Flying the flag

Flying the flag

From your first year in nursery, you’re taught that waving a flag is fun. Your mum and dad take pictures of you in your buggy waving a flag on National Day. Your family may well hang out a flag on your birthday, and people with large gardens often have a flagpole.

But that’s in Norway. In England things are rather different. Most English people today are far more reserved than Norwegians about showing any patriotism, except for at royal weddings or sporting events like football or rugby matches. You don’t hang a flag out on your birthday (unless you’re the Queen, and she has to use the British flag) and no one really celebrates St George’s Day, England’s official national day. Why not? The Scots are proud of their flag and country, so are the Welsh. Why is England different?

Part of the problem is that England was once the centre of an Empire, the British Empire. London is the capital and seat of government in the UK, 80% of the UK population lives in England and the royal family has been living in London for centuries. Great Britain has been ruled from London since 1707. All this means that it’s sometimes difficult to work out what is English and what is British.

Up to a few years ago, the official flag you’d see most often in England was the Union Jack, not the English St George’s Cross. Waving a British flag in the modern world can be problematic, however. How do you express patriotism when you have been a colonial power, a country which thought its way of life, its language and its institutions were superior to all others? Particularly as people’s opinions on the Empire are now very divided.

In the 1960s, racist groups in England shouted “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack”. What they meant was that there should be no black people living in Britain. Many would say that it’s still mainly nationalists or racists who wave flags. In fact right-wing extremists use the English flag so much that other people feel they’re sending the wrong message if they wave the flag, too. UKIP is a new, right-wing political party that describes itself as patriotic. It uses the Union Jack as part of its anti-immigration message.

At sporting events, however, both the English and British flag are waved enthusiastically by people from all sorts of backgrounds. Shopping streets are often decorated with lines of small flags called bunting. Pictures from the 2012 London Olympics or the Euros (the European Football Championship) show that patriotism is possible. But flying the flag in England on other occasions? That’s still complicated.