- Jan 18, 2009
- 4,875
Being a member of a trade union is NOT synonymous with being left wing it just means you see the benefits of banding together to improve your life.
Also I don't think what could be classed as traditional support i.e. the supposed 'working class' is the main core behind labour and that is down to major changes in demographics , more people owning their own houses, more and generally better paid self employed tradespeople , more people going to university , better access to political materials and generally more money around. To generalise the 'middle' class has moved to the left and big chunks of working class have moved to the right.
I definitely agree with the juxtaposition of social change with what we consider to be our class pulling in different directions from historic reference points, both those matters alone would be worthy matters for discussion.
The left/right debate though is just too simplistic, and dumbs down the nuance of how people genuinely see themselves politically. Indeed, part of the problem with the political system we have is that we are essentially given a binary choice on Governments. I am not making a case there for proportional representation, personally I think that would be worse, but that is a helpful segway to the left and right debate.
The genesis of left/right is driven from the outcome of the French Revolution, the Revolutionary radicals (jacobins) sat on the left, the monarchists on the right. The key to what was left and right was therefore the scale of change. The radicals eventually got their way, and up came the national razor, the end of organised religion and even a new calendar (the 10 day week).
The monarchists obviously resisted this change and wanted to shift closer to the British constitutional monarchy where parliament governs and the monarch as head of state is reduced to broadly figure head.
History is now the only judge on whether France did benefit, my own view is that the reign of terror, which was how the radicals sought to control the population after the revolution was deeply facist and led to civil strife for decades. This period saw the rise of a tyrant which resulted in the Napoleonic wars that killed millions across Europe.
So, in my view left and right is effectively change, how much and how fast. If BLM is left so is Brexit. If keeping statues is right so is staying in the EU.
Radical change can be good it can be bad, and people can desire both.