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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 Ł100 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 Leicester 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.
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