[4][5][6] Several leaders were particularly prominent during the party's early years before World War II: Habib Bourguiba, Mahmoud El Materi, Tahar Sfar, Bahri Guiga, and Salah ben Youssef.
[7][8][9] Prior to the split, a younger group of Destour members had alarmed the party elders by appealing directly to the populace through their more radical newspaper L'Action Tunisienne.
As majority of its leaders imprisoned by the French, Eitel Friedrich Moellhausen, Rahn's deputy, argued that the Arabs could be incited to action “against Jews and Anglo-Saxons” through the release of the prisoners in Marseille, without the Germans having to provide specific assurances concerning independence.
Also Ben Yusuf, who cultivated support at al-Zaytuna Mosque and took a pan-Arab political line, disputed Bourguiba's more liberal, secular, pro-Western approach.
The Neo Destour party expelled Ben Yusuf that October; in November 1955 he mounted a large street demonstration but to no avail.
[19] In 1963, the Neo Destour was proclaimed the only legally permitted party in Tunisia, though for all intents and purposes the country had been a one-party state since independence.
This phase failed to fulfill expectations, however, and was discontinued in 1969 with the dismissal of Ahmad ben Salah as economics minister by President Bourguiba.