Britain seems to have gone a bit flag crazy lately – and not, I hasten to add, because the Lionesses won the Euros trophy twice in a row.
You see, a cry has gone out in “patriotic” circles on social media to “raise the colours”. This appears to mean getting a ladder and tying an England flag to the nearest lamp post.
More creative types, in Birmingham, have taken to painting big St George’s crosses on mini-roundabouts to make these road safety features a symbol of… well, who knows? Nationalist ardour, I’d say.
Council staff from the West Midlands to east London are being sent out to try and contain the outbreak of what’s been termed “flagtivism”.
I’ve also seen rows of houses with the flag of Palestine hung out of windows and on the front of shops, which I actually find a bit less disturbing; also, a few Pride flags, in various iterations – most eye-poppingly, along the entire length of Regent Street during Pride month. Which, again, to my eyes, is non-threatening.
No swastikas, though. Apart from one on the local Hindu temple, which I take in the spirit of good luck it is meant to portray.
There are also some councils that like to light up their buildings in the national colours of countries such as India or Pakistan on Independence Day, as a gesture of goodwill to the many people who can trace their heritage to that part of the world.
I agree, for once, with Daniel Hannan, the well known and mostly thoroughly deluded Brexiteer who’s noticed the phenomenon of competing flag-hanging campaigns as a sinister trend, all too redolent of the most bitterly divided province in our United Kingdom.
Hannan puts it well on X (Twitter), where “flag-elation”, as I may term it, is a common signifier in bios and memes: “England’s politics are becoming like Northern Ireland’s. Flags signal which group is in the majority locally. Voters are expected to back ‘their’ side. This is nothing to celebrate. Sectarian politics encourages, at best, complacency and corruption; at worst, civil strife.”
It’s ugly and I don’t like it, and I’d much rather we saw fewer flags except on special occasions – carnivals, coronations and cup competitions. Otherwise, to hell with all of them, I say.
My first reaction on seeing a St George’s flag hanging out of a window or on a flagpole is to wonder whether it’s been hoisted by a football fan or some sort of extreme nationalist. Or, if you like, just a normal person who isn’t racist but feels that their identity is being threatened by immigration and multiculturalism, as some do.
When the St George’s cross is hoisted outside hotels with refugees and other migrants inside, it’s more obviously the latter. But it feels wrong. It feels aggressive. It feels as though a beloved national symbol is being appropriated for a specific political cause.
It’s not new, of course. I can remember the National Front purloining the national flag in the 1970s, and marching with it en masse through neighbourhoods with large populations of immigrants. I think Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists did the same sort of thing before the war. It’s always unpleasant when someone steals something from you, and makes you feel that bit less “warm” towards the dear old union jack, or the England flag, when it is being used as an exercise in “territorial pissing”, as Nirvana put it.
As for the Palestinian flag, it’s often seen at demos and on streets in more Muslim neighbourhoods. I choose to take it as a symbol of solidarity with the sufferings of the Palestinian people – more humanitarian than Islamist. However, I can also see why some take it to mean support for Hamas, Islamist terror and the destruction of Israel and Jewry. It, too, has acquired, to some, a quality of assertion – if not aggression.
Others, and I do find this odd, find the rainbow Pride, trans and progressive flags offensive, even if they don’t quite understand their meaning. I’m no expert, but I’m looking forward to spotting my first demisexual flag in the wild…
That’s really the point. One cannot know simply from seeing a piece of cloth or something painted on a wall what, precisely, is signified by it, and it is all too easily misinterpreted. A union flag drooping from an upstairs window might signify joy at some royal occasion, but in the middle of the riots we had last year, it could be taken as explicit or implicit support for an act of arson in a hotel full of human beings.
It’s certainly becoming rapidly politicised – the ultimate in identity politics. Some councils have sought to take down some or all of these flags – English, Palestinian, whatever – and have been attacked for doing so. If they can’t keep up with the flagtivists and are not seen to be even-handed, they get accused of double standards.
Other councils, notably run by Reform UK, won’t take down the informal union flags and St George’s banners, but might remove, say, a Ukrainian, Palestinian, Pakistani or rainbow flag. (Or an EU one, which would be a real wind-up.) Whether they would pull down the flag of Israel or the USA is yet to be tested.
The Farageistes are obsessed with what can and can’t be flown from their county halls, and claim that flags associated with other countries (ie Ukraine), groups and causes (aside from the British armed forces) are “divisive”. Yet, their own policy is palpably controversial, provocative and divisive, even if it’s meant to foster unity in their communities.
Nationally, things are confused, too. Keir Starmer’s spokesperson, understandably, wants to keep his man out of the latest culture war: “It’s a matter for those councils. But when it comes to the PM being a patriot, he’s been clear that it’s important to him in the past. The PM’s always been clear about his pride in Britain, reflected in the fact we often have the St George’s flag, and other flags, flying in Downing Street.”
There are, in fact, official guidelines about what can and can’t be flown in a public place, but I take the view that the country was much happier when “flag day” meant something special and celebratory and a shilling in the RNLI collection tin. A flag on every damn lamp post is a sign of a society going quite mad.
