Acts of Defiance in England

When I was a kid, one of my brothers had a poster--one of the gaudy velvet covered posters that was intended to be lit by a black light--emblazoned with the word "Defiance" and showing an eagle swooping down on a mouse, which mouse had raised one hand (paw) with the middle finger extended.

    We are seeing much of the same attitude on display in England with more and more residents seemingly willing to show their defiance against what can only be described as a tyrannical government. Spike! magazine took a look at one expression of this defiance in its article "How flying the flag became a symbol of revolt," by Tom Slater.  He describes the situation:

    Hot on the heels of the pink ladies’ protests outside migrant hotels, Operation Raise the Colours is the latest organic, decidedly patriotic, social-media-driven initiative whose success can be measured in the outsized, outraged, utterly predictable reaction it is receiving. While councils continue to remove the flags, on health-and-safety and property-maintenance grounds, identitarian rent-a-gob Kehinde Andrews was invited on to Good Morning Britain yesterday to insist that the Saint George’s Cross is racist and this campaign is a faux-patriotic stunt by the fash. Presumably, Dr Shola was busy.

    The sudden, nationwide explosion of Operation Raise the Colours is basically all the proof you need that this isn’t being driven by the far right – a pathetic fringe in British political life that has long struggled to fill a minibus. Apparently beginning in Birmingham, the campaign has since spread to Swindon, Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich and London. Like the migrant-hotel protests, it seems to be decentralised, leaderless, rallied on Facebook and group chats.

    It’s a fascinating, bottom-up campaign against a now undeniable, galling double standard – that in ‘multicultural’ Britain all identities are to be celebrated except for Englishness and Britishness. Tellingly, England and Union flags began emerging in Northfield in south Brum around the same time that the Library of Birmingham was lit up in green and white for Pakistan’s independence day. While Birmingham City Council was quick to take down the England flags – insisting these fluttering pieces of polyester, zip-tied 10-feet-high on to lampposts, posed an intolerable risk to public safety – a leaked email has revealed local officials were so scared to remove the ubiquitous Palestine flags that have emerged in the city since the Israel-Hamas war began that council workers were given extra security.

     So it is in Tower Hamlets. Since 2022, the east London borough has been run by mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire party, a pro-Gaza, overwhelmingly Bangladeshi outfit that is always happy to play pork-barrel identity politics, in an area that is 40 per cent Muslim and 35 per cent Bangladeshi. Hence, when Palestine flags began to appear across the borough, the council dragged its feet for months, claiming removing them would ‘destabilise community cohesion’. It only relented when forced to by an independent lawyers’ report, arguing the flags contravened planning laws, and threats of legal action. Rahman, begrudgingly announcing their removal, insisted the flags weren’t divisive and lamented ‘Islamophobic smears’ on the borough.

    Wouldn’t you know it, Tower Hamlets council was markedly more decisive when those England and Union flags began appearing on those selfsame lampposts. For much of the past week, locals have been playing a game of cat and mouse with council workers, with flags appearing, being taken down, before being raised again. There have also been some ugly shouting matches. Call me a cynic, but I dare say this more robust response isn’t entirely down to the council’s new, hard-earned understanding of the Town and Country Planning Act. Rahman, for one, has been noticeably hesitant to defend the flag-hoisters this time around. 

It seems like good fun. But since the UK seems to have the most surveilled people on the planet (with some estimates putting the number of CCTV cameras in the UK at 21 million), I would expect to see some sort of crackdown at some point. 

Related: 

• "Epping has shown the way to win" by Nigel Farage, reporting that "[t]he High Court has ruled that illegal immigrants can no longer be housed at the Bell Hotel. This is a great victory for the parents and concerned residents of Epping. Let it also be an inspiration to the rest of Britain." And this, "[d]espite being slandered as 'far-Right' by the establishment and attacked by Left-wing 'Antifa' thugs[.]"