'A very English war'

The communities fighting back over flags on lamp-posts

- Esther Addley

The Christmas lights have gone up in Stirchley. A multifaith mix of stars and swirls add a festive air to the lamp-posts in this south Birmingham suburb.

Stirchley is a modest kind of place, sandwiched between better-known (and better-off) areas such as Bournville and Moseley, but there is plenty of evidence here of the community spirit that last year resulted in it being named the best place to live in the Midlands.

Posters in shop windows along Pershore Road advertise a knitting group, a neighbourhood winter fair and the local food bank, while in the former swimming baths, now a community hub, flyers for coffee mornings and choirs are stacked.

Scratch the surface, however, and there are signs of something less harmonious. Outside the farm foods shop, someone has pasted photos of a number of Stirchley residents, whose faces have since been scraped away. "I AM THE PERSON TAKING DOWN THE FLAGS," reads one image stuck on a bin. Another picture, since torn off the post box, was tagged: "I HATE THE UNION FLAG".

For months, Stirchley has found itself the scene of a fractious and at times very ugly dispute. On at least four occasions since September, members of a Birmingham-based group called Raise the Colours (RTC), wearing branded hard hats and hi-vis vests and using a cherry picker, have hung hundreds of Saint George and union flags from Stirchley's lamp-posts as part of a widespread campaign they say is intended to "fill the skyline with unity and patriotism".

On each occasion local residents, objecting to what they describe as territory-marking as part of an anti-immigrant movement, have taken the flags down, but say they have been subject to harassment and intimidation.