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 family who had resided in ancestral Narfold Hall, The son of Vice Admiral Charles Fountaine, who had been Naval ADC to King George V, Fountaine was educated at the Army College in Aldershot. One of his 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 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, before enlisting in the Royal Navy 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. During the war he was appointed a temporary sub-lieutenant. He served in the Pacific as gunnery officer on the aircraft carrier HMS ''Indefatigable'', attaining the rank of lieutenant-commander, before being invalided out after a '' kamikaze'' attack in April 1945.

Conservative Party

During the 1940s, Fountaine became involved with the

, 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 ...

. As a result, the 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, the Labour incumbent

Clifford Kenyon Clifford Kenyon CBE (11 August 1896 – 29 April 1979) was a British farmer and politician. Kenyon was educated at Brighton Grove College in Manchester, and the University of Manchester. He worked on his father's farm, Scarr Barn Farm at Crawsha ...

John Bean

Having left the Conservative Party, Fountaine launched his own group, known as the National Front Movement. 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 followed

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, being a landowner in Norfolk, he presented a more respectable image than Bean, 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 (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 later claimed that during this time he regularly telephoned 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.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, 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 John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second E ...

, 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 were suspended for their part in recent machinations, although all three were reinstated by court order the following month. Kingsley Read and his supporters broke 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 The Coventry North West by-election, in Coventry on 4 March 1976, was held after the death of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Maurice Edelman. A safe Labour seat, it was won by Geoffrey Robinson, who retained the seat until 2019. Party performa ...

. 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

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of Tyndall and Webster, as well as their attempts to recruit elements he saw as undesirable, such as racist skinheads 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, northwest of Swaffham, 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 home, Bleak House near Wisbech in 1999, is a nephew by marriage of Fountaine.
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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 British neo-fascist politicians Foreign volunteers in the Spanish Civil War (National faction)