Flags

Most summers tend to produce a silly season story but increasingly in recent years that’s been linked to increased tensions around public order. 

This year’s story is about people putting up St George’s flags and Union Jacks on lamp posts.  As is often the case people debating the matter seem to miss the big points.

First, there is a missing of the significant issue that flag displays have been heavily politicised throughout the demonstrations about Gaza over the past few years.  To many, especially on the left, the Palestinian flag is associated with the fight for freedom and against justice. To many others, it is associated with antisemitism.

Secondly,  there is a class issue.  The reaction, even of some political conservatives, has been to the effect that it isn’t really a British thing to wear your patriotism on your sleeve. We don’t tend to be flag wavers.  To some extent that is true. However, it is less so and increasingly less so in working class contexts.  The St George’s flag especially may be seen as representing English working class identity.  This is something that the Labour Party have lost sight of, or, perhaps never knew , presuming that union banners did this.  Remember Emily Thornberry sneering in a social media post about “white van man” during the Rochester by-election.

Third, however, we cannot ignore the questions concerning agendas behind the sudden appearance of flags on lamposts. All is not as it seems, this is not a case of spontaneous outbreaks of people flying flags outside their homes.  Rather, we have seen people bringing them to demonstrations against asylum seekers accommodation and the ones appearing on lamposts are being put up by organized groups regardless of what local residents want.  The latter seems particularly sinister to me where it creates a form of enforced, vigilante nationalism.

Christians engaging with questions about patriotism and freedom need to reflect carefully on these different factors and particularly to the contexts we are witnessing in.  The phenomena, carefully handled, may also give us the opportunity to reflect on and witness to the identity we have as God’s people.