Unlike the Americans, we’re not much of a country for flag-flying. We don’t fly them from private households and, unlike our European neighbours, we are not in the habit of flying them from public buildings. The only time you’ll usually see the streets decked with England’s colours is when, like today, the national team are playing football.
In fact, of the rare household flags you do see across the country, few are likely to be British. There’s been a Greek national flag flying in Walberswick for as long as I can remember. All last year our local Conservative Association had an Irish tricolour unfurled from the flat above. Ditchling in Sussex proudly flies the Cornish white cross at the moment, for some reason, and Eastbourne Town Hall the Gay Pride stripes, but that’s about it outside of major football tournaments. On the whole, like all other official symbols of our national identity — portraits, parades, anthems, uniforms and the like — we go quietly.
What does this tell us about who we are? First it speaks the truth: that states are all very well and we’d be literally lost without them, but that their official symbols are not what counts. What counts is generally found around the corner and that isn’t a flag up a pole. Our most telling identities are inherent in the people, although there are institutions — the armed forces, for instance — when popular and official expressions powerfully combine, and the battle flag is one of them.
Second, it shows a remarkable, non-political, political maturity. Communities come from the inside out. That is why they are communities. Raising a flag (especially the national one) in the middle of a community does nothing for that community, and is also just a bit naff.
The same goes for lapel pins. It was George W Bush, I think, who started wearing a tiny stars and stripes in his lapel soon after 9/11 and to my utter astonishment he kept it there and then Obama followed. British ministers do it now with Union flags or, in Hancock’s case, with the blue badge of the NHS. Warning to ministers: do you believe in our country or do you not? If you do, you don’t need to wear a pin. If you don’t, we don’t trust you anyway and a pin isn’t going to help.
Third, flags get tacky. They only look good for five minutes in a germ-free environment. After that they fly tattered and torn not by shot and shell, but by general indifference and neglect. Like weeds in the garden, flags that look like dishcloths are a bad sign. Leicester railway station used to have half a bush growing out of its clock-face and I can assure East Midland Trains that this did not inspire confidence.
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