Owen Polley: Hostility to British emblems is behind flag wars in Great Britain – as in Northern Ireland

The only surprise, perhaps, was that it was Daniel Hannan, the erudite Conservative peer and veteran champion of British sovereignty, who drew these parallels. On X (formerly known as Twitter), Lord Hannan complained that, “England’s politics are becoming like Northern Ireland’s. Flags signal which group is in the majority locally… This is nothing to celebrate. Sectarian politics encourages, at best, complacency and corruption; at worst civil strife.”

The tone of this post was rather condescending and, understandably, some people objected. Baroness Hoey, for example, fairly asked Hannan, “What on earth is wrong with flying the flag of our country?”

I suspect that the problem was that the Tory peer was making a complicated point on a platform which publishes only a limited number of characters. You have no choice but to be brief on X, often at the expense of nuance.

I do not know for definite whether he wanted to add context, but Hannan’s comments could have done with some further explanation. Had that been provided, they may have seemed less harsh and more relevant.

None of us would ever claim, I’m sure, that Northern Ireland’s politics are a model to which the rest of the UK should aspire. Our regular disputes over flags and emblems were often cited as evidence of what was wrong with our political debate.

Indeed, the mocking word ‘flegs’ was coined to imply that, while the middle-class was preoccupied with important matters like jobs, education and healthcare, bone-headed loyalists (and, let’s be honest, this abuse was usually aimed at loyalists) were obsessed instead with trivial issues like national symbols.

This brand of wisdom held that flags on lampposts and other street furniture were purely about claiming territory, with the purpose of intimidating people from other communities. There may sometimes even have been some truth to this view, but it was far too simplistic.

In Northern Ireland, just like in England now, the problem was never flying British flags per se; it was the hostile mood that made them controversial.

This latest dispute started after locals in Birmingham erected Union Flags and St George Crosses, against a backdrop of pro-Palestine protests and other issues on the streets. The city council duly began to take down these emblems, citing safety concerns, while tacitly admitting that it could not do the same with Palestinian banners without provoking violence.

It was this decision that prompted a wider campaign to ‘raise the colours’ and flags were soon appearing on lampposts in other areas. People are fed up with the symbols that represent them - the symbols of their country - being deemed a problem, when foreign emblems, like the Palestine flag or Pakistan’s colours, are treated like untouchable markers of ‘multiculturalism’.

It was, as Hannan implied, a situation that was reminiscent of Northern Ireland, even if the way he explained that wasn’t clear.

If British people here were known for expressing their identity more assertively, in comparison to their counterparts on the mainland, it was because their nationality was threatened by a relentless Irish separatist campaign and attacked through the terrorist violence of the IRA.

Nationalists argued that Irish separatist symbols, often associated with anti-Britishness or a foreign state in the Republic, must enjoy ‘parity of esteem’ with official UK symbols in Northern Ireland. The alternative was purging British emblems from public spaces to foster a ‘neutral’ atmosphere.

Most controversially, at Belfast City Hall the Union Flag was taken down for most of the year, at the suggestion of the Alliance Party, and flown only on ‘designated days’. The argument was that this policy was already followed in many cities in Great Britain. But you only had to take a walk around London, Edinburgh or Cardiff, to see that the Union Flag was far more visible there.

The City Hall fiasco injected fresh poison into politics in Northern Ireland at an otherwise stable moment. It arguably caused a more severe reaction than the Irish Sea border did more recently, even though the Windsor Framework had a far more direct and diluting effect on our constitutional position.

The point was that, whether we liked it or not, flags and symbols were powerful, especially when people’s sense of belonging and national status were constantly under attack.

That’s not remotely unique to Northern Ireland, however much eye-rolling it causes from a certain kind of commentator.

As if to illustrate this point, in Great Britain similar tensions are now emerging. Increasingly, the symbols of the UK, and symbols of Englishness, are portrayed as signs of extremism. In one infamous case, a girl was sent home from a ‘culture day’ at her school for wearing a Union Flag dress.

At the same time, the Palestinian banner, and even emblems of Hamas terrorism, have proliferated on the UK’s streets.

These angry disputes over symbols are certainly not breaking out because there is social harmony in GB, so Lord Hannan was right to say that they are symptoms of sectarian politics, and his concern was justified.

But this atmosphere of sectarianism is created by hostility to English and UK flags, rather than their display. And it is intolerance of British patriotism that is driving people to ‘raise their colours’ across the country.