League of Empire Loyalists
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League of Empire Loyalists
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| Leader | A. K. Chesterton |
| Founder | A. K. Chesterton |
| Founded | 1954 |
| Dissolved | 7 February 1967 |
| Split from | Conservative Party |
| Merged into | National Front |
| Membership (~1960s) | 2000 - 3000 |
| Ideology |
British Imperialism Empire loyalism Anti-Semitism Anti-immigration Distributism Reactionary |
| Political position | Far-right |
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 dissolution of the British Empire, though some critics charged it with being an attempt to re-found the British Union of Fascists. 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 it was disliked very much by the leadership.
Chesterton established the group in 1954 on the far right of the Conservative Party, effectively as a reaction to the more liberal forms of Toryism in evidence at the time, as typified by the policies of R. A. Butler. Chesterton feared the growth of the Soviet Union and of the United States. He concluded that Bolshevism and American-style capitalism were actually in alliance as part of a Jewish-led conspiracy against the British Empire, a mindset that informed the LEL from the beginning. The wide-reaching critiques that this conspiracy theory utilised meant that the LEL won membership from various sectors of right-wing opinion including former BUF activists like Chesterton himself and Barry Domvile, traditionalist patriots like General Sir Richard Hilton and young radicals like John Tyndall, John Bean, Colin Jordan and Martin Webster. Indeed, in its early years the LEL succeeded in attracting some leading members of the establishment to its ranks, including Field-Marshal Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, Lieutenant-General Sir Balfour Oliphant Hutchison and former British People's Party election candidate Air Commodore G.S. Oddie.
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