The PUP dominated local British Honduran and later Belizean politics from the mid-1950s until 1984, when it lost to the centre-right opposition United Democratic Party (UDP).

Among the Union's leaders (some of whom would later be prominent in the PUP) were Clifford Betson, Antonio Soberanis, Henry Middleton and Nicholas Pollard Sr.

Among the favourite places for anti-British sentiment to manifest itself was the Belize Town Board (now City Council), which offered opportunities for anti-colonial elements to gather strength and support from British Hondurans.

A group of college-educated students, led by John Smith, George Price, Herbert Fuller and Herman Jex were all elected to positions on the Board and later the Legislative Council, assuring that they would be well placed to act.

By September 1950, an overworked PC was forced to admit that it had overreached itself and that the work of enlightening British Hondurans was the vein of a political party.

Among its complaints was that development was not uniform among all ethnic groups, the dominance of the Creoles, widespread illiteracy, and overall "backwardness' of Belizeans, especially outside of Belize City.

One month earlier the colonial government dissolved the PUP-dominated Belize City Council for neglecting to place a portrait of King George VI in its chambers, and in October jailed PUP leaders Richardson and Phillip Goldson for an article in a local newspaper justifying revolution.

Leader John Smith left immediately after that, having failed to persuade the party to fly a "Union Jack" at its meeting to counter statements that Guatemala had been aiding the PUP.

The National Party had managed to recruit respectable anti-PUP elements from among women's leaders, trade unions and middle-class representatives and presented a better front.

George Price was named head of the GWU in April 1952, and returning leaders Richardson and Goldson called for a "Crusade against Colonialism".

A majority in the elected government, they nonetheless felt threatened by the overwhelming support in the street for Price, who controlled the rank and file through his connection with the GWU.

As a minor result of the resignations, the GWU lost its popularity and this signalled the end of Labour's attempt to control the country's movement.

In March 1958, a protracted charge of sedition was laid on him for supposedly uncomplimentary remarks about the possible reception of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom in Belize.

Moreover, the PUP achieved its greatest electoral dominance in 1961 elections, sweeping all eighteen seats from the hapless National Independence Party.

This demand led to the construction of Belize's current capital, Belmopan, later in the decade, and of the village of Hattieville, 16 miles from the city, to host the hurricane's evacuees.

Its efforts were mixed at best and illustrate the PUP's unwillingness to allow women much room in the march to development, preferring them to depend on their male counterparts in government.

The British also retained the public service, including bureaucrats and police, and internal security, meaning that loyalty was a higher priority than development and forcing Price to actively recruit the middle class to the PUP's side.

The PUP in this era presided over the shift from forestry to agriculture, the rise of the sugar industry, reforms to labour laws, land distribution, infrastructural development and increased social services contributing to a general improvement in the standard of living.

In 1968, students began returning from abroad with a serious sense of the kind of development Belize needed to stay afloat in the modern world.

He formed the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) in early 1969 and began seriously attacking the PUP's economic and social policies, equating them with neo-colonialism and denouncing them as "politricks".

The results of the 1979 elections showed that the UDP had not quite passed that test, particularly because of their demands for a delayed independence due to Guatemala's claim to Belize remaining unsettled.

While the PUP eventually fended off this initial UDP challenge, their policy on Guatemala and independence at any cost would prove the party's undoing.

On January 30, 1981, Premier Price presented to the house a paper with suggestions for the new constitution to come into effect on the eve of independence, which the United Nations maintained had to be no later than the end of 1981 when it supported Belize in a resolution at its 1980 meeting.

On March 11, Price, Assad Shoman and other Belizean negotiators returned with a series of proposals they called the "Heads of Agreement", though nothing had actually been agreed on.

The sixteen clauses called for Belize to make tough choices in order for the claim to be dropped, but Belizeans rebelled and set the country afire, forcing a state of emergency.

The PUP led Belize to eight consecutive years of growth, despite serious external and internal shocks to the traditional and non-traditional bases of the economy.

On October 20, 2011, Francis Fonseca was endorsed at a meeting of the party's National Executive in Belize City as the new PUP leader following the resignation of Hon.