The Union of the populations of Cameroun (UPC) , founded as of 1948 by a trade unionist trained by French C.G.T, Ruben Um Nyobe, was the first party to assert immediate independence as well as the unification of the Cameroun French and British. This liberation movement main road counted, seven years later (1955), 460 committees of village or of district and 80.000 members, especially in South-west, among the Bamiléké and the Bassa. After having tried the parliamentary way in 1951 - 1952 with failure, UPC turned to the UNO, which had the supervision on Cameroun, to require independence and the reunification.

From 1953, under the impulse of the doctor Felix Moumié, UPC takes an orientation Maoist inspired by the Chinese experiment and radicalizes its modes of political action. After the first revolt in May 1955 brutally repressed by the colonial capacity of the time, the party east dissolves and its leaders must exile themselves with Kumba (British Cameroun), then with the Cairo, Conakry and Beijing. Ruben Um Nyobé will be killed in the maquis in September 1958. Felix Moumié will be poisoned with Geneva in October 1960, by the French secret services. UPC enters an armed struggle will continue until the arrest, in August 1970, of the leader Ernest Ouandié, shot six months later. Meanwhile, another leader of UPC, Osendé Afana, was assassinated in the South of the country, in March 1966 by the mode of Ahmadou Ahidjo.

Remained a long time in clandestinity, UPC remakes officially surface in 1991. Into 1992, it is divided into two parties, both named UPC. UPC exit of the scission takes part then in the government resulting from ex enemy UNC-RDPC and is there still today.

Nowadays, UPC always exists. Its historical branch presented to the last presidential elections 2004, a candidate invalidated by mode RDPC, solidarity with the fraction taking part in the current capacity.