Early years Parker was born in
Napier,
Hawke's Bay. He went to school at Napier Marist and
St John's College, Hastings. By 1969 he was living in
London,
England. While of mainly Irish ancestry, he knew little of the Irish struggle until
The Troubles began that year in
Northern Ireland. Parker joined the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign, led by the
International Socialists (now known as the
Socialist Workers Party), and immersed himself in literature on the Irish struggle. He continued his involvement with the International Socialists into the early 1970s, attending branch meetings in West London, with his old Napier friend,
Blair Peach. Peach was later killed while participating in a 1979 anti-
National Front rally.
Career Parker worked as a writer for much of his life and was prominent in his union, the
New Zealand Writers Guild. His plays included
Midnight in Moscow — which
The Press reviewer Alan Scott called "entertaining and thought-provoking" and "one of his best to date" — 2005's Iraq-set
Baghdad, Baby, and an adaptation of
Nicky Hager's exposé
The Hollow Men. He won awards in New Zealand for teleplay
Share the Dream (starring
Joel Tobeck), and co-writing the successful big-screen comedy
Came a Hot Friday. The 1985 film centered on two conmen in small town New Zealand, and was adapted from the novel by
Ronald Hugh Morrieson. Parker's theatrical CV included
The Feds,
Two Fingers From Frank Zappa, and adaptations of
Great Expectations, and
The Trial. He also wrote many radio plays, among them
Joe Stalin Knew My Father and
Engels F: A History of the Ould Sod. Arguably his best-known television work is Welsh-Kiwi rugby tale
Old Scores, which Parker co-wrote with ex All Black triallist and occasional soccer player
Greg McGee. The two also co-created the 1980s trucking series
Roche, whose cast included
John Bach and
Andy Anderson, and goldmining drama
Gold, a co-production between New Zealand and Canada. Parker also worked on episodes of police drama ''
Mortimer's Patch, Betty's Bunch
, and documentary Just Slightly, A People Apart: The Irish in NZ''. In 1990 Parker co-directed
Shattered Dreams, a documentary on the years leading up to the
1951 Waterfront strike. By 1975, Parker was back in New Zealand. Horrified at the election of National Prime Minister,
Robert Muldoon, Parker joined the pro-Soviet
Socialist Unity Party of New Zealand and soon became chairman of its Auckland City Branch. He was active in the Campaign for an Independent East Timor and played soccer for the
Halt All Racist Tours team for a number of years, though the quality of his play was purportedly variable. In July 1977 he penned the first of many articles on Ireland for the SUP's paper,
Tribune. By the late 1970s the SUP had decided to ally with the
Labour Party. Parker resigned from the SUP in 1978, though he remained a supporter into the late 1980s. In 1979 Parker travelled to
Northern Ireland, visiting West
Belfast and trouble spots such as the
Falls Road. Returning to New Zealand, Parker helped form H Block/Armagh in 1980/81 as a support group for republican prisoners in Irish jails. Parker served on the editorial board of the organisation's publication
Saoirse from 1982 until its demise in 2000. Parker contributed regular articles on Irish issues to SUP publications until the party split in 1990. In 1991 Parker was a member of the Editorial Group of the socialist journal
Agenda. He was also active in the
Workers' Charter Movement, a joint project of Socialist Worker, SPA,
John Minto's Global Peace and Justice Auckland and
Matt McCarten's
Unite Union. He also contributed to the
New Zealand Listener and
The New Zealand Herald. Parker was a Marxist–Leninist, and injected his politics into his art. In the socialist journal
Sites, No. 16 Autumn 1988, he wrote, "I would describe myself as a class-conscious writer. I'm with Lenin. I'm for the working class seizing control of the wealth it creates, for the replacement of parliament, the army, the police, the judiciary — all those deadly manacles of state control — with workers' committees and militias, and all this done as part of a world-wide struggle ..."
Personal life Parker and his partner Isabel lived in Ponsonby, Auckland and had a son. Parker died on 14 April 2020 aged 72, having finished a stage adaption of
Albert Camus'
The Plague the previous day. == Works ==