Andrew Fountaine

Andrew Fountaine (1918-1997) was a veteran of the far right scene in British politics. After fighting for Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Fountaine became a naval Commander during the Second World War, serving in the Pacific.

A one-time candidate for the Conservative Party (whose candidature was disowned for his extremist positions), Fountaine came to the extreme right initially as a member of the League of Empire Loyalists (whom he joined after attempting to organise his own Nationalist movement which briefly used the later more well-known National Front name). He would go on to follow John Bean 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. Fountaine remained a strong supporter of Bean and supported him in his later struggles with Colin Jordan in the British National Party (in which he acted as party president).

Fountaine would go on to be a leading member of the British National Front, eventually serving as deputy leader to John Tyndall despite being expelled by Arthur Chesterton in 1968 (an action he had overturned in the High Court). 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, later called the Nationalist Party. The new party claimed 2000 members by January 1980 and was publishing its own paper Excalibur. The new movement was to prove short-lived as Fountaine became disillusioned with the in-fighting that was coming to characterise the British right. He retired from politics in 1981 to concentrate on growing trees on his Norfolk estate and remained there until his death in 1997.

Controversial figure and British National Party supporter Tony Martin is the nephew of Fountaine.