[2] The organisation attracted great publicity when member Captain Francis de Groot, on horseback and at Campbell's direction, upstaged Lang in cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in protest at the latter's anti-monarchist ideology.

Campbell met with fascists and National Socialists such as Sir Oswald Mosley and Joachim von Ribbentrop and, in 1934, published his manifesto The New Road, signalling an ideological transition towards Italian corporate statism.

Among them was the Old Guard, a secret organisation purported to exist as early as 1917, which at the time of the Great Depression was administrated primarily by businessmen Roger Goldfinch and Robert Gillespie, among other anonymous committee members.

The Old Guard was a coalition of imperial loyalists, devoted to the British Empire and ready to act preemptively to prevent a socialist revolution from taking place.

With a peak membership of over 50,000,[12] the Guard rallied in public, broke up 'Communist' meetings, drilled,[5]: 161  vilified the Labor Party and demanded the deportation of Communists.

[7] Campbell and his New Guard proceeded to secure connections and weapons[5]: 161  so that, in the event of a statewide communist revolt in which the police had become ineffective, he could seize control of essential services and keep them operational.

[15] Though the New Guard sought to work as a supplement to the police in the event of a socialist revolution,[16] they were significantly opposed under orders from the Lang government.

De Groot was supplied with a horse by fellow New Guardsmen Albert Reichard and he rode to the ceremony in his World War I 15th Hussars uniform, managing to slash the ribbon before Lang.

The activities of militant splinter groups emerging from the New Guard, such as the Fascist Legion, also contributed to a rush of resignations which began even before Lang's dismissal.

[14]: 46  It was during this time that Campbell began to outline more fully his political beliefs, producing a series of broadcasts in which he developed a "complete credo for a fascist State", most notably incorporating a "non-elective cabinet or commission, a corporative assembly, vocational franchise and a charter of liberty".

Campbell was curious to learn about fascism from the source however, so in 1933 during an overseas business trip, he met with Sir Oswald Mosley and wife Lady Cynthia at their London home to discuss the matter.

With Mosley's recommendations he later progressed to Berlin where, unable to meet Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler, he was able to see Foreign Affairs Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, as well as Alfred Rosenberg.

However, on his return to Australia, Campbell's support for an "openly pro-fascist policy" was met with strong opposition from the Guard's "anti-fascist moderates".

[21]: 97  These attempts to establish the movement as what historian Keith Amos dubs "Australia's first fascist party" are thought to hastened the decline of the New Guard, with many previous members unhappy with the ideological progression that had taken place.

While initially satisfied by the prospects of a United Australia Party-led purging of communism and other socialistic and anti-communist dogmas from the continent, Campbell had realised that the central tenets of the New Guard could not be fulfilled due to those politicians' ineffectiveness in bringing them about.

[23] The majority of the shrinking organisation endorsed its move into electoral politics, which was, according to Campbell, "necessitated by the failure of the UAP governments, at both federal and state levels, to accede to the New Guard's demands".

[24] At the May 1935 New South Wales state election, the Centre Party contested five out of the 90 Legislative Assembly districts, all in suburban Sydney, and polled 0.60 percent of the total vote.

[28][29][30] The party's relatively high vote in Hornsby and Lane Cove is thought to have represented "merely the level of protest against [UAP Premier] Stevens" in the absence of other candidates.

[32] Additionally, Aubrey Murphy, the candidate in Concord, served on two occasions as mayor of the Blue Mountains City Council in the 1950s,[33] and was named an MBE in the 1960 New Year Honours.

[35] Campbell's 1965 autobiographical account of his involvement in the New Guard, The Rallying Point, considered "confused", "highly unreliable" and a work of "historical fiction" by Moore in any event,[5]: 139–140  does not mention the Centre Party at all.

[5]: 147 As Campbell allowed considerable independence for the Localities and permitted members to associate freely with any political party so long that the New Guard's central values were upheld, splinter groups such as the Fascist Legion (also known as the Pack of Cards) formed.

Legion members wore Ku Klux Klan-style gowns and hoods at their own internal meetings in order to guarantee anonymity, adopting pseudonyms based on particular playing cards in a standard 52-card deck (excluding queens).

The activity of splinter groups such as the Fascist Legion contributed to the bleeding of members in the lead-up to Lang's dismissal by Sir Philip Game.

Standards for New Guard membership had prospective members picked irrespective of class, financial situation or party affiliations, so long as they were of good character.

For propaganda reasons, the New Guard's membership was often publicly exaggerated, as when Campbell foreshadowed a procession of 100,000 men along Macquarie Street to present a petition to Sir Game.