{"id":382908,"date":"2025-08-29T16:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/382908\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T16:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T16:43:11","slug":"why-the-row-about-the-england-flag-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/382908\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the row about the England flag matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of Sky News\u2019s coverage of last year\u2019s Notting Hill Carnival, its correspondent recited the usual list of arrests, stabbings and so on before concluding her piece to camera by saying: \u2018But overall it\u2019s been a really peaceful and enjoyable day.\u2019 This year the honour of summing up the beauty of the event was left to Sky\u2019s arts and entertainment correspondent, Katie Spencer. The reason it is important for two million people to gather in the tight streets of Notting Hill over the August bank holiday, she said, is because of \u2018resistance to racism\u2019. \u2018This is a place where community comes together,\u2019 she went on, ignoring all the shops in the area that had been boarded up. \u2018You don\u2019t walk around constantly looking over your shoulder.\u2019<\/p>\n

This year, over the two-day event, there were 423 arrests, 32 assaults on police, only a couple of stabbings (down on last year), fewer than 50 guns, machetes and knives seized, and a mere 18 sexual offences. Safe spaces, which were introduced last year, were back. As one female Metropolitan Police officer explained: \u2018Women and girls who might feel sort of vulnerable in Carnival \u2013 unfortunately there are incidents of sexual assaults \u2013 can go and be supported in those areas.\u2019 It is hard to think of another cultural event in this country where dedicated areas have to be set aside in advance for people who will be sexually assaulted. The BBC Proms, for instance, do not have an area set aside for people who have been raped by other Prommers.<\/p>\n

\u2018Does [the Notting Hill Carnival] feel any unsafer than being at, say, Glastonbury?\u2019 asked Spencer, before answering herself: \u2018Not particularly.\u2019 Which, if true, is another reason never to go to Glastonbury.<\/p>\n

The gated institutional narrative around events such as the Notting Hill Carnival is that ethnic minorities need a \u2018safe space\u2019 in order to have a day or two off from the racist nightmare that is life in the UK. What is interesting about this year\u2019s Carnival is that it comes at a time when a different grass-roots movement is springing up \u2013 and attracting a very different response. That is the decision by a large number of people, mainly in England, to start flying our national flags more prominently. One part of this movement is called Operation Raise the Colours, and of course the people involved have already come in for the usual smears and guilt-by-association.<\/p>\n

The BBC this week ran a report on the phenomenon of people flying our nation\u2019s flag. As you might expect, the subject was approached in the manner of a hanging judge who\u2019s donned the black cap before asking for the first defence witness. Indeed, the BBC outsourced its expertise on this matter \u2013 as on all matters to do with anything patriotic \u2013 to the radical leftist campaigning group Hope Not Hate (a group which, as I have said here before, has its name precisely the wrong way around). As the BBC said: \u2018According to the research group Hope Not Hate, Operation Raise the Colours was co-founded by Andrew Currien, otherwise known as Andy Saxon, who has allegedly had links with the English Defence League and Britain First.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n

What are you actually allowed to do or say if you don\u2019t like the direction this country is going in?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One might note that this is a textbook effort at smearing an entire people. First of all, the radical activists at Hope Not Hate are described merely as a \u2018research group\u2019. And then they say that someone involved in one of the organisations that has encouraged flag-raising is someone who has been \u2018alleged\u2019 to have had links with the defunct EDL. This is the journalistic version of the 1920s hit song \u2018I\u2019ve danced with a man, who\u2019s danced with a girl, who\u2019s danced with the Prince of Wales\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet Operation Raise the Colours brings to mind the occasional times in recent decades when MPs from the Labour and Conservative parties have talked about the importance of having more pride in our culture and about how we should \u2018reclaim\u2019 our national flag. Here is a movement that is responding to some of the downsides of mass migration by showing pride in our flag. And the response from much of the media is to say: \u2018The flag you\u2019re flying is the flag that is flown by someone who we\u2019re told might have links with groups we deem unsavoury.\u2019<\/p>\n

So we return to that age-defining question: what are you actually allowed to do or say if you don\u2019t like the direction this country is going in? If you join a rally against the rape of young British girls, you will be marked as a racist. If you go to a demonstration against putting up illegal migrants in expensive hotels, you will be branded far right. If you put up a flag, you will be smeared by the most distant possible association with someone you\u2019ve never met who might have put up the same flag for the \u2018wrong\u2019 reasons.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\"\"
\n\t\t\t\u2018That\u2019s it \u2013 we\u2019re moving to Dubai.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps it is just about possible that the public could be kept down forever, our national story trashed and our flags said to be toxic. The problem is trying to maintain that stance while at the same time encouraging everybody else to have a whale of a time with their own emblems and traditions, even traditions where laws are broken.<\/p>\n

We are informed that some migrants may feel concern at going down a street festooned with our national flag. But it\u2019s an odd thing to move to a country and then say that its emblems scare you. Still, I find the argument unconvincing. I felt concern recently going down a street in east London where every lamppost was bedecked with signs saying \u2018Trust in Allah\u2019. But I never heard of anyone caring about my feelings.<\/p>\n

I suppose people can vote Reform. But the next election is four years away. And just guess what the media will do to voters who even think of putting their cross in that box.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tEvent
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCoffee House Shots Live: Can the Tories turn it around? \u2013 Manchester Special<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tBook now\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of Sky News\u2019s coverage of last year\u2019s Notting Hill Carnival, its correspondent recited the usual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[192,748,393,24085,4884,80864,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-382908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-flags","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-notting-hill-carnival","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115113060346353197","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}