Catholic People's Party
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Catholic People's Party
Katholieke Volkspartij |
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|---|---|
| Leader |
Carl Romme 1945-1961 Wim de Kort 1961-1963 Norbert Schmelzer 1963-1971 Frans Andriessen 1971-1977 |
| Founded | 22 December 1945 |
| Dissolved | 27 September 1980 |
| Merged into | Christian Democratic Appeal |
| Ideology | Christian democracy |
| European affiliation | European Union of Christian Democrats |
| International affiliation | None |
| European Parliament group | Christian Democratic Group |
The Catholic People's Party (Dutch: Katholieke Volkspartij, KVP) was a Catholic Christian democraticpolitical party in the Netherlands. During its entire existence, the party was in government. The party is one of the precursors of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), into which it merged in 1980.
The KVP was founded on 22 December 1945. It was a continuation of the pre-war Roman-Catholic State Party (RKSP). Unlike the RKSP, the KVP was open to people of all denominations, but mainly Catholics supported the party. The party adopted a more progressive course and a more modern image than its predecessor.
In the elections of 1946 the party won a third of the vote, and joined the newly founded social democratic Labour Party (PvdA) to form a government coalition. This Roman/Red coalition (Roman (Rooms) for the Roman Catholic KVP, Rood, Red for the social-democratic PvdA) lasted until 1956. In the first two years the KVP's Louis Beel led the Cabinet. Beel was not the party's leader a post which was taken by Carl Romme, who led the KVP between 1946 and 1961, from the House of Representatives. After the 1948 election the PvdA became larger and supplied the prime minister Willem Drees. The PvdA and the KVP were joined by combinations of the protestant-Christian Anti Revolutionary Party (ARP) and Christian Historical Union (CHU) and the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) to form oversized cabinets, which often held a comfortable two-thirds majority. The cabinets were oriented at rebuilding the Dutch society and economy after the ravages of the Second World War and grant independence to the Dutch colony Indonesia. That last point was caused a split within the KVP, in 1948 a small group of Catholics broke away to form the Catholic National Party (KNP): it was opposed to the decolonisation of Indonesia and to cooperation between the Catholics and social-democrats. Under pressure of the Catholic Church the two parties united again in 1955.
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