Sidney Parker (1) (1929–2012)

Sidney E. Parker was a philosopher and historian of Individualist Anarchism and Egoism, as inspired by the ideas of Max Stirner. His writing appeared in Freedom (UK), The Match (US) and other journals. Parker edited a series of anarchist and egoist journals, most notably Minus One (1963) and Ego (1983). He spoke to humanist, anarchist and freethought groups all his life.

Parker was a teenage member of the Communist Youth League in 1946, after which he read about Anarchism. In 1961 he read Max Stirner’s The Ego and His Own and became convinced that anarchism was not a communism, but an individualism. In 1982 Sid would “emerge as his own man,” leaving anarchism behind and becoming an unhyphenated Egoist. He was always en marge, the outsider. “I am not so much a Stirnerite as I am a Parkerite.”

Sid Parker died in 2012. He and his wife Pat had withdrawn from society in his last years and so there was no public memorial of his passing.