Charles Parker was a leading member of the

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 ...

in its early years and provided the group with much of its funding. A businessman in

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

, Parker and his wife joined the National Front (NF) in 1975. He soon took charge of the

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

branch of the party, a position he continued to hold until he joined the BNP, despite having to see off a challenge to his authority from

Martin Wingfield Martin Wingfield (born 1951) is a British far-right politician. Wingfield is long-standing figure in the British nationalist movement, he and his wife, Tina Wingfield, having contested several elections since the 1980s. Biography National Front ...

. Parker's daughter Valerie married NF Chairman

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 ...

, who was also based in the Sussex area, in 1977 and as a result Parker became closely associated with Tyndall over the next number of years. Following Tyndall out of the NF in 1980 he became a leading member of the New National Front and provided the financial backing that enabled the fledgling movement to gain a foothold. He took a major role in the attempts to reach out to other groups that the NNF initiated in the early 1980s and on 7 April 1982 he joined Tyndall, Ray Hill of the

British Movement The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), is a British neo-Nazi organisation founded by Colin Jordan in 1968. It grew out of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which was founded in 1962. Frequentl ...

, Capt.

Kenneth McKilliam Kenneth is an English given name and surname. The name is an Anglicised form of two entirely different Gaelic personal names: ''Cainnech'' and '' Cináed''. The modern Gaelic form of ''Cainnech'' is ''Coinneach''; the name was derived from a byna ...

, the founder of the NF's ex-servicemen's organisation and John Peacock of the

British Democratic Party The British Democratic Party (BDP) was a short-lived far-right political party in the United Kingdom. A breakaway group from the National Front, the BDP was severely damaged after it became involved in a gun-running sting and was absorbed by the ...

at a press conference in a hotel in

Victoria, London Victoria is an area of Central London in the City of Westminster. It is named after Victoria station (London), Victoria Station, which is a major transport hub. The station was named after the nearby Victoria Street. The name is used to describ ...

to announce the foundation of the new BNP. Parker became a leading figure within the BNP, continuing as head of the new group in Sussex, as well as providing much of the party's finances and acting as National Organiser. He also joined Hill in warning Tyndall against making any deals with the

Official National Front The Official National Front (ONF) was one of two far-right groups to emerge in the United Kingdom in 1986 following a split within the National Front. Following ideological paths that were mostly new to the British far-right, the ONF stood oppos ...

, after one of its senior members, Joe Pearce, approached Tyndall about the possibility of an alliance.Ray Hill with Andrew Bell, ''The Other Face of Terror'', London: Grafton, 1988 Advancing age meant that his role in the BNP diminished during the 1980s as he retired from politics.

References

External links

Back cover of 'The Other Face of Terror' showing Parker flanked by Tyndall and Hill
National Front (UK) politicians British National Party politicians English businesspeople People from Brighton Year of birth missing Year of death missing {{UK-business-bio-stub