he became openly critical of what he saw as the
neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...
of Tyndall and Webster, as well as their attempts to recruit elements he saw as undesirable, such as
racist skinhead
White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads, are members of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and antisemitic offshoot of the skinhead subculture. Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and ...
s and
football hooligans
Football hooliganism, also known as soccer hooliganism, football rioting or soccer rioting, constitutes violence and other destructive behaviours perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism normally involves ...
. As a result, by 1978 Fountaine had become a focus for dissident activity within the NF. In the 1979 election, Fountaine stood as National Front candidate in the Norwich South constituency, polling 264 votes (0.7%).
Later years
Following the NF's failure at the 1979 general election, Fountaine split with Tyndall in 1979, and challenged him for the leadership, but was defeated and split from the NF to form his own NF
Constitutional Movement
The Constitutional Movement was a right wing political group in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1979 by Andrew Fountaine as the National Front Constitutional Movement, a splinter group from the National Front. Offering a more moderate altern ...
, later called the Nationalist Party. The new party claimed 2,000 members by January 1980 and published a newspaper, ''Excalibur''. The new movement was short-lived as Fountaine became disillusioned with the far right's in-fighting.
He retired from politics in 1981 to concentrate on growing trees on his estate
Narford Hall
Narford is situated in the Breckland District of Norfolk and covers an area of 970 hectares (3.75 square miles).
Narford village has all but disappeared, with a population of only 41. At the 2011 Census the population of the area remained less th ...
, northwest of
Swaffham
Swaffham () is a market town and civil parish in the Breckland District and English county of Norfolk. It is situated east of King's Lynn and west of Norwich.
The civil parish has an area of and in the 2001 census had a population of 6,9 ...
, and remained there until his death in 1997.
Fountaine's book ''Meaning of an Enemy'' was serialised in John Bean's magazine ''Combat'' from 1960 to 1965. It was published by Ostara Publications in November 2012 .
Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer who received extensive media coverage after shooting and killing a burglar at his
Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
home, Bleak House near Wisbech in 1999, is a nephew by marriage of Fountaine.
Elections contested
''Note:'' Although Fountaine was the candidate of the local Conservative Party in 1950 his candidacy had been disavowed by the party at national level.
Personal life
Fountaine had a son and a daughter from his first marriage, which lasted from 1949 to 1960,
and another son from his second marriage, which lasted from September 1960 to his death in 1997.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fountaine, Andrew
1918 births
1997 deaths
Military personnel from Norfolk
British people of the Spanish Civil War
Conservative Party (UK) parliamentary candidates
National Front (UK) politicians
English neo-Nazis
Royal Navy officers of World War II
People from Breckland District
Royal Navy officers
English far-right politicians
Independent British political candidates
Andrew
Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in List of countries where English is an official language, English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is freq ...
Neo-fascist politicians