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:
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“We are the party of all labor.
The whole earth shall be ours to share
And every race and craft our neighbor.
No idle class shall linger there
Like vultures on the wealth we render
From field and factory, mill and mine.
Tomorrow’s sun will rise in splendor
And light us till the end of time.”
—Eugène Pottier (1816–1887)