CROSS PURPOSES

Can the St George's flag ever be reclaimed, or is it forever tainted by its association with the far right? Helen Coffey investigates how it became such a dubious national symbol

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It's hard to pinpoint when it happened - the exact moment when the England flag went from being a benign show of patriotism to a dog-whistle call to racism.

At one point, the St George's flag was even considered the “safe”, more inclusive alternative to the union jack, the latter having been co-opted by the National Front in the late 1970s. Football was arguably the driving force behind this: in a 2019 speech, former Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “Since Euro ’96, English football fans have helped to reclaim the flag of St George from the BNP.” Sociologists Paul Bagguley and Yasmin Hussain, meanwhile, described in their 2005 essay, “Flying the Flag for England? Citizenship, Religion and Cultural Identity among British Pakistani Muslims”, how St George’s flags were displayed from the windows, shops and taxis of Bradford’s British Pakistani population during the 2002 World Cup. “The St George’s flag was felt to represent a multi-ethnic Britain, whereas the union jack is associated with colonialism and white racism,” they wrote.

But somewhere between Labour MP Emily Thornbury’s infamous 2014 tweet, Brexit, a run of anti-immigration PMs and the swift rise of the Reform party, something shifted in the national consciousness. It’s no coincidence that, in many of the recent anti-asylum hotel protests, the St George’s flag features prominently. No, it might not seem fair that to fly our country’s flag is tantamount to throwing your lot in with the far right — yet the connotations are now hardwired. So found a Worcestershire community group recently, when their campaign to fundraise to put England flags on every lamp post in their village quickly drew censure and accusations of right-wing sympathies.