League of Empire Loyalists - Creation of The National Front

Creation of The National Front

Despite the poor performances of the three candidates donations had poured in from all over the country to help them fight the campaign. This made a deep impression on Chesterton, who had largely been obliged to fund the LEL out of his own pocket. Chesterton had been preoccupied with a legal case over the estate of his financial benefactor, the Chile-based millionaire Robert K. Jeffrey, who had seemingly left two contradictory wills but Chesterton's fervour for politics had been rekindled by his discovery of the relative ease of funding a political party as well as by the emergence of Edward Martell, a right-wing libertarian who had garnered a reputation as an excellent fund-raiser and whose methods, if not politics, had impressed Chesterton greatly. By the spring of 1966 Chesterton had begun sounding out the likes of Bean, Tyndall and even Jordan about the possibility of building a united front on the far right.

Chesterton's mood was dampened somewhat by the 1966 general election in which the Labour Party won a convincing victory and anti-immigration candidates lost support, as well as by Rhodesia's exit from the Commonwealth following their Unilateral declaration of independence. However it also convinced him that space had opened to the right of the Conservative Party and that the chances were better for a united far right group. The LEL itself however was under threat from the growth of both the Racial Preservation Society and the Monday Club, making the need for a new party that much more urgent. Around this time he flirted with Dr. David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society and his plans to establish a National Democratic Party but he backed away when Brown insisted that the LEL would effectively be turned over to RPS control in this arrangement.

Discussions with the BNP began in earnest in September 1966 and by the time of the LEL conference the following month plans were already at such an advanced stage that the major topic was whether the new party would be called the British Front or the National Independence Party. The conference also saw the establishment of a working party to thrash out details of the new group, consisting of Austen Brooks, Rosine de Bounevialle, Avril Walters and Nettie Bonner from the LEL and Philip Maxwell, Bernard Simmons and Gerald Kemp from the BNP. On 7 February 1967 the LEL was officially wound up and replaced by the newly merged group, by now officially known as the National Front.