Time to reclaim the English flag from the right

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This whole flag thing feels like it’s getting out of hand. It’s blatantly been claimed by the right wing and although you get the ‘why shouldn’t we hang our flag and be proud to be British?’ Brigade, I haven’t seen or heard anyone with left liberal values boasting about hanging the flag. It’s being done purely to intimidate migrants and minorities.
So how do we go about making being proud to be British back to being proud to be a country that believes in helping others, being multicultural, being compassionate , embracing the things that make us all different?
The only thing I can suggest is hanging the same flags but with slogans on that shout out support for all of the things listed above, I can’t think of another way to reclaim it for what I consider the true values of being British?

I agree.

We used to have a lovely neighbour who had a little flag pole that he displayed with England Flag for sporting events/St George's Day and other flags for relevant times of the year. He also did a fantastic Christmas display and a good Halloween one. He was never anything but polite and kind to everyone that I saw.
First thing the people who bought his house did was to take down the flag pole; I'll tell you from the conversations I overheard from the back garden I know which set was racist and it wasn't the flag flying one.

Well 0.5% of the population of the UK are refugees / asylum seekers, so I don’t think they are materially changing the culture of the uk.

(Source for this figure is the refugee council at: https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/about/facts-about-refugees/ )

Other migrants have come here with government backing / approval. So unless you want the industries which are propped up by migrant workers to fall apart (NHS and social care, being two that spring to mind) you might want to re-think your stance on immigration.

i’m not sure what part of ‘British Culture’ is being removed by migrants - most migrants assimilate very well into British culture (my husband being one of them). They work, pay taxes and contribute to society. Like any population, a small minority will commit crimes and not be open and tolerant of new ideas, but plenty of people in the UK born population also commit crimes and are not open to new ideas. That’s just people the world over, and education is the key to changing attitudes.

the irony I find is that many of these ‘flag protets’ are being held in some of the least ethnically diverse areas.

You need help with your blatant racism.

@Ablushingcrow ok then. Care to expand on that? What help do you suggest? Help on being upset that there is currently a national display of intolerance and hate?

It’s not ‘the flag’. It’s never about the flag. It’s about the movement of people ‘marking their territory’. The organised rallies of people going around spray painting (vandalising) roundabouts, hanging flags en masse. If you hung your flag 6 months ago I would not have batted an eyelid.

Perhaps if fascists and racists weren't wearing it, it would die down even faster.

Yes the key is that this movement is clearly organised and not spontaneous. Worrying. It feels like we are going back to the 70s again with open racism.

I just googled and there is some bunting that has England flags and in between rugby balls with the England flag. I couldn’t tell whether it was 6 nations

That might help distinguish?

Tbf there is a massive flag issue in NI and it is absolutely not ok to randomly fly any flag if you do not want your house firebombed. You must be v culturally sensitive to survive!

You've got a point there.

Yeah good idea

Yes absolutely this!

Yeah in Ballymena back in June various immigrant families had to put the Union Flag in their windows in order to be 'allowed safety' and 'protection'. A Filipino family nonetheless got targeted.

I feel a bit of that coming here and it's chilling.

The single best thing for the planet and people would be if everyone stopped buying cheap, plastic wrapped, badly made, single use then binned polyester and nylon flags that are imported from China.

The best way to reclaim the flag would be for every immigrant family and their friends to fly it. Then it becomes everyone's flag.

Stop calling it racist, stop protesting about it and it isnt racist.

I agree with Laiste, people just need to get on with waving the flag if they want to. If I put one up and people think I’m racist because of it then that is their problem not mine. I refuse to be told by people and where I can fly the national flag. Especially when the very same people think they can fly other countries flags, let’s face it we have no idea really what their individual intention or meaning is in doing it.

Did you see my post about what happened in Ballymena when immigrant families started putting up Union Flags? They still got attacked.

It's interesting. Where I live it's a nice semi-rural village with a traditional "centre". It's got about 6,000 residents and three HMO's with asylum seekers (which we aren't supposed to know about except well, it's a village, it's obvious and also we have a village support group for asylum seekers!). On VE day we had an event and there were flags and bunting everywhere in the centre, and events. Same happened on VJ day. Nobody batted an eyelid. Yesterday morning (a bit late, but then our own particular brand of racists were probably too drunk to get up in the morning) when I was coming back from walking the dog, some young white men were adorning the centre with flags and bunting. It was brilliantly sunny, a bank holiday, and local people were literally seeing what they were doing, and turning and walking away. Our pond is usually brimming with people on a lovely bank holiday morning - it was nigh on empty and the few people there were doing their very best to avoid being near or even looking at what was being done.

People are afraid, yes - but not of asylum seekers.

BTW, I did recognise the four young white men doing this. They are proudly British to have never lifted a finger in work for their entire lives and I doubt anyone in the families have (legally) worked since the 1800's.

I don’t want to hang anything with pride. I don’t feel proud to be British. How is it possible to feel pride in something I had absolutely no control over?

If flag-shaggers started doing something to be actually proud of, like helping in their local communities, instead of wasting their time on the internet, whipping themselves into false victimhood, we’d all be better off.

The last thing we need is more fucking flags. Enough identity already. Let’s start looking outwards.

The irony is that many of the flags themselves were probably made in China.

So how do we go about making being proud to be British back to being proud to be a country that believes in helping others, being multicultural, being compassionate , embracing the things that make us all different?

The Union Jack is more suitable than St George's Cross for the sentiments above. the current inflated St George's Cross flag shenanigans are all driven by social media algorithms, with far right influence 😏and Russian support.

You do understand that Russia is seeking to destabilise Europe?

So yeah, the Saint George's Cross is, especially now, a symbol of racist nationalist dumbwits.

I work for a local authority. We’ve had an email requesting that we report any unauthorised flags we spot on highways, lampposts etc to the county council so they can be promptly removed.

I personally don't think it's normal for English people to fly flags at all, except for maybe royal Jubilees, VE day, or big sports events. The English flag has a history of being adopted at times by problematic groups, football hooligans, the far right etc. We are not fervent flag flyers like the French or Americans. It's not in the culture for every garden to have a flagpole. Flags on church towers and town halls perhaps, flags everywhere by everyone, no.

Somehow, the ubiquitous flags remind me of the "social distancing" signs which were plastered everywhere in 2020: an ugly blot on the landscape. Yes, I know it was supposedly "government information" (and incidentally, some scientists have admitted that the figure of "two metres" was made up on the spot with no basis in science, because they had to come up with something quickly), but it meant you couldn't go anywhere without the propaganda being thrust in your face all the time. In the rougher areas, these signs were high up on lampposts, like the flags, so that people like me couldn't easily remove them. And then the "thank you NHS" banners, rainbows in windows, arrows on the ground, and the masks littering the pavement (to say nothing of those on faces), all became unpleasant visual reminders of the whole thing.

Those of us who thought the response to the pandemic was causing much more damage than the pandemic itself couldn't say so on social media, because we were on the wrong side: we would be vilified as granny murderers, and painting targets on our backs. So we found other ways to counter the propaganda, such as taking down "social distancing" signs; I learned that there was a whole army of people doing this. I think there are certain parallels with the flags: "messaging by stealth".

I think we're in an age of "propaganda pollution", with a huge burst of it in 2020. Safety signs everywhere. Train journeys full of pointless announcements, mostly about safety. Advertising displays which are moving screens, instead of static images. Your computer constantly trying to sell you things with pop-up ads: once upon a time, computers were our servants. Now, they run our lives.