The National Front began as a coalition of small far-right groups active on the fringes of British politics during the 1960s. The resolve to unite them came in early 1966 from A. K. Chesterton, the leader of the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL). He had a long history in the British fascist movement, having been a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930s. Over the following months, many far-rightists visited Chesterton at his Croydon apartment to discuss the proposal, among them Andrew Fountaine and Philip Maxwell of the British National Party (BNP), John Tyndall and Martin Webster of the Greater Britain Movement (GBM), and David Brown of the Racial Preservation Society (RPS). In principle, everyone agreed with the idea of unification, but personal rivalries made the process difficult.