Andrew Fountaine (7 December 1918 – 14 September 1997) was an activist involved in the British far right. After military service in a number of conflicts Fountaine joined the Conservative Party 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, Fountaine was educated at the Army College in Aldershot and was the son of Vice Admiral Charles Fountaine who had been Naval ADC to King George V. One of Fountaine's ancestors was an art collector. Fountaine drove an ambulance for the Abyssinians during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. He also attended Cambridge University studying natural sciences. He then fought for Francisco Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War, before enlisting in the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman 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 Lt-Commander, before being invalided out after a Kamikaze attack in April 1945. Conservative Party During the 1940s, Fountaine also became involved with the Conservative Party, 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". In 1949 he was chosen by the Tories as their candidate for Chorley in Lancashire at the next general election. A speech to the Tory Party conference that same year was considered to be antisemitic, however; and, as a result, Party Chairman Lord Woolton disavowed his nomination. 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. He would follow John