The head teachers of Britain’s independent schools, gathering for their annual conference in central London this week, might be forgiven for feeling a little apprehensive. After years of doing as little as possible to provoke old Labour war cries, they have appointed a newly retired rear admiral as the public face of the Independent Schools Council, who has spent his first month loosing off broadsides.

First, Chris Parry told the Commons schools select committee that the education world was beset by “cold war” thinking that had split the private and state sectors and that he found the poor quality of state schools near his Portsmouth home “offensive”.

Then he tore into Beverley Hughes, the children’s minister, as if she were a junior officer on his war-ship, attacking the “clumsy intrusion” of the government into nursery education and “discrimination” against independent providers. He has no regrets – indeed, he is more than happy to compound the ill feeling by denouncing the unsatisfactory response he received from Hughes’s officials as “petty and petulant”.

So far, so good: according to one head teacher, Parry, 54, was chosen because schools realised they had failed to justify themselves and had been “totally outwitted” when the Charity Commission decreed they would have to do far more to help pupils from less affluent backgrounds.

Parry’s role will be to promote loudly what he calls the independent sector’s “progressive, world-class” qualities and take on “residual chippi-ness” about independent education. The more confrontational tone will, many heads accept, be a gamble – one that could easily backfire.

Parry’s comments have provoked a fair amount of shock among senior education figures used to the more emollient tones of most independent school heads. Barry Sheerman, the usually unflappable select committee chairman, with whom Parry had the “cold war” flare-up, called the admiral’s comments “quite extraordinary”.

His move into education comes after a career revolving around Portsmouth, home city of the navy. Parry attended the grammar school there and then went to sea with the fleet after getting his degree at Oxford. He had what one colleague calls a “good war” in the Falklands – his helicopter crew knocked out an enemy submarine and rescued an SAS team stranded on a glacier.

His most recent post at the Ministry of Defence was running a think tank with the brief of pinpointing future threats to Britain. He is now scanning the horizon for threats to independent schools.

In the short term there may be an economic hazard. Although Parry says there is no let-up in parents wanting to send their children to independent schools, “this may change if there is an economic downturn”.

The worldwide picture is, Parry believes, a far bigger threat in the longer term than the ups and downs of the British economy. “Globalisation is a threat to the settled, bourgeois life-style,” Parry says (in an unlikely echo of Karl Marx). “We are going to see a lot more volatility in income and social organisation. For schools, that means there are going to be a lot of parents moving into and out of private education as they are suddenly able to afford it or suddenly lose their money.”

On the brighter side, Parry is confident that the “sectarian divide” between state and independent sectors in Britain cannot last. “There is still some resentment but class war is so passé,” he says, adding that, as the government’s semi-independent academy schools become established, the fault line will become blurred. “The obvious threat, the political one, will diminish; there will be a coalescence of independence across the sectors with academies.”

Until that happens he is going to continue his attacks on the “huge overregulation” of schools and what he sees as the instinct of the government to intensify control at every opportunity, a sentiment few in the state sector would dispute.

He ticks off some plus points for the government – it has done a lot, he believes, to restore the status of state school teachers, and Lord Adonis, the schools minister, understands the independent sector.

“The rest of the government”, Parry says, “does not recognise that the reason we operate as well as we do is because of choice, excellence and independence.”

The Charity Commission, Parry thinks, is guilty of “overinterpreting” the law. “Of course schools should demonstrate they are good citizens,” he says. “But why should a school that provides education then have to demonstrate it by jumping through hoops that are greater than any other institution in society to share with people who don’t invest in it?”

For all his defence of independent schools, Parry, like thousands of others, would far rather have been able to find a decent local state school for his children. Instead, he sent his daughter and son to an independent school. “For me, it was a simple economic and emotional choice,” he says. “What sort of environment did I want my children educated in and how much was I prepared to pay?”

While this week’s conference will no doubt have a frisson as head teachers wonder what their outspoken new champion will say next, they should be warned that he’s not above criticising their customers.

Too many children are molly-coddled, he says, and the urban school run is a “complete social evil”. “I welcome the new taxes on 4x4s,” he declares. “Okay, in a lot of areas public transport is not good enough and there are worries about security, but too often it’s about saying, ‘I’m married to a better husband than you,’ and getting the child to school is the least important element.”

Expect more broadsides from the admiral in the coming weeks.

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