Time to reclaim the English flag from the right

[BlueCarRedCar]

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?

@RhannionKPSS

The regular anti-migrant posters on our town's Facebook group have all posted photos of St George's flags hanging from their windrows. They have all 'liked' a photo of a St George's flag someone has painted on the local roundabout.

Obviously just coincidental unless there is an England match on that I don't know about.

Quite!

And in a newsflash for NI, "The mines have closed, the steelworks have mostly closed, the factories have closed." didn't just happen in NI; GCSE Maths and English or the equivalent is required mostly everywhere; reasonable adjustements for those with disabilities exist across the UK; and families across the UK can't afford tutoring for thier kids. Immigrants didn't do any of those things to you. A decade of Tory rule did it.

As for "jailing them when they kick off", in the UK the common practice is to jail violent thugs. Are we supposed to reward them for being criminals?

You mentioned Nazis, not me! Says it all really. I think English people will be even less likely to fly flags now, if they think it means they sympathise with the far right (in whatever fluffy wrapper it's presenting itself in now)

I didn't a couple of months ago, but I do now. Because most of the people painting roundabouts are doing it for nationalist not patriotic reasons.

We live in a very multicultural area. And they've always been a few england flags or union flags flying, and no one gave a monkeys. But right now, if anyone put one up, we know that there is very likely to be a message not if pride but of negativity.

I hate the way they are desperately hoping someone complains about it so that they can get all up in arms. The people locally who have said stuff are known to be racist.

We were going to put little flags on our car because we love Rugby. I'm going to watch the women's game next week. But I don't want to do it now because it's been taken away from us and given to these twats.

I loved it during 2012 Olympics when it felt like we had finally got to reclaim the union flag. But then Brexit fucked it up.and gave a platform and confidence to the racists.

Christian values

hahahahahaha 😉

Sure it is (not).

Do you realise the Anglican Church, so the CofE is completely in support of migrants in the UK?

I mentioned nazis because anyone who tries to stand up for their country nowadays is called a nazi and a racist. It’s always just a question of time before someone on a thread like this is called one of these names by some woke leftist. So I thought I would address this issue before it arises, as it always does…
Leftists just chuck these words around aimlessly at anyone who disagrees with them, not really understanding the meaning of them.
The more and more leftists push their agenda, the more the far-right will push back and gather strength.

Hmm, the person chucking around labels is complaining about people who chuck around labels. Okaaaayyyy.

I reported one yesterday to the county council.

Let's stop the namecalling shall we? I'm not a woke leftist any more than you're a Nazi. Extremists benefit when people start jumping on bandwagons. Flag flying is just not English. If you want to protect English traditions how about live and let live, fair play and the rule of law?

But can't you see you're letting them take it away from you which then makes you part of the problem and divides people even more.

If you want to put flags on your car to support the rugby then do it. You know you're not racist, your friends and family and neighbours know you're not racist and they're the only people that matter. We can't control what other people do but we can control how we react to it.

I have been out and about in the last few days and not one person has mentioned anything about flags to me. The real world is not the same as the on line one. People are just getting on with their lives.

I agree. Sadly the link between the flag and the right is so deeply engrained in the so-called "progressive left" (whose herd instinct should never be underestimated), that I think it an almost impossible task.

What would happen if the asylum seekers responded by also putting up our flags, as if to say “we respect your country too”. I wonder if it would calm things or muddy the waters?

The opposite
I love our flag and poppy
Idiots have misappropriated it
The latest acts are literally led by Tommy R friends
Disgusting

Yes but that's not how they got people to vote for them is it.

They started with selling exactly what you said "protecting traditions, national heritage, Christian values and democracy" and a little side dose of how minorities are exploiting us all and taking our money and we want our national pride back...
And then they went from there.

Do you really think the Germans saw "gas millions of jews" on the ballot paper and thought oh yes that's the party for me?

I thought you guys learned about this in history?

Apparently, I am not allowed to reference NI but anyway...

This very thing happened in Ballymena. It even became something of a protection racket. 'Paint your door, and we'll see you right'.

Immigrants STILL got attacked.

A very long time ago, because I thought I ought to, I read Mein Kampf. At the time - long before the internet - it was not banned but impossible to find. So I sat in the reference library in Manchester and read their non-loanable copy. I have to be honest, it was something of a slog because Hitler was a bloody awful writer anyway. Beyond that, it would not be out of place on any current MumsNet thread like this. At the time - I was 17 - I did not see how it got from Mein Kampf to the camps. 50 years later I do. And it's all on here. Every single last bloody inch of the journey from Mein Kampf to Auswitz is truckling along on MumsNet threads with gay abandon. And while Farage, just like Hitler, stokes the flames of hatred, people are taking their eyes off what else is going on.

"Drill, baby, drill" - those are headlines and policies to watch. While everyone is looking at the Channel, just as in Nazi Germany, the people to watch are the ones making vast amounts of money out of it. Farage does not give a shit about women and girls, and if there was money or capital to be made from it he also wouldn't give a shit about asylum seekers. Hitler wove a narrative out of prejudice and fear. Farage does the same. But for power and for money - not for "the people", not for "the British"... for himself and his friends.

@PhilippaGeorgiou - Until recently Starmer couldn't even define what a woman was, he had to have the Supreme Court spell it out for him, so I don't think he cares about women either. They're all as bad as each other.

From Palestine I believe!

This is not how nazi Germany started. The German far-right were very honest from the get-go about the Jews. Anti semitic legislation in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) started many years before 1939. Another difference is that in modern day Britain and Europe, the far-right is mainly about stopping illegal immigration and the islamization of our culture, not curtailing the rights of indigenous citizens or legal migrants.

It so clearly is racist though right now. My neighbour has never flown an England flag before apart from the football….and now he feels the need to fly it hmmm. If it was up all the time I wouldn’t bat an eyelid but it’s not and it’s gone up in the last few days and he is very much the “type”

I wouldn’t even want to start flying one now and reclaim it, because I see it and I see shame. Union Jack I don’t have an issue with it flying as they don’t appear to have claimed that one right now

Well said. Couldn't agree more!

As a Jewish person, I never thought I would see this country on the verge of pogroms, egged on by the right-wing press.

I would have agreed that the Union Jack doesn't appear to have been so tarnished but you may recall that just a few weeks ago there was a media fuss over a school girl sent home for sporting a Spice Girl style Union Jack mini on culture day. Of course the school apologised profusely amid the media backlash but it is precisely this progressive left over reach that has handed our flag to the right.
Then we tie ourselves in knots trying to justify it.

No and mumsnetters have to stop saying that