The night before yesterday, I received a text message with the not very welcome news that one of Meg’s cousins who we due to meet for lunch yesterday was now not able to make the lunch date as he had just had experienced a recent health scare which involved a night in hospital so evidently he needed to recover safely at home. Whilst I was disappointed to receive the news, I could evidently understand and perhaps another occasion will arise in which I can make the journey to Derby (or to the other cousin in Cheltenham) for a family meal. I reported the other day that when I was out in the car going to a meeting of U3A (University of the Third Age), I counted a rash of St George’s flags, seventeen at least, which were affixed in profusion to the lamp posts in the town centre. I now see from the local news that this is part of a wider cultural movement. Consulting the web I discovered the following. A recent movement has seen the St. George’s flag displayed prominently in Worcestershire, particularly in Bromsgrove and Worcester, with flags appearing on lamp posts and even painted on roundabouts. This has sparked both support and controversy, with some residents organising the displays as a show of patriotism and others raising concerns about safety and potential division. Worcestershire County Council has stated that while they recognise the desire to express views, they are also responsible for maintaining infrastructure and may remove unauthorised attachments to council-owned structures. But if I were a social geographer and were to map the distribution of these flags, there would be a very high coincidence between the flag erecting activities and the the poor, white working class areas in which the Reform movement is now sweeping the board. Here in Bromsgrove and also in Worcestershire, Reform made sweeping gains in the last local elections, Reform won an unprecedented number of seats on the county council but fell two short of an overall majority. The party enjoyed election success across Worcestershire, winning 27 of the 57 seats up for grabs and were only two short of an absolute majority. The reaction of the local authorities to whose lamp posts these flags are affixed is interesting. In Labour controlled Birmingham, the local authority has not hesitated to remove them on ‘health and safety’ grounds. But here, locally and elsewhere in Worcestershire, the reaction has been much more muted and even ambiguous. I have seen video clips on the local news of gangs of enthusiasts armed with aluminium ladders going from lamp post to lamp post attaching the flags with those black cable ties which makes the task of erection both easy and rapid. From what I can gather, the respondents on social media are enthusiastically in favour of this social movement with a common sentiment being expressed that ‘we are taking our country back’ and the movement was trying to spread the celebration of ‘being English’ by their activities. The interesting thing about all of this is that in cultural terms, the English are not a great flag waving nation quite unlike the Americans. I read that in the United States, while many public schools schedule a daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, it is not mandatory for all students to participate, The Supreme Court has ruled that students cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge, and many states offer exemptions or allow students to opt out with parental permission. Here in England, a great deal of flag waving is manifest upon sporting occasions and national festivals involving royalty but is it is not (yet) part pf the warp and weft of every day special life. I must admit to feelings of great unease whenever I see demonstrations of excessive nationalism from whatever quarter although I am somewhat more tolerant when it comes to expressions pf national identity for those in Scotland and Wales who have been subject to English hegemony for centuries. One little thing that stimulates my distaste for this cultural phenomenon is that the flag makers are now writing the words ‘England’ across the middle of the flag as though uninformed members of the public needed educating about the significance of St George’s flag. I just have the sinking feeling that once the genie of excessive nationalism is let out of the bottle, as it were, it is very difficult to contain it and community tensions may well eventually be exacerbated by this cultural movement.
There is a fact of recent history which ought to be receiving a great deal of prominence but unfortunately this is not the case. Ukraine did give up its inherited Soviet nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the US, UK, and Russia, formalised in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This agreement included pledges to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and existing borders, as well as to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine. This security assurance has evidently been completed ignored by Russia which could hardly be said to be respecting Ukraine’s independence when they invaded and waged war against the Ukraine in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea only some twenty years later. In a similar vein, both the USA and the UK did not respect Ukrainian boundaries and all of this demonstrates that words might be utterly meaningless unless backed up with the means of enforcing the security protocols. So, in the present conflict with Putin, given that he has broke assurances before, how can the Ukraine be assured that history will not repeat itself a few years down the line?
In the morning, I walked down to Waitrose and bought some cake, raspberries and coffee to offer our guests after the meal we were to have in the middle of the day. So our two cousins plus myself, son and daughter-in-law all had a magnificent meal and, despite the fact that the restaurant was so fully booked, were served with some delicious food with serves to sustain the good reputation of the gastro-pub in the area. Then my son and daughter-in-law had to shoot off but my cousins came round and we enjoyed some raspberries, ice-cream and coffee before they,too, had to depart. I intimated to them that I might have plans to have a brief holiday in Spain but the bookings and some final arrangements have yet to be made.