They name it “Operation Increase the Colors”. It started in Birmingham, when Union Jacks and the Cross of St George appeared on streelights and lamposts in Weoley Fort and Northfield just a few weeks in the past. The folks behind it are a “group of proud English males”, who name themselves the Weoley Warriors. On-line, over £10,000 has been raised by supporters of their trigger. The group say they’ve “a standard purpose to indicate Birmingham and the remainder of the nation of how proud we’re of our historical past, freedoms and achievements”.
Standing in the way in which of those ambitions are a lot of councils throughout the nation – Birmingham Metropolis, Metropolis of York and Tower Hamlets, amongst others – which have tried to take the flags down as rapidly as they’ve gone up. However the flaggers have grow to be hoarders: grabbing as a lot inventory as potential following a raft of donations. George Fort, who claims to be a founding father of the Weoley Warriors, has boasted on the group’s personal Fb web page for fellow flaggers that he has amassed over 4,000 flags – “sufficient to stretch from Birmingham to Cheltenham!”
In addition they say – insist – that they’re not racist. That what they’re calling “flagging” is about pleasure in nation, place and folks. The aim of these flags is to construct a “sturdy group”, the Warriors’ Fb web page reads: “Irrespective of your background, race or faith, we dwell facet by facet on this nation collectively; so if you lookup and see the flags fly, [know] they fly for you.” In fact, the identical flags have traditionally – as lately as final summer season’s riots – been flown at moments of, and used as weapons of, intense racial agitation.
The “flagging” second has captured the nation – or a part of the nation’s – creativeness. Flags have appeared everywhere in the nation from Newcastle to Norwich. Tacitly, the flags could also be seen as a response to the Palestinian flags which have appeared in cities throughout Britain because the October seventh assault and subsequent battle in Gaza that started in 2023. The Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, ever desirous to faucet into the populist zeitgeist, was pictured this week elevating a Union Jack in his house constituency of Newark. He attacked the “Britain-hating councils” which had taken some flags down. (Kemi Badenoch has not but braved a ladder and achieved the identical, although certainly it’s a matter of time.) In a Telegraph op-ed revealed on Thursday (August 21), Jenrick predicted a reckoning: “The nation is heading within the unsuitable route. However the British folks have proven over the past week that there are causes to consider a comeback is on.”
Some have linked “flagging” to the road politics, murals and flags of Northern Eire. The mainland, they are saying, is changing into extra like Ulster. That territory between totally different, hostile teams is being marked. It’s an ominous commentary.
Driving out from the un-flagged metropolis centre, beneath a procession of flags on the twin carriageway in the direction of Birmingham’s suburbs, I arrived within the village of Rubery. The half-mile lengthy high-street which cuts by outlets on both facet was forested by Union Jacks on prime of streetlights and lampposts. There was little sense amongst residents of what the Union Jacks had been doing there – even much less so what they meant. A girl of a south Asian background, working in a candy store, had requested neighbours and assumed it was up in celebration of VJ day (August 15); a Pakistani man in one other store informed me he had additionally requested, and did acknowledge feeling – with out an excessive amount of clarification – barely “intimidated”.
The exception was the high-street Turkish Barbers, who informed me they had been “proud” to show the Union Jack when approached by native organisers. They even agreed to have their photograph taken with the flag and have its location shared on a nationwide “Stay Map” of proudly flying St George’s Crosses and Union Jacks, designed by allied group Flag Drive UK.
“I don’t actually have an emotional response to it, [though] I believe lots of people do,” one of many store’s white clients – who didn’t need to give his title – stated of the nationwide flags while getting a pores and skin fade. “Unpacking that could be a very, very difficult factor to do… They imply various things to totally different folks.” When an emblem is so broadly recognised, however has a malleable which means and definition, scepticism abounds. “Confused” was the response from a pair of college college students, Ellie and Emma, each 20, who had been again house for the summer season. “Usually, it’s been fairly a optimistic factor round right here for most individuals,” stated Ellie, ”they see it as a pleasure factor, being patriotic.” However that patriotism, Emma famous, is double-edged – typically being “utilized in a dangerous manner… saying that you just’re ‘glad we’re getting our nation again’. However what does that even imply?”
“The social contract’s damaged,” Joseph Moulton, the boyish-looking organiser behind Flag Drive UK, informed GB Information. Carrying a crisp white shirt and gold cross pendant, he highlighted the gulf between the “folks [who]… desire a trigger” and “fully out of contact councils”. Moulton encourages folks to not “simply do the flagging”, however to make use of it as a ”gateway to really constructing the communities… doing the litter selecting, serving to the meals banks, taking care of weak folks”. Duties that, in his view, are being deserted by native and nationwide representatives: “The institution isn’t interesting to folks.”
In Weoley – the place the primary spate of St George’s Crosses and Union Jacks went up at the least two weeks’ in the past – the material flapping within the wind meant rather more than flags. Flagging, it appeared, was additionally in regards to the altering demographics of Britain – notably felt in a various metropolis like Birmingham – and the concern and anger such adjustments impressed within the native white British nationals. To at least one man, Sam, 35, standing outdoors a chippy, who had “100 per cent pleasure in my nation”, these weren’t simply flags, however a “assertion” to “present that we’re united as one on this nation. And for those who’re not united as one on this nation, then be happy to depart for those who’re not from right here.”
One flag above the bus cease, within the view of a well-dressed aged man, is “solely patriotic, [and] nothing to do with racism”. But he additionally noticed the flags as being a part of a wider fightback in the direction of supposed “double requirements on this nation” in opposition to white folks. “That is simply saying: ‘That is our fucking nation,’” a balding and bearded man informed me by a toy store within the bowl-shaped centre of Weoley.
“It’s simply all in regards to the children,” he added, as his major school-aged daughter held her bag filled with toys. “These folks coming over, they don’t care. They’ve received no morals.” All of them? “They’re totally different from the [previous] generations of black [and] Indian individuals who have come – [they’ve] been right here for years, and we’ve mingled… These new folks…don’t care about us, the folks on this nation… They don’t care who they damage… they’re right here to harm folks. They’ll admit it to you: ‘We’re right here to kill your children.’”
Many residents whose harmless intuition was to again “flagging” feared being related to such excessive views. “That was my fear once I noticed them, that there could be that hyperlink,” Louise, 30, informed me. “And I’d hate to suppose they made different folks really feel uncomfortable… I discover it onerous to consider that it’s simply patriotic,” she added, standing alongside her sister, each of whom grew up close by. “Why is there a necessity for [the] flags to go up? I don’t see the hyperlink between these flags and hope and group.”
In attempting to determine the connections of the flags and patriotism (and the supposed exclusion of racism), I privately messaged these claiming to be behind the “authentic motion” that has “received the entire nation doing it and talking about it”. The response: “No weren’t talking to any1 sorry [sic].” I did, by probability, communicate to some who claimed to know the organisers (they didn’t need to be interviewed). “They know what they’re doing,” the person – a Brummie of Afro-Caribbean heritage – stated, ambiguously. His girlfriend – who’s white British – gave him a telling look. “They need to know higher,” he added.
In a Britain which largely feels apathy in the direction of mainstream politics, it feels as if there are few methods to specific discontent cathartically. Maybe most acutely so in a spot like Birmingham – which is contending with a bankrupt council and an ongoing bin strike, now in its sixth month. Given town’s non secular and multicultural variety, it turns into a straightforward goal for narratives in regards to the “failures” of immigration. However a latest report – “This Place Issues” – from Residents UK, UCL Coverage Lab, and Extra in Frequent, discovered no constant correlation between excessive immigration to an space and low social cohesion. Certainly, it discovered that the most typical points in areas affected by final summer season’s riots had been social dislocation and deprivation.
And there may be loads of that in Birmingham: 43 per cent of its residents dwell in neighbourhoods that fall in essentially the most disadvantaged 10 per cent nationally; a persistent scarcity of social and reasonably priced housing noticed an estimated homeless inhabitants in extra of 16,000 folks (the very best figures outdoors of London); whereas 19.3 per cent of households had been in gasoline poverty in 2023.
Folks really feel let down by their house – as soon as thought to be the “best-governed metropolis on the earth”. Immediately the native authority can’t satisfactorily justify their failures to its residents. On this specific context, why it determined to take away the nationwide flags (citing structural considerations round “including additional weight”), whereas Palestinian flags typically flew for months undisturbed. When approached for remark, Birmingham Metropolis Council informed me it has “eliminated Palestinian flags together with different attachments,” however that, “sadly, some objects are changed after”. However once I visited the bustling Alum Rock Highway on Thursday (August 21), I counted at the least 20 – nearly all of which had been tiny and withered after enduring the weather. They’d clearly been current for months.
Brummies know that their metropolis is in bother. They describe the temper: “Up and down – largely down”; “run down”; “tough”; “robust”. One appears content material in complete disassociation: “I strive not to consider the state of issues an excessive amount of.” That bind isn’t any manner for England’s second metropolis to exist in.
Birmingham’s outbreak of “flagging” coincided with the Excessive Court docket ruling that can see asylum seekers evicted from the Bell Resort in Epping. These summer season months have seen protests, proscriptions and an underlying sense that the nation has not moved on from the violence of final 12 months. And whereas the Prime Minister is on vacation, his spokesperson did little to quell tensions, solely noting that Keir Starmer is “completely” in favour of these flying flags. “The PM has all the time talked about his pleasure of being British, the patriotism he feels,” the spokesperson stated on Monday (August 18).
The genie seems to be out the bottle with the flaggers. In comparison with its suburban flagging hotspots, central Birmingham was comparatively flagless. However the instance set by the flaggers growing on its outskirts exhibits no indicators of slowing down, and is being aped by regional copycats. Because the variety of “our” flags throughout the nation grows, so will the quantity of questions on what, and who it represents – and, extra existentially, who it excludes.
[See also: How Birmingham became Britain’s scapegoat]