The Civic Freedom Party (Hungarian: Polgári Szabadságpárt) was the last name of one of the two interbellum liberal parties in Hungary.
The party was founded in 1921 by Károly Rassay as the Independence Party of Smallholders, Workers and Citizens (Függetlenségi Kisgazda Földműves és Polgári Párt, FKFPP) as an attempt to mobilize voters for liberalism outside the cities. Shortly after its foundation it won 3.6% of the popular vote and 8 seats in parliament. It merged in 1926 with the Nemzeti Demokrata Párt (National Democratic Party) into the Independent National Democratic Party (Független Nemzeti Demokrata Párt). The new party won 4.0% of the vote and 9 seats in the 1926 elections.
Rassay reconstituted the separate party in 1928 as the National Liberal Party (Nemzeti Szabadelvű Párt). It was an attempt to build an alternative to the conservative government. The party only won 5 seats in 1931 and in 1935 it won 7 seats. Just before or after the elections the party was renamed the Civic Freedom Party. It won 5 seats in 1939, but it could not survive the radicalisation of Hungary during the Second World War. In 1944 the party dissolved itself.
Famous quotes containing the words civic, freedom and/or party:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind is an arduous task.... In order to dive into those recesses and lay them open to the reader in a striking and intelligible manner, ‘tis necessary to assume a certain freedom in writing, not strictly perhaps within the limits prescribed by rules.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)