Towards the end of what has been a glorious summer, at least meteorologically speaking, a much-disputed symbol began appearing on lampposts across England: the national flag, the St George’s Cross. It started in the southern suburbs of Birmingham and fanned out to all corners of the country.
Street after street was bedecked with fluttering red crosses on a white background. Such sights are not unknown on certain royal occasions or, less officially, when the England football team is playing in a major international competition. But neither was taking place, so why did the flags suddenly appear and who put them there?
These are questions that have been hotly debated. The most obvious suspects when it comes to demonstrations of nationalism are always the far right, and indeed there was evidence that familiar figures of the knuckle-dragging fraternity were keen to promote the flag-waving.
Some said it was in response to the Palestinian flags that have become a common sight in areas with large Muslim populations. Others said it was simply an innocent display of patriotism.
Still grappling with our colonial past, England is not a country that is at ease with the idea of its nationhood, much less celebrations of it. For a start it’s not really a nation. We are citizens of the United Kingdom, of which England is a constituent part. And while the other constituent parts – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have various degrees of devolved power, England is a more nebulous political concept.
A number of local councils responded to this lamppost decoration by taking the flags down for “safety” reasons. This went down particularly badly in Birmingham, a city that has been flirting with bankruptcy and enduring a six-month-long rubbish-collection strike.
Social media memes flourished with images of St George’s crosses emblazoned on black rubbish bags and over gaping potholes, as if to suggest the only way of getting the rubbish collected or roads fixed was to cover them in the offending flag. And the flags were quickly put back up by locals.
This is the problem with symbols: their removal only lends them greater significance. It’s what might be called the Obi-Wan Kenobi paradox: if you take them down, they will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
The whole drama was a gift to the man leading the polls, the right-wing populist Nigel Farage. He’s well aware of the combustible cocktail of emotions that is building in this country. Hotels where illegal migrants and asylum seekers are held have been picketed during the summer after a young girl was alleged to have been sexually assaulted by an Ethiopian asylum seeker staying in one such place in Essex, and a 12-year-old was alleged to have been raped by two Afghan asylum seekers in the Midlands.
These may be isolated crimes, but they are highly emotive and easily exploited. Many, perhaps most, who voted for Brexit were cynically misled into believing it would spell the end of illegal and mass migration. The opposite has happened, with record numbers of legal and illegal migrants entering the country since the referendum.
The irony is that those, like Farage, who claimed Britain would “regain control” of its borders have benefited most from the subsequent discontent about the higher levels of migration. Recent numbers of newcomers are unsustainable in a country whose infrastructure is fraying at the edges, but solutions are not easy when labour remains in demand.
Putting out the flags is certainly no answer. But nor is taking them down. It’s the country, not the symbol, that is in urgent need of attention.
Andrew Anthony is an Observer writer and is married to a New Zealander.
