The UPR was affiliated with the Republican Federation, the largest conservative French party of the interwar period.
[1] The party was founded in 1925,[2] six years after the birth of the Alsatian Popular Republican Union.
Both organizations shared clerical and conservative stances, and opposed the Cartel des Gauches which had won the 1924 legislative election.
[3] Chaired by Father Bergey, priest of Saint-Émilion and member of Parliament, and supported by Cardinal Pierre Andrieu,[4] the UPR displayed a program reflecting the concerns of the Catholic right, in the continuity of the Fédération Nationale Catholique.
The party defended private education against the laïque "single school" project and endorsed the right to vote for women, at that time considered more clerical than men.