United Tanganyika Party
1956–1962 political party in Tanganyika / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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United Tanganyika Party (UTP) was a political party in Tanganyika. It was established by the British governor Edward Twining in 1956 as a counter to the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), an African nationalist party led by Julius Nyerere. The UTP was a multi-racial party that included all of the white members of the Legislative Council as well as a majority of the Asian members and around half of the black African members. Twining did not intend that the UTP would defeat TANU in elections, which he considered impossible, but that it should be used as a tool to pressure Nyerere into an agreement over independence. The UTP argued against independence at the United Nations.
Despite the UTP, TANU won a majority of European and Asian seats and all of the African seats in elections held in September 1958 and February 1959. They repeated this success in the 1960 elections winning 70 out of 71 seats. The UTP was considered "virtually defunct" by 1961 and was dissolved some time after 1962.