Everything Changes But Stays The Same!

[The Little Un 47]

Memories from Reg Fearman.

 

MIKE PARKER 1925 -1987

 

It was through Dave Anderson (the Captain of Hanley Speedway (Stoke) in the late 1940’s), who popped into my garage in October 1959 asking if I was interested in racing again at Stoke as Mike Parker was negotiating to run speedway there, that I met Parker in the winter of 1959/60 at his office and flat which was above his hardware store in Moss Side, Manchester (an extremely run-down area which some years ago was completely demolished. I told him of my background in speedway and of my racing career at Stoke in particular so we came to a deal to promote on a 50/50 basis. I then installed at Stoke all the necessary equipment to stage speedway racing including the floodlights. I didn’t know at the time that he was on the way to becoming the Rachman of the North. You could buy a whole street of run-down terrace houses in that area for about £100 each. Parker would convert the ones he bought into bed-sits. I actually accompanied him one day (without knowing it) on one of his evictions. He broke down the door, threw all the contents out into the street and put hasps and padlocks on the doors.(This give one an insight into his character). It was this ruthlessness that he carried forward into his speedway and stock car promoting career. When Parker came into speedway promoting in 1960, his knowledge of speedway racing was just about zero. My belief was, as far as he was concerned, that it was business with no feel for the sport of speedway racing or its history. I used to feed him all the information at Promoters’ meetings and along the way he picked up a lot of knowledge from the other promoters. I believe he saw, through speedway racing, a means of making money and then eventually also going into promoting Stock Car Racing.

 

It was an advertisement and write up in the Speedway Press that brought interested parties to the inaugural Provincial League meetings which were held that winter in his flat above his shop. John Wick, Editor of Speedway World, became our Secretary and some of those at the inaugural meetings were Trevor Redmond (St Austell), Ian Hoskins (Edinburgh), Frank Varey (Sheffield), Alan Martin, Captain and Maurice Jephcott (all Cradley Heath), Charlie Foot and Charlie Knott (both Poole) Charlie Dugard (Arlington - Eastbourne) and Wally Mawdsley and Pete Lansdale (Rayleigh) John Pilblad (Aldershot). Parker told me that he had spent some time in the Merchant Navy and was then doing property repairs as a jobbing builder.

 

There were a number of midget cars around Lancashire in the late 1950’s which used to race at Belle Vue. He was one of the drivers. I believe most of the cars belonged to one man but Parker managed to take over all the cars. They were very unreliable and it was hard to keep them going for four laps. I understand that the Belle Vue speedway riders became fed up with the track being cut up and so Parker went off to Liverpool and Bradford in 1959 where he staged pirate Cavalcade of Speed meetings – side car racing which was organised by Harold Hill from the Birmingham area, a grass track man, and Parker’s midgets. There were many junior speedway riders around who were willing to race in these unlicenced meetings which would normally be licenced by the Speedway Control Board and Auto Cycle Union.

 

A committee of the prospective speedway promoters for 1960 met the Speedway Control Board which agreed to sanction the new Provincial League.

 

1960 saw Parker run Liverpool and me Stoke under Northern Speedways Ltd, a company which we formed. Stoke was extremely successful but Liverpool, although having staged several Cavalcade of Speed meetings in 1959, failed to draw a paying crowd for Provincial League speedway. We dropped Liverpool in 1961 and opened Newcastle and Wolverhampton Speedways – both tracks had closed in the 1950’s with the downturn at that time in the sport. Both stadiums were owned by the same Greyhound Company, The Midland Greyhound Racing Company Ltd. The return of speedway to those two venues was extremely successful. At the same time, we opened Middlesbrough.

 

At the end of the 1961 season, Charles Ochiltree closed Le icester in the National League due to falling attendances and offered it to Parker and me in the Provincial League for 1962. The CO said he had closed the speedway with an attendance of 3,000 plus people on average and thought the figures would not go lower in the Provincial League. We took it on and the figures plumetted. 1200 people and less were the norm and it haemorraged money. As we had so many tracks, I suggested that we took Bill Bridgett in for a third share in Wolverhampton. I knew him as a junior rider at Stoke,an enthusiast and a business man having inherited the fish and game shop in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

 

At the end of the 1962 season, I went on holiday abroad around October time and when I returned, Parker was very cool on the telephone so I went up from my Stoke on Trent base to Manchester to learn that he did not want “to do business with me” anymore and that he had negotiated a new lease for Newcastle and Wolverhampton in his own name and, thank you very much, I could have Stoke and Middlesbrough. We parted acrimoniously.

 

That winter of 1962/63 saw the start of my litigation against Parker. He got involved with Newport, South Wales with Charles Foot and the Knotts and I got involved with Long Eaton (both venues to prepare for the 1963 season). At the January 1963 Annual General Meeting of the promoters at the Harbour Heights Hotel, Poole, (remember Parker was the Chairman of the Provincial League 1960/61/62). I got up on the floor at the beginning of that meeting and addressed the assembly to say that I had a statement to make that Mike Parker was dishonest and a thief. He had stolen the Wolverhampton and Newcastle speedway leases from our companies into his own name and was not fit to be a Chairman of that Association. Well, you can imagine, the balloon went up and Charles Foot proposed that, for the sake of the meeting, Parker should be removed from the Chair for that Conference. Long Eaton and Newport were accepted as members of the Provincial League which gave Parker and me three tracks each out of about 14. I had read the Memorandum and Articles of Association of Limited Companies and told my lawyers that a Director of such a company was there to protect the company’s interests and not to divert its assets to one’s own personal benefit, which Parker had done. In February, Major W W Fearnley, the Secretary of the Speedway Control Board, notified Parker, myself and the Provincial Promoters’ Association that it would not licence those six tracks until the litigation was resolved. I was suing Parker for a considerable amount of money and those words from the Speedway Control Board brought the litigation to a swift conclusion with our barristers at Lincolns Inn, City of London. The outcome was a financial settlement to myself which took Parker about two-and-a-half years to pay in instalments. After that, I would not have p…ed on him if he had been lying in the gutter and on fire.

 

The vendetta continued for many years until his death. After he finished with speedway and stock car racing, he ran a restaurant business in Lancaster. He died in November 1987 comparatively young aged 62 following a cancer-related illness. He lived most of his life in the Blackpool area and Manchester.

 

In 1964, the Provincial League ran black outside the jurisdiction of the Speedway Control Board and ACU. A row ensued between the SCB and the Provincial League promoters when the SCB decided that it would elevate Wolverhampton and one other track, which they never named, to the National League for the 1964 season. The Provincial League promoters protested as they did not wish to lose any one of their teams and the Wolverhampton promotion had no wish to be elevated. Due to the conflict with the Speedway Control Board. The Royal Automobile Club which is the governing body of all motor sport in Great Britain, decided that an Inquiry should be held into the running of speedway racing. That was when Lord Shawcross was appointed to carry out a full investigation. His report was completed in the winter of 1964/65, the outcome being the amalgamation of the two leagues. After a joint meeting between members of the National and Provincial Leagues, the British League and the British Speedway Promoters’ Association were formed. Several heads rolled in the make-up of the Speedway Control Board following the Inquiry.

 

After the 1963 episode with Parker, I decided that eventually I would have to have him removed as Chairman of the Association but Charles Foot always said to me (he proved to be right) that if we left Parker where he was, we would know where he was but in the late 1960’s, I decided a coup d’etat should take place. Charles Ochiltree was at this time in conflict with Parker over the Stock Car World Final. (By this time, Parker had branched out with Bridget into promoting stock car racing). So, the CO was the obvious choice to take the Chair. He agreed and I did the lobbying which was all quite secret and, at the British Speedway Promoters’ Association Annual Conference at Chesford Grange Hotel, Warwickshire, the bomb dropped. Parker’s face was ashen as Charles Ochiltree was sworn in as Chairman of the British Speedway Promoters’ Association for 1970 which saw him carry those duties through to the end of 1972 when I was appointed British Speedway Promoters’ Association Chairman in 1973. The inaugural Second Division took place in 1968 and I was Chairman of that Division through to the end of 1972. In all, I was Chairman of Division Two for five sessions and Division One for seven sessions. Parker had other partners in Len Silver at Hackney but there was soon a parting of the ways with Len Silver taking control of Hackney. The relationship between Parker, Foot and the Knotts at Newport lasted only a short period of time before they fell out with Parker taking control.

 

At one time, Parker and Bridget signed Rick France for Wolverhampton without the consent of the Rider Control Committee and were threatened with expulsion from the League. Parker – a maverick and at times a law unto himself.

 

The only person who remained with Parker throughout was Bill Bridget. In 2002, I heard that Bridget was not very well and offered him the olive branch via phone call to his home and I invited him to become a member of the Veteran Speedway Riders’ Association to enjoy the fellowship and news bulletins. He declined saying that his life was spent within his own four walls, watching football – his first love - on television at every opportunity and that he had blown out to 20 stone and could just about hobble across the room. Harold (Bill) Bridget died in Stoke on Trent in 2004 aged 76 from a cancer-related illness.

 

Charles Foot proved to be correct because for years after Parker was removed from the Chair, at promoters meetings, Parker accompanied by Bridget would waste as much time as possible on the smallest items on the agenda, filibustering and then, at 2.00 pm, leave the meeting to catch his train home to Manchester. The rest of us remained until 6.00 pm doing the rest of the business.

 

In 1975, the Rider Control Committee allocated Bengt Jansson to Reading from Wolverhampton. The RCC consisted of the Management Committee of five members. Len Silver and I were two of the members of the RCC. The Wolverhampton Speedway Programme and Press Bulletin named Len Silver and myself as being associated with the Mafia. Len Silver and I took legal action against Mike Parker, Bill Bridget and Michael Beale, the Press Officer, an Action which we won in the High Court and received unreserved apologies and retraction in the Wolverhampton Speedway Programme and Press Bulletins.

 

I always remember Parker turning up for the first meeting at Stoke Speedway on Good Friday 1960. That winter, I had written down all the things I could remember about the promotion at West Ham and Leicester in particular. One thing that stood out in my mind was that the promoters and managers always wore suits so I was there at Stoke in my Sunday best and to my embarrassment, Parker turned up in jeans and a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up. He really had no idea at that time of presentation.

 

Parker also became a tremendous thorn in the world of stock cars and in particular to Charles Ochiltree a Gentleman, who was such a docile man. The C.O. once swore a bad word to me in describing Parker and that was really saying something.

 

http://www.stokepotters.cc/fearman/Fparker.htm

Edited September 4, 2011 by The Little Un

[racers and royals 8,728]

Maybe this will inspire Middlo to tell us his memories of his testimonial meeting