business establishment that dominated the colony. The election of the Reform Party government led by Godfrey Huggins in 1933 had a great deal in common with the RF win in 1962. It has been argued that the racial dimension of UDI was an incidental thing. Economic recessions in the early 1930s and the early 1960s had both produced the election of populist governments committed to securing standards of living for working people (albeit, the immediate concern was for working white people). It is significant that in the 1962 election, the RF recruited a slate of black candidates to contest the district (essentially B roll) seats. Those black RF candidates obtained little support from the B roll electorate and none were elected. Rhodesia in the UDI era never quite took on the character of a one-party state. Although the Bush War was the real political contest, there was a conventional political opposition to the RF throughout the UDI period. The opposition came from white liberals who would contest A roll seats in general elections and from some black parties that would contest B roll seats. The main white opposition was the Rhodesia Party, associated with veteran liberal politician (and former district Assembly member) Dr Ahrn Palley. In the 1974 general election, Dr Palley came within 3 votes of taking Salisbury (City) from the RF. In that same election, Michael Auret took about 30% of the vote for the RP in Bulawayo (District). Auret later won Harare (Central) for the MDC in the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections, 2000. The RP did manage to secure around 20% of the white vote nationally on a regular basis and it would pick up most of the non-white constituency votes, but the first-past-the-post electoral system meant that they never won seats in the Assembly. Widespread press censorship and government control of radio and TV inhibited opposition activity. The lack of an effective parliamentary opposition is one factor that made it difficult to end UDI when this measure had become clearly necessary. RP activists considered that most of their support came from the business elite, the professional class and from second or third generation Rhodesians. The more recent white immigrants tended to vote overwhelmingly for the RF. It has been suggested that Rhodesia hosted a peculiar brand of white politics traceable to British working-class immigrants who during the 20th century brought their successful struggle for a generous social