How the Union flag went posh

From clothing to cushions - and even doorstops - the union flag is everywhere



I don't believe this news coincides with the increased publicity over BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time last week, but yesterday the department store Selfridges announced that sales of its products featuring union flags – including a Lulu Guinness clutch bag and Jonathan Aston tights – had risen by 50%. Elsewhere at the posher end of the high street, the union flag is flourishing and finding its way into the decor of middle-class homes. Textiles designer Jan Constantine has banners and cushions; ceramicist Emma Bridgewater, best known for twee polka-dot teapots, has beflagged just about every kitchen accessory going; Bradleys, an independent tannery, has a range of flag-decorated gardening accessories; and it is a familiar motif at Boden and Jack Wills, the clothing brand beloved of pink-cheeked public schoolboys.

Perhaps this is all an attempt to reclaim the flag from royalists and racists. And those who string up union flag bunting above the butler sink consider surely themselves to be very different to those who drape flags from their windows. Yet it still comes with tricky questions.

Trapped between those layers of red, white and blue are the whispers of imperialism and bloodshed, National Front marches and BNP "literature", aristocracy and privilege. Punk, Britpop and citizenship ceremonies may have gone some way to rehabilitate it, and there are few things more heart-swelling than the images of, say, Amir Khan or Kelly Holmes draped in the flag in their moments of glory, but the flag still hasn't shaken its cultural echoes. For many, it is too cringeworthy to consider. continues here

Editorial :  Didn’t they do that with the St George cross misappropriate it as a brand, until today it is simply an item of fashion worn by all and sundry, its history tainted and its reason muted, oh we still see it, I know of one family where they erected a flagpole, only for disgruntled non-whites undercover of darkness, to break the flagpole. Of course they continued in this battle, a battle that escalated, eggs thrown at their house, used tampons in their garden, graffiti and minor property damage, eventually the harassment continued until their son was threatened and their property burglarised whilst they holidayed.

The man of the house took, I now hear, to walking his dog with a stick, “just in case” and his partner suffered dreadful ill-health, in the summer they could not use their garden and they were forced to keep their windows shut in the vain hope it would to some degree, shut out the noise emanating from the adjacent property. The family concerned rejected all offers of help from nationalists and instead turned to the police and the council, making many complaints, eventually of course the non-whites used their primary weapon they played the race card.

Now I can tell you dear reader that the man concerned does have rightist leanings but in truth his is a kind of Daily Mailesque conviction, it’s all those “dam Muzzies” as a viewpoint, yet his neighbours and the majority of their visitors were negroes, to which as a community he had and indeed has no objection. Yet they pulled out the race-card and so the harassment continued, in fact increasing and all because of a flag, a flag they had been told represented anti-black prejudice. Over time of course many in the neighbourhood protested at the actions of the non-whites, yet it took some six years to evict this family, the main stumbling block fear, fear of the accusation of racism.

This family’s crime was to be seen to be racist, to dare to fly their countries flag, it flies again today, but in a more discreet location, unnoticed by others, it flutters now among pot plants and a well-trimmed lawn, consigned to wave there unobserved least trouble comes calling. What an inglorious end for our flag, either a brand or a loathed symbol, used by many, understood by few, of course now they attack the union flag, they move from the English to all. It is perhaps for this reason that those on the right use all manner of flags and Pendants, all manner of symbols, this site itself uses the Celtic cross as a browser image, yet there is no unifying symbol, at least not as yet.
Still it is of little consequence, let them create of the jack merely a brand, a money making frivolity, for blood makes a people, that then its greatest symbol, you cant make of that a brand.

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