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 for the continuation and preservation of the British Empire. The League was a small group of former members of the Conservative Party led by A. 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 most of the Conservative leadership disliked it.

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 an 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 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 the former British People's Party election candidate Air Commodore G. S. Oddie.

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. According to Nigel Fielding, the LEL "was composed of right-wing Conservatives, particularly retired military men, and a few pre-war Fascists".

The LEL was well known for various stunts at Conservative Party meetings and conferences (acting as a constant irritant to the party). These stunts included hiding underneath the speaker platform overnight to emerge during the conference in order to put across their points. At the 1958 party Conference in Blackpool, George Irvine Finlay (who became Director of Organisation for the Scottish Conservatives) was involved in forcibly removing members of the League of Empire Loyalists. The widespread media coverage resulted in his being sued for assault; not only was he acquitted, but costs were awarded against the prosecution. That same year the League secured further publicity when members launched an "invasion" of the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion.

In another incident, LEL member Austen Brooks gained access to a lunch for U Thant by impersonating Cypriot Archbishop Makarios III, both men being heavily bearded, before revealing his charade and shouting LEL slogans. Sir Anthony Eden was also a target and when he shook hands with Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin as they arrived at Victoria Station in 1956, LEL members were on hand to yell at Eden that he had just shaken hands with murderers. In November 1961, Leonard Young, a Royal Air Force Wing Commander and author of the 1956 book Deadlier Than the H-Bomb, gained further notoriety for the LEL when he threw a bag of sheep guts at the President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was also a target when speakers at its inaugural rally in Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958 were heckled, in particular Michael Foot. After these antics, the Tory leadership made it clear to their members that the LEL was to be discouraged, leading to a severe downturn in membership.

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 Britons 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 the independence of Sudan and the Suez Crisis in 1956 when the Conservatives 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.