The organisation's chief function was to promote the point of view of industrialists and businessmen, as well as to keep track of communist and left-wing organizations and individuals.
[2] In 1925, the Economic League was organised into a policymaking Central Council of 41 members, with 14 district organizations covering most industrial areas of the UK.
[6] In 2013, Labour MP John Mann said he had had a job offer at Ciba-Geigy withdrawn in the 1980s after the company had found his name on the League's list.
"Speaking to MPs, trades unionists and journalists in the Houses of Parliament (in 1989) the former North West Regional Director, Mr Richard Brett, suggested that 35,000 of the 45,000 files would have to be weeded out because they were either hopelessly inadequate or uselessly out of date".
[8] Jack Winder, the former Director of Information and Research at The Economic League, claimed to have had "Very good relations with certain trade union leaders", which held anti-communist pro-British views.
The BBC's Watchdog reported on it, and Paul Foot obtained an entire copy of the blacklist and ran a series of stories in the Daily Mirror.
[14] At the time of its closure, the League had files on 22,000 people, including Gordon Brown, 40 Labour MPs, "as well as journalists and thousands of shopfloor workers".
[16][17] Kerr later gave evidence to Parliament that the Consulting Association was founded in April 1993 with a £10,000 loan from Sir Robert McAlpine and "was started out of the Services Group (SG), operated by and within the Economic League (EL).
[19] That added concerns to previous disclosures by the Metropolitan Police that "on the balance of probabilities", the Special Branch had improperly disclosed information about trade unionists to the Economic League or similar organisations.