The National Radical Union (ERE, Greek: Εθνική Ριζοσπαστική Ένωσις (ΕΡΕ), Ethnike Rizospastike Enosis) was a Greek political party formed in 1955 by Konstantinos Karamanlis out of the Greek Rally party.
ΕRΕ was a conservative, right-wing party, which comprised also some prominent centrists, such as:
- Panagiotis Kanellopoulos
- Konstantinos Tsatsos, president of the Greek Republic from 1975 to 1980.
- Evangelos Averoff, minister of foreign affairs in Karamanlis' governments (1955–1963) and leader of ND from 1981 to 1984.
Karamanlis resigned from the leadership of ΕRΕ in 1963 and was succeeded by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos. The cause of Karamanlis' resignation was the hotly contested elections of 1961 (known as elections of "violence and fraud"). According to official results, ERE won the elections. But the opposition Centre Union and United Democratic Left accused the government of Karamanlis of massive fraud, did not acknowledge the result, and Centre Union's leader George Papandreou organised massive demonstrations ("uncompromising struggle") and called for new elections. Karamanlis felt gravely insulted and resigned from the Premiership and the leadership of the party. New elections were held in 1963 where ERE lost, and a year later, in 1964 which the Centre Union won with the second highest percentage in Greek history, 54 percent of the vote.
Kanellopoulos remained leader of the party until 1967, when he formed a government which did not last more than a month, as it was overthrown by the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. After 1967 ΕRΕ, like all political parties, was outlawed. It was never regenerated, since Karamanlis formed a new party in 1974, New Democracy.
Famous quotes containing the words national, radical and/or union:
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The world is not dialectical—it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)