Caledonian Union
political party in New Caledonia
The Caledonian Union (French: Union calédonienne, UC) is a pro-independence party and the oldest political party in New Caledonia. In the latest legislative elections of May 10, 2009, the party won around 11.65% of the popular vote, and 9 out of 54 seats in the Territorial Congress.
History
The Caledonian Union was born as a cross-community (multi-ethnic) autonomist party led by Maurice Lenormand, who was the island's sole representative in the French National Assembly. There, he sat with the Popular Republican Movement, or MRP, and other Christian democratic parties in France. The Caledonian Union did not initially call for the independence of New Caledonia, but instead drew support from all ethnic groups in New Caledonia and campaigned for a greater degree of self-governance and local identity from France under the slogan "Two Colours, One People."
The party's first significant success was on February 8, 1953 with the election of 15 members of the Caledonian Union to the 25 seats General Council.
However, the UC opposed the arrival of Gaullist centralism in France, which undid most of the autonomist reforms of the French Fourth Republic (the Defferre laws). The UC grew more and more radical, and started flirting with independence, which eventually led to an outflow of the Caldoche members of the Caledonian Union to new loyalist parties, such as the Rally for Caledonia in the Republic. Combined with corruption scandals, this weakened the party considerably.
In 1977 in Bourail, the UC adopted a nationalist platform that changed the party's ideology from autonomism to full independence from France. This shift was supported by Jean-Marie Tjibaou and the rare European pro-separatists, such as Maurice Lenormand and Pierre Declercq.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caledonian Union” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.