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| Abbreviation | ROI |
| Website | |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Established | 1936-12-30
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| Disbanded | 1999-12-04
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| Contributor | Magical Horse |
| Last Edited | Magical Horse - April 27, 2011 03:19pm |
| Description | The Ring of Independents (German: Landesring der Unabhängigen (LdU), French: Alliance des Indépendants (AdI)) was a Swiss political party that existed between 1936 and 1999.
History of the party
The founder of Migros, Gottlieb Duttweiler was unsatisfied with the state of Swiss politics in the 1930s and therefore founded the Ring of Independents with a group of like-minded people as an association. It was not meant to be a political party at first but to be an association to help to reconcile capitalists and workers. Nonetheless the party won seven seats in the elecions for the National Council of Switzerland in 1935 (altohough the seats were won in three cantons only: 5 in Zürich, 1 in St. Gallen and Berne). Since the original plan, to unite the best politicians of all parties in one group, did not work the party Ring of Independents was founded on December 30 1936.
Duttweiler's authoritarian style of leadership combined with his vague political positions lead to a breakaway of leading circles from the party in 1943. These ran as Unabhängig-freie Liste (Eng: Independent- Free List) and won one seat in the elections for the National Council of Switzerland the following autumn. However this breakaway did not manage to exist for long. During the era of Duttweiler the party always won around 5% of the vote. However the party was never successful in the French or Italian speaking regions of Switzerland and in central Switzerland (except in Lucerne).
After the death of longtime chairman Duttweiler the party was able to establish itself as a social liberal alternative between the left and the right. It won 9.1% and 16 seats in the 1967 elections to the National Council of Switzerland, thus becoming the strongest opposition party. The ROI was mainly voted for by urban middle-class voters (blue collar workers, civil servants). Several new local affiliates in different cantons were founded in this time. In the late 1970s a conflict over policy broke out in the party. The traditional opponents of Social market economy were confronted by a new ecological wing of the party.
In the mid 1980s the ecological wing of the party became the most dominant. Already in 1982 members of the green and social liberal wings of the party resigned. Since the biggest financial backer of the party, Migros, had ideological problems with the ecologcal wing of the party it massively reduced its donations to the party. Due to financial problems the daily newspaper of the party Die Tat (The Deed) had to be converted to a weekly newspaper. The party lost its profile and its voters switched to new parties and protest groups (Green Party, Car Party).
The party continued to lose more and more of its voters to the Social Democratic & Green parties. In the 1990s the party tried unsuccessfully to win back these voters by returning to their social liberal roots. Following numerous election loses and defections of prominent politicians to other parties the ROI disbanded on December 4 1999.
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