Nationalists hijacked the Saltire... but now I want my flag back

THE first time I spotted it, I had to do a double take. But no, it really was there, a string of Union flag bunting, fluttering outside a house on my Glasgow street. It was about a week before the Coronation and until that point such outward displays of patriotism had been few and far between in the city.

The weekend before, my husband and I had spent a couple of days in London and had marvelled, trailing down Oxford Street, at the Union flags that hung from every lamppost.

Back in Glasgow, we’d been struck by the contrast. But then it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Scotland, I think, and Glasgow in particular, has always had a tricky relationship with the Union flag.

In certain parts of our largest city it has become a shorthand for sectarianism, and seeing it flown at certain types of marches does little to quell the impression. Some nationalists, meanwhile, treat it as though it were a toxic image, so much so that in recent years there have been a number of Union flag burning incidents that merely stoke the notion that there is an extreme element within the Scottish nationalist movement that seems mired in a particularly unpleasant form of hatred.

So I was intrigued when, as the days went on in the run-up to the Coronation, I saw more Union flags around Glasgow than I would have expected. My local supermarket, in a sleepy suburb in the south of the city, was touting packs of Union flag bunting, hats and table cloths. Flags appeared in other house windows, and in shops in the city centre.

For once, the Union flag, so often a loaded symbol north of the Border, seemed to stand for something simple: one nation, united in celebration.

And so, inspired by my neighbours, I ordered some Union flag bunting myself. Seeing it strung across the windows and over the fireplace on the day of the Coronation felt festive and right somehow, particularly for a household containing one Scotswoman and one Englishman (the cat retains neutral ground). It felt like a bit of a reclamation. A flag that my Scottish heritage has at times felt conflicted about, handed back to me on a day when a new monarch was crowned and the country felt strangely at peace with itself.

And so I wonder then, as the SNP sinks into the mire, the Yes movement continues to founder and support for Scottish nationalism goes down, whether it might not be time to reclaim the Saltire too?

It wasn’t too long ago, after all, that Unionists like myself felt represented by the St Andrew’s Cross. I once painted the Saltire on my cheek in support of Scotland at an international football match, something that has felt unimaginable since the run-up to the 2014 referendum.

For the Saltire has been commandeered by the nationalist movement in a way that I find deeply uncomfortable. Once a flag for all Scots, apolitical, symbolic, the Saltire now – both in real life and on social media – has become a sort of shorthand for ‘I want an independent Scotland’. And without wanting to sound too hysterical about it, well, I want my flag back. Why should the nationalists have all the fun? And boy do they like to have fun with it, in the most teeth-grindingly political of ways.

Who can forget Alex Salmond’s colourful collection of Saltire-dotted ties, or the excruciating scenes at Wimbledon when Andy Murray won the men’s singles and Salmond, quick as a flash, whipped a Saltire out of Moira’s handbag and started waving it around.

Nicola Sturgeon, no slouch in the flag department, planted herself in front of one at every opportunity as First Minister in a way that felt representative not of Scotland but of her divisive, nationalist party.

And Yes marches (I believe they do still have them, bless), are always a sea of Saltires, as though the Scottish flag was just for them, and not the rest of us long-suffering, just want to get on with it, inhabitants of this fine nation.

Scotland needs a national flag now more than ever because it is a country that has become riven with division. Flags should be apolitical, inclusive and nationwide.

Is it too much to ask that the nationalist movement find its own symbol and let Scotland reclaim its heritage?