The Full Story
Left and right are not British ideas. They began as a seating plan. And it was not even ours.
In 1789 revolutionary France gathered in a new National Assembly. Supporters of the old order sat to the president's right. Supporters of the revolution sat to his left. That is the whole origin: a way of splitting one room into two camps.
By then Parliament at Westminster had been meeting for around five hundred years. It had Whigs and Tories. Later it had Liberals and Conservatives. It had factions, interests and arguments that ran for generations. In the channel's view, what it did not have was a single line with two ends.
Look at some of what got done. The campaign to end the slave trade was founded in 1787 by twelve people, nine of them Quakers. Slavery across most of the Empire was abolished by an Act of 1833, passed under Earl Grey's Whig government.
The modern police began with Robert Peel, a Tory Home Secretary. His Metropolitan Police Bill became law in 1829. It created a professional force for London, which Peel hoped would become a model for the rest of the country.
The Saturday half-day that grew into the weekend came out of long campaigning by mill workers for shorter hours. The Factory Act of 1850 ended work at 2pm on Saturdays for women and young people in the mills.
The NHS opened in 1948 under Aneurin Bevan, a Labour Minister of Health. It built on the Beveridge Report of 1942, written by a man who went on to sit as a Liberal MP. The wartime government had already promised a national health service in 1944. Bevan also admired the workers' medical aid society in Tredegar, in his own constituency. He famously talked of wanting to Tredegarise the whole country. Many hands. Many parties.
The French terms arrived late. They only came into common use in British politics in the late 1930s, during arguments over the Spanish Civil War. Here they are less than a century old.
Proud Of Us thinks the line misleads. It tells you where everyone else stands before they have said a word. In the channel's view, most people in this country want the same things: a doctor when they are ill, a police officer who will come, a wage they can live on and a country their children can be proud of. That is the channel's argument, not a party's. No left. No right. Just us.
Why This Matters
Left and right is a handy shorthand. It is also borrowed. It came from a French chamber in 1789 and only took hold in British politics in the 1930s. Many of this country's lasting achievements, from abolition to policing to the NHS, drew on people from different traditions. Remembering that does not mean pretending real disagreements away. It means remembering that people who disagree have built great things together before.
Key Facts
- ✓The terms date from 1789, when supporters of the old regime sat to the right of the National Assembly's president and supporters of the revolution sat to his left (Wikipedia, Left-right political spectrum)
- ✓Left and right came into common use in British politics in the late 1930s, in debates over the Spanish Civil War (Wikipedia, Left-right political spectrum)
- ✓Nine of the twelve founders of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, formed on 22 May 1787, were Quakers (Wikipedia)
- ✓Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Bill was approved by Parliament in 1829, creating a full-time professional police force for greater London (UK Parliament)
- ✓The 1942 Beveridge Report argued that free healthcare had to underpin a new benefits system. The NHS launched on 5 July 1948 with Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health (The National Archives)
- ⚠The film says the NHS built on 'a miners' society'. Bevan praised the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, but historians caution the NHS drew on many earlier schemes. The film's 'about 100 years ago' for borrowing the French terms is closer to 90 years.