Left or Right

From: R Montague,
To: The Editor, Belfast Telegraph.

Dear Editor
It is good to learn from Henry Mc Donald (Belfast Telegraph 10th June) that the May Day parade through the City of Derry avoided the tribal bigotry which traditionally bedevils the Left. Hopefully, it will take them into an area of more enlightened confusion.

The expressions Left and Right, used in a political context, are warranted to confuse. Effectively what is meant by both terms includes such a plethora of cross referencing as to render them meaningless for both have an elasticity that allows their use in a myriad of things not connected, or very loosely connected, with politics.

Both words employed as a means of political identification originated in the French National Assembly in the period immediately preceding the Revolution of 1789. They were then clearly associated with a class conflict between King Louis XV1, the church and the aristocracy, referred to in combination as The First Estate, and an ascendant bourgeoisie or Third Estate. Though argument concerned matters such as taxation what was really at stake was the continuance of the old feudal order or its overthrow in favour of a social system structured to meet the political requirements of a nascent but rapidly developing capitalism.

So originally the terms Left and Right referred to the forces confronting one another in a struggle to change the system of social organisation then prevailing from one favouring the interests of a class of landed aristocrats to one that politically favoured a burgeoning capitalist class.

A classical social revolution.

Unfortunately today there is no such clarity of intent to overthrow the social order from that vast amorphous body known loosely as the Left.

Richard Monague