The Empire Free Trade Crusade was a political party in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Lord Beaverbrook in July 1929 to press for the British Empire to become a free trade bloc. The group was founded to oppose both the Labour minority government, elected in 1929, and Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin's protectionist policies, which they viewed as an insufficient answer to their demands for "fiscal union of the Empire" (with stiff barriers against goods from rival trade blocs), a more extreme version of Imperial Preference.