Keir Starmer has he often does has been supporting the display of the St George’s flag. It is of course that national flag of only one of the four UK nations and even that can be argued about.
The current ad hoc hanging of the flag in various locations, given the context of time of year and wider events, has the hallmark of those who claim ‘I’m not far right’ while forgetting at least in some cases to add that they are racist and quite possibly a fascist.
Of course only a minority of those who display the flag fall in to that category. It can regularly be seen at sporting occasions when England teams are playing mostly un-controversially so. It is a relatively recent thing as was demonstrated by the recent culture war over exactly what form it should take on players shirts.
There has been a long history of the left trying to claim or reclaim the flag from the right. Whether Starmer knows about that is another matter but broadly its fits into to some kind of patriotic people’s history approach to at least English life. It might be argued that E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class also fits somewhere in that except Thompson’s flag remained resolutely red, tinged with a Chartist green.
There are St George’s Fields around England but perhaps the best known is in inner South London. It was an historic location for mass protest in the eighteenth century. On 10th May 1768 there was a riot in support of the maverick MP John Wilkes (later Mayor of London and Boris Johnson’s hero) who had been jailed. There were cries of No Liberty, No King. Troops were called in and there were dead and injured.
In 1780 as part of the Gordon Riots another large crowd assembled and burnt property particularly that belonging to religious minorities and specifically Catholics.
By 1795 a huge crowd of 100,000 assembled in June calling for the vote and annual parliaments.
Disputed history is a reality. It can be harnessed to political causes but with more nuance and insight than Starmer manages
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