The Executive Committee of True Blue Conservatives

Dr Martin Parsons is an author, charity founder and expert on the global persecution of Christians and radical Islam.

He is founder and CEO of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution and also works as an independent consultant and expert witness on Christianity, freedom of religion or belief and radical Islam. He has been quoted on multiple occasions in both the print and broadcast media on radical Islam and the global persecution of Christians, including interviews on both the BBC and US TV network CBN News.

Martin spent 10 years working without a formal salary to set up an aid project in a remote mountainous area of Afghanistan. He and a Norwegian colleague were the first westerners ever to visit this area, which till then was literally just a blank on the map. In order to gain access to the area he had to negotiate in local Afghan Persian with senior members of jihadist groups including the Taliban.

He has has also held senior leadership roles in education, including being principal of an FE institute in Pakistan, and being a member of the NGO committee which functioned as the national education committee during the first period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. He was later part of the senior leadership team establishing a new sixth form college which significantly improved both A-level results and university admissions in a deprived East Anglian port town with underachieving schools. He has also been an examiner for A-level Geography and set up a new course in Research Ethics at a university.

Martin was on the Conservative Party’s parliamentary candidates list from 2005-15 and shortlisted for a number of constituencies which Conservatives subsequently won. He was a councillor on Waveney District Council in Suffolk 2011-16 where he won one of the 20 percent most deprived wards in the country and was subsequently re-elected with more than 50% of the vote share. In May 2024 he won a seat on Colchester City Council representing Mersea and Pyefleet ward.

He is the author of two major books, the first on Christian and Islamic theology – which was the book form of his PhD and a second Good for Society: Christian Values and Conservative Politics (Bloomington:Westbow,2021) described by Rt Hon Anne Widdecombe as “magnificent, detailed and authoritative” and by former Conservative Party chairman Rt Hon Lord Tebbit “as a robust defence of both our Christian heritage and the Conservative Party”. From 2008-18 he wrote regularly for Conservative Home on British national identity and values the challenge of radical Islam both in the UK and overseas. More recently he has written for The Critic on the spread of radical Islam and the persecution of Christian minorities.

He is married to Lesley, a nurse and health visitor and they have two grown up sons and live in Essex.