Its main ambitions were to continue to control the Lower Hutt City Council, reduce local spending and deny left-leaning Labour Party candidates election.
From the 1930s on, the Labour Party had been steadily winning more votes in local elections and it was thought an opposing ticket was necessary to defeat them.
Similar associations of citizens and ratepayers had existed in Wellington and other cities in New Zealand on which Lower Hutt modelled theirs on.
The Citizens' performed poorly at the election where Hadley came a distant third (Kennedy-Good narrowly beat Labour's John Seddon) and only won three of the fifteen council seats.
[3] The unity was short-lived however and another split occurred in the lead up to the 1986 election when Gerald Bond, a councillor and chairman of the Hutt Valley Energy Board, formed a "combined progressive" electoral ticket after losing the United Citizens nomination for mayor to Glen Evans.