Unionist Party (South Africa)

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The Unionist Party was a pre-apartheid South African political party, which contested elections to the Union of South Africa parliament from the 1910 South African general election to its merger into the United Party in the 1930s.

In May 1910, the Unionist Party of the Cape Colony legislature merged with the Constitutional Party of the Orange Free State to form the Unionist Party of South Africa. The party was a pro-British conservative party. It favoured the maintenance of a pro-British political culture in South Africa similar to that present in the other 'white dominions'.

It was for the protection of South African industries, particular the mining interests, from foreign competition that would force more unwanted 'coloured' immigration to South Africa, mainly from India. The party's interests were closely tied to those of the Anglo-South African middle class and the mining corporations in the diamond and gold mines of South Africa. It also enthusiastically supported British imperialism, and many of its founding members were those who had championed the British cause in the Second Boer War. Its first leader was Leander Starr Jameson, leader of the ill-fated Jameson Raid before the Boer War.

Faced with growing nationalism among the enfranchised whites and coloureds of South Africa, the Unionist Party's base dwindled and it was forced into an alliance with the South African Party in a futile attempt to stop the National Party from coming to power in the 1924 South African general election. Eventually, the SAP-UP coalition agreed to a coalition government in 1934 as the United Party in response to economic pressures during the Great Depression.