Suella Braverman who is believed still to be Home Secretary has started a Culture War on flags. She has claimed that waving or even wearing a Palestinian flag may be an offence as it might suggest that someone is not a supporter of the far right to fascist Government currently in Office in Israel.
She has urged the police to take action. Of course its culture war stuff. How can an officer know why someone is waving a flag. I tend to assume that someone waving a Union Jack is possibly a fascist and certainly a racist. In reality of course this is far from the case.
The police don’t need any encouragement to arrest the usual suspects for things that are not actually offences but Braverman along with most other Tory Ministers is woefully ignorant of British history.
Flags have always annoyed the ruling class. E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class notes that the flags at Peterloo concerned the authorities but the thousands present even more so.
He records that when the Prime Minister Perceval was assasinated in the Commons in May 1812 a crowd in Nottingham celebrated parading the town with drums beating and flags flying in triumph. One wonders if Braverman could sort their retrospective not to say posthumous arrest?
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