The Fellowship Party was the oldest environmentalist political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 in England. It opposed nuclear power

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

 and all weapons. Its national petition against nuclear weapons tests led to the forming of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

.

The party was founded in June 1955, following an independent anti-H Bomb candidature by John Loverseed, a former Common Wealth Party

Common Wealth Party

The Common Wealth Party was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom in the Second World War. Thereafter, it continued in being, essentially as a pressure group, until 1993.-The war years:...

 MP. Other founding members included Eric Fenner (Battersea South candidate), Ronald Mallone, George Onion and forty pacifists and advocates of total disarmament

Disarmament

Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear arms...

 and common ownership

Common ownership

Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an enterprise or other organization are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or by a public institution such as a governmental body. It is therefore in contrast to public ownership...

 of the means of production

Means of production

Means of production refers to physical, non-human inputs used in production—the factories, machines, and tools used to produce wealth — along with both infrastructural capital and natural capital. This includes the classical factors of production minus financial capital and minus human capital...

, distribution and exchange (socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

).

It contested general elections from 1959

United Kingdom general election, 1959

This United Kingdom general election was held on 8 October 1959. It marked a third successive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, led by Harold Macmillan...

 to 1997 general election

United Kingdom general election, 1997

The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...

 and council elections from 1955 to 2002. It has stood parliamentary candidates in Woolwich West

Woolwich West (UK Parliament constituency)

Woolwich West was a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1918 until 1983. It was based around Eltham, now in the London Borough of Greenwich in south-east London....

, Tottenham

Tottenham (UK Parliament constituency)

Tottenham is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...

, Birmingham and Greenwich

Greenwich (UK Parliament constituency)

Greenwich was a parliamentary constituency in South-East London, which returned Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1997 by the first past the post system.-History:...

, in addition to several by-elections. It also contested elections for the Greater London Council

Greater London Council

The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...

 and the Inner London Education Authority

Inner London Education Authority

The Inner London Education Authority was the education authority for the 12 inner London boroughs from 1965 until its abolition in 1990.-History:...

. It has contested elections in Blackheath, Chatham, Lancaster, Leigh, Paddington, Peterborough, West Greenwich and Kidbrooke with Hornfair. The highest vote was 792 (3.6%) for Mallone in Greenwich in 1971.

Life members have included Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

, Lady Clare Annesley and Canon Stuart Morris. Its presidents have included Sidney Hinkes

Sidney Hinkes

Sidney George Stuart Hinkes was a pacifist and a priest in the Church of England.Hinkes was born in Dagenham. His father was a postman. He was educated at Dagenham County School from 1936 and was evacuated to Ilfracombe during the Second World War. He went on to serve with the 6th Airborne...

, Donald Swann

Donald Swann

Donald Ibrahím Swann was a British composer, musician and entertainer. He is best known to the general public for his partnership of writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders .-Life:...

 the composer and stage star, Rowland Hilder

Rowland Hilder

Rowland Frederick Hilder OBE was an English marine and landscape artist and book illustrator. He has been called 'the Turner of his generation', and according to the Dictionary of National Biography 'The description "Rowland Hilder country" evokes a landscape as distinctive and personal as...

 the painter and Frank Merrick

Frank Merrick

Frank Merrick was an English pianist in the early 1900s. He was born in Clifton, now part of Bristol.Merrick's peers included Artur Schnabel and Mark Hambourg, and he studied with Theodor Leschetizky. From 1911 to 1929, he taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music and from 1929 at the Royal...

 the composer. Vice-presidents have included Leo McKern

Leo McKern

Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian-born British actor who appeared in numerous British and Australian television programmes and movies, and more than 200 stage roles.-Early life:...

 the actor, scientists Kathleen Lonsdale

Kathleen Lonsdale

Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, DBE FRS was a crystallographer, who established the structure of benzene by X-ray diffraction methods in 1929, and hexachlorobenzene by Fourier spectral methods in 1931...

 and Professor Charles Coulson

Charles Coulson

Charles Alfred Coulson FRS was an applied mathematician, theoretical chemist and religious author.His major scientific work was as a pioneer of the application of the quantum theory of valency to problems of molecular structure, dynamics and reactivity...

, Benjamin Britten, Sybil Morrison

Sybil Morrison

Sybil Morrison was a British pacifist and a suffragist as well as being active with several other radical causes.As a young and enthusiastic suffragist, Morrison was persuaded by Emmeline Pankhurst that she was too young to go to prison. She became a pacifist in 1917 and during World War I she...

, Sybil Thorndike

Sybil Thorndike

Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike CH DBE was a British actress.-Early life:She was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to Arthur Thorndike and Agnes Macdonald. Her father was a Canon of Rochester Cathedral...

 the actress, Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain

Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.-Life:Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the...

, Dr Albert Belden and Professor Glenn Paige. In elections supporters included Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan

Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan Hon. KBE was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the...

 and Dr Kenneth Greet.

The Party continued for many years under Ronald Mallone's direction, based in Blackheath, London

Blackheath, London

Blackheath is a district of South London, England. It is named from the large open public grassland which separates it from Greenwich to the north and Lewisham to the west...

. It was still registered with the Electoral Commission as the Fellowship Party - Peacemaking, Social Justice and Environmentalist, with a registered emblem of an upright sword cancelled by the cross of St Andrew, until 2007. Its registered leader and nomination officer in 2007 was Sidney Fagan, with Ronald Mallone as Treasurer. It voluntarily de-registered on 20 August 2007.

The Fellowship Party published the subscription magazine "Day by Day" for 45 years, until Mallone's death aged 92 in 2009.