League of Empire Loyalists - Policies

Policies

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 Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change speech in 1960 when the Tories formally broke from any notion of being the party of empire.

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. The League was also strongly anti-communist and had close links with emigre groups such as the Ukrainian National Committee. It also had a vague connection to the economic idea of distributism, inspired to an extent by A.K. Chesterton's familial relationship to G.K. Chesterton.

Although sometimes labeled fascist according to historian Roger Eatwell: "Most of its 2000-3000 active members were Colonel Blimpish rather than fascist: in fact many of its members saw it as a Conservative ginger group... an attempt to keep the Conservatives true to the Imperial way." Indeed it has also been argued that although parts of its ideology overlapped with fascism the LEL was in fact much too reactionary to be considered truly fascist, given the revolutionary nature of that ideology.