The British League of Rights was an offshoot of the

Australian League of Rights The Australian League of Rights is a far-right and antisemitic political organisation in Australia. It was founded in Adelaide, South Australia, by Eric Butler in 1946, and organised nationally in 1960. It inspired groups like the Canadian Leag ...

founded in 1971. It was an "

anti-semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

and

white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...

" Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley (editors) entry in ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations'' Pinter (2000) p177 political group. The British League opposed the entry of the UK into the

European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisb ...

. In the early 1970s it came under the direction of Don Martin, a former member of the Australian Young Liberals, who has run it ever since. Under Martin's direction the British League increased its membership.

Conservative Monday Club The Conservative Monday Club (usually known as the Monday Club) is a British political pressure group, aligned with the Conservative Party, though no longer endorsed by it. It also has links to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Ulster Unioni ...

member Lady Jane Birdwood was General Secretary. By 1974, the British League of Rights became the British chapter of the

World Anti-Communist League The World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization of anti-communist politicians and groups. It was founded in 1952 as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) under the initiative of Chiang Kai-sh ...

, replacing Geoffrey Stewart-Smith's Foreign Affairs Circle, which claimed to have left due to the Anti-Communist League's anti-semitism. In 1975 the British League established an association with the Britons Publishing Company. Although not officially connected, the League of Rights had links to the National Front and during the leadership of

John Tyndall John Tyndall FRS (; 2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist. His scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the p ...

articles that appeared in League of Rights publications were regularly reprinted in Tyndall's organ '' Spearhead''. The British League of Rights hosted the fourth Crown Commonwealth League of Rights conference in 1985.Spoonley, Paul ''The Politics of Nostalgia: racism and the extreme right in New Zealand'' The Dunmore Press (1987) p102 Don Martin elected to resign from the chairmanship of the Policy Unit of the

Federation of Small Businesses The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) is a UK business organisation representing small and medium-sized businesses. It was formed in 1974 as the National Federation of Self Employed (NFSE). The current name for the organisation was adopted in ...

in 2001 as a result of a campaign by

Gerry Gable Gerry Gable (born 27 January 1937) is a British political activist. He was a long-serving editor of the anti-fascist ''Searchlight'' magazine. Background The son of a Jewish woman and an Anglican father, Gable grew up in post-war east London ide ...

's ''

Searchlight A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...

'' magazine.

References

See also