With St George’s Cross & Union flags continuing to appear across England, funded in the main by far right supporters of Yaxley Lennon, the long running debate about whether the flags can be reclaimed from the far right or whether its better to use other symbols continues.
Keir Starmer who often appears wrapped in a flag argues that there is the patriotic flag and then there is the flag that is abused by unpatriotic racists. The problem is, its exactly the same flag, so how to tell.
Its not a debate that allows for much nuance. However those raising the flag at England sporting events, where the teams composition is hardly ever something that would meet the approval of the nearly all white attenders of the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally on 13th September can easily live with, do represent something that is mostly not of the far right.
Beyond that the efforts of some on the left to reclaim the flag continue. Full marks to Billy Bragg for continuing to try- his latest sticker focused campaign is shown above.
As a contestation it hasn’t noticeably stopped the far right from flagshagging, although its notable that Mosley’s British Union of Fascists often used other imagery as well as the Union flag, so at some point fascists endeavoured to claim the flag themselves, perhaps starting with the National Front in the 1970s. More research or info from someone who has done it please!
Beyond all that I’m very much with Phil Piratin the East End Communist MP (1945-50) whose biography is called Our Flag Stays Red. Indeed, after all isn’t the anthem of the labour movement or at least British labourism the Red Flag?
The left of course is also internationalist as the thirty Central London demonstrations on Palestine since October 2023 underline. Flying the Palestine flag is an excellent antidote to flagshaggers whether on demonstrations or in local neighbourhoods
Red Green I think