Union Flag is abused when politically used

HOW often have you seen a Government minister appear on television with at least one Union Flag behind him or her?

Rudyard Kipling, usually seen as the spokesman for the British Empire, wrote a story based on his experiences at the United Services College at Westward Ho, Devon, called The Flag of Their Country.

In it, a ‘Conservative MP’ gives a lecture at the school exhorting the boys, who are the sons of military officers and civil servants, to do their duty. At the end of his speech, he waves the Union Jack before them, expecting “thunderous applause”.

He is greeted by silence, the boys disgusted by his ‘sham patriotism’. Among other terms, he is described as a ‘Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper’.

One is reminded of Boris Johnson as a parachutist waving the flag as he descends. Surely the flag is abused when it is exploited as a political weapon or used to rabble-rouse. It may be used to distract attention from uncomfortable truths, to take people’s minds off things like the worst Covid death-rate in the world, or cronyism over Government contracts, or a failed test-and-trace system, or racism, or increased poverty and inequality, or an erosion of human rights, or a hostile refugee policy, or cuts to foreign aid, or a careless and self-destructive Brexit.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that flag-waving and romanticising the past can be features of regimes like Nazi Germany.

It was another great English writer who said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”.

Mike Temple

Sidmouth, Devon