People constantly get the origin of the term ‘one nation’ wrong. Alistair Lexden has corrected the mistake in the press on many occasions. He did so again in a letter published in The Spectator on 22 September under the amusing headline ‘Stan’s laurel’.
Sir: Cocky Tom Tugendhat repeats a common error in attributing the famous Tory phrase ‘one nation’ to Disraeli (‘Move aside, Boris’, 15 September). Stanley Baldwin was the first to use it. At the Albert Hall on 4 December 1924 in the aftermath of the Conservative Party’s greatest election victory, he said: ‘We stand for the union of those two nations of which Disraeli spoke two generations ago: union among our own people to make one nation of our own people which, if secured, nothing else matters in the world.’
I shall be quoting these words in Bewdley on 27 September at the unveiling of a fine statue of Baldwin by Martin Jennings.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords