Imagine you were the type of liberal who sees public expressions of patriotism as primitive and aggressive, rather than a sensible reader of The Critic. You would probably already know that the “flag wars” breaking out in England this week are a familiar part of local politics in Northern Ireland. Indeed, you would most likely have a ready-made image of thuggish loyalists marking out territory with performative displays of Britishness, in a crude attempt to intimidate their innocent Catholic neighbours. No doubt you would reason that, thanks to the rise of the “far-right”, which you would hold to contain politicians like Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, something like Ulster’s ugly sectarianism was erupting on the UK mainland.
While angry disputes over emblems are hardly a sign of social harmony, this would be an ill-informed take — based on prejudices that can only inflame and spread the current row. It also gets the relevant issues pretty much diametrically the wrong way around. If British people traditionally expressed their patriotism more vociferously in Northern Ireland, it was because they felt their nationality was under threat from IRA terrorism and an unremitting Irish separatist campaign. Later, many official displays of Britishness were stripped from public spaces, supposedly to foster a more “neutral” atmosphere, and locals increasingly used lamp-posts to ensure their country’s emblems did not disappear entirely from the province’s streets.
If you want to draw parallels with what’s happening in England now, where pro-Hamas symbols proliferate in some areas and public bodies apologise for the nation’s past rather than celebrating it, this is a more useful place to start.
In Birmingham, for example — arguing, unconvincingly, that it was acting out of safety concerns —- the city council removed British flags from street furniture, while Palestinian banners were left untouched. Taking those symbols down, a council cabinet member admitted, would need “the support of the police”. As the Daily Mail insinuated, local politicians in Birmingham were scared to remove Palestinian flags, but they had no such qualms about English banners.
In Northern Ireland, polite society has long taken a disapproving view of national emblems
The authorities’ “two tier” approach sparked a backlash and a wider campaign to “raise the colours” across other towns and cities. Council workers were soon removing St George’s Crosses in east London and Worcestershire, while activists in other areas erected their own patriotic emblems. Sir Keir Starmer claimed he was enthusiastic about English and British flags, but declined to comment on specific examples, which his spokesman said were a matter for local councils. This intervention rather epitomised the prime minister’s talent for saying something, without saying very much at all.
In Northern Ireland, polite society has long taken a disapproving view of national emblems, whose political importance it dismisses with the sneering epithet, “flegs”. This approximation of the working-class Belfast accent implies that upstanding, middle-class people in Ulster are concerned with jobs, healthcare and schools, while a bone-headed underclass obsesses about symbols and trifling matters like which nation state they belong to.
This attitude reached an infamous peak in 2012 when the Union Flag, which previously flew year-round, was removed from Belfast City Hall, to be displayed only on a limited number of “designated day”’. The policy was devised by the supposedly “middle ground” Alliance Party, which held the balance of power in the council chamber, and the angry reaction from loyalists arguably became so severe that it drove that party in a more pro-nationalist direction. The problem was that, because Northern Ireland was in the UK, creating “neutral” spaces meant stripping away British symbolism taken for granted in the rest of the country. The same attitude never applied to anti-British displays, which were often portrayed as legitimate expressions of “Irish culture”, entitled to “parity of esteem” with official emblems of the state. At the City Hall, recent innovations have included unveiling statues of prominent republicans, while the council erects contentious Irish language signs on streets where only 15 per cent of residents support that demand (even when a clear majority object).
In Northern Ireland, nationalists have traditionally tried to map their own rhetoric about British colonialism onto the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. In the aftermath of October 7th, republicans have relentlessly used the war in Gaza to force Palestinian symbols, which many unionists associate with Hamas terrorism and, by extension, the IRA, ever more flagrantly into public spaces. They are, you understand, just so very enraged about starving Arab children, rather than trying to impose their ideology on cowed and demoralised unionists.
If this all sounds a bit familiar to the unfolding flag wars on the mainland, that’s because the left, and an increasingly vocal Muslim population, are using similar tactics to force aggressive, anti-Western, often anti-British politics into the public sphere. If these disputes over symbols make you uncomfortable or have a whiff of sectarianism, the fault is not with UK or England flags, or the people erecting them, but the mood that makes them controversial.
The sight of a row of Union Jacks is more likely now to raise my morale
My personal attitude to red, white and blue banners and bunting on street furniture in Northern Ireland has changed over the years. I once regarded it as unnecessary and inappropriate, preferring to see flags flying from designated flag-poles, rather than the proverbial tattered symbol fluttering on a lamp-post. I’m not entirely over that prissy instinct, but as society in Ulster is increasingly bent to the demands of separatists, to the point that there is a functioning border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the sight of a row of Union Jacks is more likely now to raise my morale.
I’m sure the St George’s Crosses and Union Flags sprouting in some of our nation’s biggest cities will have a similar cheering effect. At a time when patriotism is often cast as extremism, they are becoming symbols of defiance which send out the message that people still value their Britishness (or Englishness) and will never give it up.
