I am rather interested in opinions here, but I suppose it’s more of a poll.
Inspired, obviously, by this thread.
I was more than a little surprised to see how many Americans found the confederate flag offensive. As a UK chap not entirely up on things American, it only ever made me think “Dukes of Hazzard” - maybe with added vague undertones of “don’t the klan come from there or something”? However it seems clear that many Americans find the flag positively repugnant.
Now, America, I have heard, is a flag sort of a place. People have flags there. They hang them out of windows and put them on their garages. I can’t tell you how fascinated and confused my anthropology lecturer was when she first went over there to teach. She simply couldn’t understand why anyone would have a flag on their garage. It may be that you’re rather prouder of your country than we are, and if you are, well, that’s probably healthy.
I wondered aloud then, and I wonder it now, whether the reason behind my lecturer’s bemusement is that you don’t see a great many Union Jacks flying over British garages. Clearly if I flew one over my house in Scotland I’d probably get a brick through the window. And yet I consider myself British, unlike many of my compatriots - but I wouldn’t fly it ANYway, it would feel COMPLETELY inappropriate. Even the Conservative Party, when it campaigns in Scotland, uses the Scottish flag instead. There is never any hint of red white and blue (they wouldn’t dare, admittedly).
I imagine things are quite similar in Ireland and Wales, for reasons you can perhaps guess. Maybe in Ireland some places fly the British flag proudly, I don’t know.
Anyhoo. Even as a Britisher, I would never dream of flying a Union Jack, even if I lived in London. My reasons are as follows:
- everybody knows this is Britain, it’s not like it needs pointing out
- the only people I have ever seen using the Union Jack extensively are far-right fascist groups like Combat 18. I might be wrong about the mainstream political parties but I’ve only ever seen the tories use it, and then moderately. New Labour have probably used it a bit since they got into power, but again, I doubt they’d try it in Easterhouse.
- We don’t have a “British” football squad or anything, so the racist thugs who make up a small percentage of the fanbase in this country always use the English flag. Or, y’know, the Scottish one, or whatever.
- I’m not proud of it but if I see an England flag hanging from a window, I think “is there a football match on?” and then I think “far-right nutter”. I do not think “proud of his country”. If I saw a union jack hanging from a window, I’d get nervous. Seriously. I’d think “something’s about to kick off here”. Unless it was Buckingham Palace I suppose.
- Johnny Rotten once got arrested for hanging an Italian flag in his window because he didn’t have any curtains. The police thought he might be in the IRA or something. This is nothing to do with the rest of the list, but it’s a great story.
- the Union Jack is an even worse design than the stars and stripes.
- everybody seems to identify so strongly by their particular bit of the Union (Scotland, Wales, whatever) that the Union Jack just feels spectacularly out -of-date. I’m pretty sure I get a mild undertone of “empire” whenever I see it.
And this is all coming from someone who just IS British. Perfectly happy to have an independent Scotland and all that, if that’s what everybody wants, but I just THINK British.
So what do you think? Symbol of hate? Symbol of Geri Halliwell?