The History of the League of Empire Loyalists and Candour

Product Information

British Resistance was the brainchild of Rosine de Bounevialle, the editor of Candour. The group's activities included hosting training camps and co-ordinating activities with other far-right organisations. [55] 2000s [ edit ] White Nationalist Party [ edit ] The formation of the National Front (NF) at the beginning of 1967 brought together much of the previously disunited extreme right in Britain. The League of Empire Loyalists, led by former Mosleyite A.K. Chesterton, regrouped with the British National Party (BNP) and with members of the Racial Preservation Society and, shortly after, another group, the Greater Britain Movement (GBM), dissolved to enable members to join the new organization. Both the BNP, led by Andrew Fountaine and John Bean, and the GBM, led by John Tyndall and Martin Webster, took the view that Chesterton had given too little attention to elections. Conversely, however, Chesterton and sections of the BNP were united in their initial reluctance to fuse with the Tyndall group which they saw as too overtly sympathetic to National Socialism for a credibly British nationalist movement. Tyndall’s admission represented a suspension of this doubt but the continued exclusion of yet another organization, the National Socialist Movement (subsequently British Movement), was intended to ensure that whatever subterranean sympathies for Nazism existed in National Front circles should at least remain unexpressed in public. Keywords New Zealand Society for Closer relations with Russia. Dinner in honour of guests from the USSR. Hotel St George Wellington, 10 October 1941. Menu

Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations 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?

Selected sources:

The British Movement (BM), later called the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), was a neo-Nazi political party founded by Colin Jordan in 1968 as a continuation of the NSM. It contested the UK general elections in 1970 and in February 1974 on a neo-Nazi platform, attracting little support. Michael McLaughlin became the leader in 1975 and won the BM new support from the growing racist skinhead and football hooligan movements. [24] The group disappeared in the mid-1980s following revelations from Ray Hill but returned in September 1983 and has continued to exist in some form to the present day. By 1961, the LEL found itself in financial trouble, and Chesterton was funding the group himself. The group had also lost many of its members, falling from a 1958 high of 3000 to only 300 members. Some had left with Hilton to join his Patriotic Party whilst another group of leavers had been the supporters of Colin Jordan. Jordan had left in 1957 after his call to bar Jews, and non-whites from the LEL had been rejected, whilst John Bean had left under acrimonious circumstances the following year. Both men advocated the formation of mass parties, an idea that Chesterton rejected, and over time they won support to their respective groups, the White Defence League and the National Labour Party by advocating these and other more radical ideas. [11] Britain First, a far-right group founded by Jim Dowson who had formerly worked a call centre for the BNP before leaving after allegedly groping a female employee. [69] The party is known for invading mosques [70] [71] and its "Christian patrols". [72] British Democrats [ edit ] Roger Griffin (11 August 2005). Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion (Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions). Routledge 1 edition. ISBN 978-0-415-37550-4. Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, p. 176

As time progressed, the group became primarily concerned with opposing non-white immigration into Britain and were instrumental in the founding (with other right-wing and neo-Nazi groups) of the National Front in February 1967. Chesterton's personal anti-Semitism and devotion to conspiracy theories about the Jews and international capitalism also became more prominent in LEL ideology towards the end of the group's life. [16] The League was also strongly anti-communist and had close links with emigre groups such as the Ukrainian National Committee. [17] Decline and splits [ edit ]

Let us know you agree to cookies

Part of a larger collection of political ephemera collected by Les Prince, a designer and illustrator in the printing trade, this series includes publications on the National Front and racial discrimination from the Anti-Nazi League, the Institute of Race Relations, AFFOR and Young Jews Against Racialism. Mann, Jamie (1 August 2023). "Home Office probed far right Homeland group's 'stealth' political party bid". The Ferret. Far-right politics from the late 1960s and into the 1970s was dominated by the Eurosceptic National Front – which was created from the League of Empire Loyalists and similar groups, on the initiative of Chesterton and others – who claimed that the European Economic Community was a threat to British sovereignty and part of a Jewish conspiracy for a one-world government.

He sought to exploit racial tensions, following the increase in immigration from the Commonwealth and the colonies symbolised by the arrival of the Windrush in 1948, to promote his pan-European aims. Mosley, seen with his supporters, after he lost his deposit standing for the Union Movement in North Kensington, in 1959. He polled only 2,821 votes out of 35,000. Photo: Bettmann. the fires of the threat of continental invasion, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Restoration and the Acts of Union, The British National Party was a Leeds-based group led by Eddy Morrison during the mid-1970s. The group, which was linked to the League of St. George, helped to organised the White Defence Associations, armed gangs of vigilantes active in areas of racial tension. Morrison would later join John Tyndall's BNP following its formation in 1982. [44] Elections would be held with an “occupation-based” franchise. Effectively this would mean the end of multi-party democracy with electors voting for representatives based on their occupation, rather than their geographical location. So, miners would vote for mining-based candidates, agricultural workers for agricultural candidates and health workers for doctors and nurses. For this reason he is a clear prism. The forces acting on him are never dissipated in murky doubts, self-interest, fear, or confusion, but thrown into sharp relief by his always upstanding response to them. At times this gives him the aura of a hero from a Greek tragedy as we see him reacting to the forces of dissolution and pursuing, without compromise, his own self-realization and political destiny.Although the LEL actively supported an independent candidate who was a member at the 1957 Lewisham North by-election, it was not a political party. [6] According to Nigel Fielding, the LEL "was composed of right-wing Conservatives, particularly retired military men, and a few pre-war Fascists". [7] Stunts [ edit ] At the end of the war, Mosley, the former leader of the British Union of Fascists, was a diminished figure.