The movement was established as the European Labour Committees (ELC) in 1974 by two American LaRouchians, William "Bill" Jones and Michael Vale. Bill Jones had lived in Sweden since 1968, as an apparent Vietnam war deserter. The movement started to build its organization around the young Swedish student Kerstin Tegin, later Tegin-Gaddy, and her American husband to-be Clifford G. Gaddy. However, the party never became much bigger than a handful of people. During this period, Sweden was one of the few countries that openly harboured and encouraged American GIs in Vietnam to defect, and it is often insinuated that EAP was set up in Sweden by the CIA in order to label the defectors as left-wing extremists.