what does the expression “thin blue line” mean? How did it come about?
The first response on a google search for thin blue line gave me www.thethinblueline.com, where they claim:
Now, I assume you have done your homework and found that, so let’s rephrase the question:
Who coined the phrase?
Where/when did it first appear in print?
Why did Rowan Atkinson wear such an ugly tie?
Over to the teeming millions:
I think it refers to the police force as being the line that divides the good and the bad (or protects the one from the other).
Why thin? - I suppose because there aren’t that many police officers when you look at it as a proportion of the total population.
Often at public demostrations in the UK, the police officers would link arms and physically hold back the crowd; a literal ‘thin blue line’ between the protesters and wherever they were trying to get to.
The original “thin red line” was the Scottish 93rd Highlanders regiment, which earned this nickname in the battle of Balaklava in 1854 (during the Crimean war).
The Times war correspondent reported to his paper that nothing stood between the Russian cavalry mass and the defenseless base but " the thin red streak tipped with a line of steel" of the 93rd. In the course of time this accolade became shortened to “The Thin Red Line”.
The “thin blue line” is a reference to the blue uniforms that law officers wear, and the fact that a small number of people is all that stands between law and order on one side, and criminality on the other.
The expression gained widespread currency as a result of the documentary “The Thin BLue Line”, made in the late 1980s. This documentary detailed how a man ended up on death row in Texas for the shooting of a policeman despite a complete absence of legitimate evidence of his guilt, and abundant evidence that another man, by then in prison for a later crime, was the real killer. He was pardoned as a result of interest generated by the film.
In the movie a policeman recalls that this phrase was used during a eulogy for the slain officer.
The use of the term “The Thin Red Line” became popular in the US in the early 60’s. James Jones’ novel of the same name was released in 1962 and the movie with the same name released in 1964 (well before the Nick Nolte movie). Interesting to hear that it goes back much further in the UK.
“The Thin Blue Line” (AFAIR) was used in ads and such for one or more of the Joseph Wambaugh inspired cop shows in the 70’s. It’s widespread use definitely predates the documentary.
I have always taken TTBL to mean a psychological barrier. In those situations where people think the police are not going to be able to do anything, bad behavior results.
I’d still stick with aegypt’s understanding. The thin red line is a common phrase in military history, and the thin blue line (with reference to the police) would seem a logical extension of the idea of meagre (and highly visible) forces fighting against a numerous enemy.
I’ve heard ‘thin blue line’ also used in a military context. At least two separate sources refer to ‘the thin blue line’ for the RAF fighters that held off the last assaults of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. I’m wondering if there was a common source – maybe a speech. Winston Churchill apparently used ‘the Few’ to refer to them, so I’m not sure it was him. But perhaps someone else.
At the time I saw it I thought it referred to the English Channel, but I haven’t found anything to back me up on that. More likely a usage meant similar to ‘the thin red line’.
The use of “Thin Blue Line” for the RAF was a simple transfer of “Thin Red Line” to the bluish uniforms worn by the RAF. I doubt there was some single speech or event that popularized it, as, especially in Britain, the phrase would have had immediate recognition both for the original* and for the transference to the RAF.
Kipling has his weary British soldier/narrator complain “We aren’t no thin red 'eroes” in his poem [url=“http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_tommy.htm”]Tommy from the end of the nineteenth century.
I would think that Wambaugh would be the source of the widest distribution of the phrase rerlating to police. He enjoyed the metaphor of the police being that last line of defense against chaos, and made the connection explicit in his novel The New Centurions. The Thin Blue Line simply expressed the same thought, using the nineteenth century British Army rather than the Roman army for his metaphor.