The History of the League of Empire Loyalists and Candour

Product Information

To work to achieve for this new world system adequate economic and agricultural self-sufficiency and the financial and military strength needed to guarantee this British world system its freedom both from Communist domination and from coercion by the power of the international money-lending houses and their financial and political agencies. It is at this point of the story that we meet the mysterious R.K. Jeffery, a millionaire Englishman based in Chile, who proved to be A.K.’s greatest benefactor, donating the large amount of money that Candour and later the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL) needed to stay in the fight. One of the most interesting parts of the book concerns the later death of Jeffery and the apparent shenanigans carried out by his relatives that prevented the inheritance coming into the hands of the LEL. Who knows how Jeffery’s millions might have impacted on British nationalist politics? The same could be said for the Communist leaders whom they also opposed. In 1956, Khrushchev might have been able to point to the scientific pretentions of the Soviet Union and claim that this was “the future.” But, of course, it is old school Communism that now lies rusting on the scrap heap of history. As its name suggests, the initial aim of the LEL was to support the British Empire and to campaign for its continuing existence. [6] It was to be its calls for the restoration of the empire and reassertion of the notion of Britons as the world's natural leaders that ultimately saw the group become estranged from the Conservatives, as the League was increasingly divorced from the one nation conservatism that came to dominate the party. [14] This was particularly true following the independence of Sudan and the Suez Crisis in 1956 when the Conservatives formally broke from any notion of being the party of empire. [15] There were links between the Union Movement and the Fascist Irish nationalist party Ailtirí na hAiséirghe. Ailtirí had taken a pro-Axis stance during “the emergency”, as the war was known in neutral Ireland, and attracted former Blueshirts, the 1930’s equivalent of the BUF.

The League of Empire Loyalists ( LEL) was a British pressure group (also called a " ginger group" in Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations), established in 1954. Its ostensible purpose was to stop the British Empire's dissolution. The League was a small group of current or former members of the Conservative Party led by Arthur K. Chesterton, a former leading figure in the British Union of Fascists, who had served under Sir Oswald Mosley. The League found support from some Conservative Party members, although most of the Conservative leadership disliked it. [1] Formation [ edit ] In 1940, shortly after the fall of France and Churchill’s arrival in Downing Street, Mosley – who was then calling for Britain to accept Hitler’s offer of peace – was interned under Defence Regulation 18B. The Racial Preservation Society (RPS) was a right-wing pressure group opposed to non-white immigration and in favour of white supremacy. It was established in 1965 by Robin Beauclaire and Jimmy Doyle as a propaganda organisation. [25] Elements of the group were associated with the National Democratic Party and others with the National Front although it continued to exist at least until the 1970s.In 1954 Chesterton established the League of Empire Loyalists, a political pressure group whose direct action stunts and ‘interventions’ received widespread publicity and attracted the attention of a new generation of fascists, nationalists and right-wing extremists. In 1967 when the League merged with the British National Party, the Greater Britain Movement and the Radical Preservation Society to form the National Front, Chesterton was invited to become its first chairman.

As its name suggests the initial aim of the LEL was to support the British Empire and to campaign for its continuing existence. It was to be its calls for the restoration of the empire and reassertion of the notion of English people as the world's natural leaders that ultimately saw the group become estranged from the Conservatives, as the League was increasingly divorced from the one nation conservatism that came to dominate the party. This was particularly true following the independence of Sudan and the Suez Crisis in 1956 when the Conservatives formally broke from any notion of being the party of empire. However, Thatcherism moved such arguments into the mainstream right by the late 1980s with this respectability allowing the emergence of UKIP and Nigel Farage – and arguably leading to Brexit.

Gerry Gable, 'The Far Right in Contemporary Britain', L. Cheles, R. Ferguson, and M. Vaughan, Neo-Fascism in Europe, London: Longman, 1992, p. 252