The Union Jack

I was at home visiting my mother in Hampshire this weekend and noticed several people in her area had put up 15 foot flag poles with Union Jacks* on them.  To put it in geographic/social context: it's an affluent, middle class area: a massive suburban sprawl of massively overpriced late 60s bungalows that always returns a Tory MP with a huge majority.  It was Thatcher heartland, though since the "glory days" of the 80s I've noticed the area looking a lot more down at heel than it once did.

The sight of the flags (there were several in short distance of each other) evoked a feeling of mild repulsion in me.  "Mild repulsion" is quite a strong reaction.  Why?  Well, I'm afraid I just don't believe someone goes to the length and expense of putting up a 15 foot permanent flagpole in their garden unless they want to send out a very deliberate message.  It's not, in my opinion, and in this context, a neutral message.  It makes me think, rightly or wrongly that a xenophobe or racist lives in the house.

Union Jack Flying Outside Bungalow

What's Wrong with Our Flag?

Absolutely nothing, per se.  It's an attractive, eye-catching design.  Subjectively it's much more pleasant than say Albania's, which is quite rubbish.  The colours clash on that one.  The Union Jack looks great on British Airways tail-fins.  It looks lovely emblazoned on the Team GB Olympic uniform.  It looks even better on Tom Daley's trunks.  Yes, there's a mixed colonial past associated with it, which I understand evokes reactions, but not having experienced this time myself that aspect is pretty much absent for me.  It's more recent general associations for me are connected to "Cool Britannia".

But what matters is the context.  A Union Jack displayed on top of a building in Whitehall is what you expect and I've absolutely no issue with it.  During the Diamond Jubilee, I put up Union Jack bunting outside my home: I remember thinking that the village decked out like this was a fun, joyful display of celebration.   Likewise, a St George's flag flying on the church in the village is part of our landscape and tradition.  When you see a car bedecked in them with aggressive, chanting football fans inside the flag carries a different meaning.  It's not a simple case of I hate the flag: it's about the context and the intent of the display.

Jubilee Bunting. Yes, I was one of THOSE people

We are not a country, like say Switzerland, Denmark or Sweden, where national flags are to be seen routinely all over the country on private properties.   Because there are so many of them there you don't tend to make any sort of judgement about the people flying them.  It's part of the national culture.  Here they are a rarity.  I just cannot imagine any middle of the road person who realises the benefits that immigration brings with it hoisting a bloody great Union Jack up in their front garden.   That covers Labour supporters, Tory supporters and people of all social backgrounds.

I was born in this country, I am British, I am white, I am blond haired and blue eyed.  My father served 23 years in the army and fought in 3 armed conflicts.  My brother was in the army.  My grandfather served in the Boer War, First World War, and in the home guard during the Second World War.   Yet I found these flags outside people's houses mildly threatening and mildly aggressive.  They say to me "we don't want anyone who's not like us around here".   It makes me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

That's my view.  I might be right about the flag fliers' motives or I might be wrong, but I know I'm not alone in it.  The National Front and the BNP have permanently sullied the flag of this country and it's a rare occasion (such as the Diamond Jubilee or on top of a government building) when it carries neutral associations.  Anyone growing up in the 70s remembers the chant "There ain't no black in the Union Jack".  It's the far right that has created this situation, not me.

UKIP Pile On

I therefore tweeted something this weekend along the lines of "when I see a Union Jack outside a house, I wonder if it's UKIP or BNP who lives there". 

Any regular user of Twitter knows that there's a body of UKIP fanatics who have a permanent search out against their beloved party, as well as any mention of Nigel Führage's name.   Within moments a conversation I was having with a friend was interrupted and I was hit with this charming invitation to his 1200 followers to send me abuse:

True to form, and confirming to me in large part everything I'd assumed about the type of people who do put these flag poles up in their gardens, I was called "scum", told that I was "everything that's wrong with this country", "obv. NOT British", that if I object to flying my own flag I should "go home"; and if I don't like it it, I knew "where the exit is" etc.

One guy said he flew the Union Jack to show his support for a "relative" serving his country.   Funny enough, my Father, (a Tory) who actually fought for this country and risked his life, didn't feel the need to shove a bloody great flag pole up in our front garden.  I'm actually sure would have found it unbearably crass.  Likewise, he was the last person to become a fascist about people wearing or not wearing poppies around Remembrance Sunday. 

Nevertheless, despite my army background, I was now a traitor who should leave the country for making a judgement about a Union Jack outside a bungalow.

Snobbish Judgements

Am I a snob for tweeting what I did?  I don't think there's any inherent link between someone's social background, and whether they want to display the British or English flag outside their house.  There are stacks of both working and middle-class people who would agree that nationalism has been a negative force in recent history.  This is about the negative connotations around national symbols that has been created by the far right.  It has absolutely nothing to do with class.  It has nothing to do with being part of a "metropolitan elite" or anything else.  It's about seeing a symbol and realising that context colours our reaction to it and makes us reach judgements. 

These people have a perfect right to display the Union Jack in their front garden: I also have a perfect right to feel uncomfortable and to reach negative judgements about them.  I'll continue to do so.





* I know that technically it's a Union Flag, not a Union Jack. But whatevs, it's what everyone calls it and knows it as.  It sounds tediously pretentious to call it anything other than the Union Jack in normal speech.  So there.

Immigration

We've seen a wave of people across the country voting for UKIP recently.  Political commentators are reading all sorts into this and the potential impact on government policy.  Some Tories are calling for action both on an EU referendum before the next general election, and further tightening up of immigration.  Labour has repeatedly said it will "listen to voters' concerns" in this area, fearing that if seeks to argue against this, rather than pander to these prejudices it will lose out at the ballot box.

My response to this that I like immigration.  I think immigration is absolutely essential to the health of a society.  I love seeing people who are of different skin colours and races and hearing those who speak different languages.  They bring variety, they bring different ideas, perspectives and they enrich our country.  Fear of the "other" is to me the most primitive emotion.  In essence it goes back to cave people: "you're not in my tribe, keep out".  I don't believe babies are born with hatred of others in them.  I believe they are taught it, and the more varied and cosmopolitan the range of influences they are exposed to, the less likely xenophobia and prejudice will be.

A nation of immigrants: more so than most in the world

I can argue about history, and how Britain is a nation of immigrants.  We all know full well that wave after wave of new people has settled here since well before Roman times to create over centuries the identity we have today.  Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Hugenots, Jews... Each group came in turn and was eventually accepted into British society.  My father's family came from Holland in the late seventeenth century.  I'm sure they were shunned as "weird foreigners" with a funny name and religion who didn't fit in when they settled in Sussex.  My mother is from Germany.  She certainly had a massive helping of prejudice, both from strangers and from my English family, when she moved here in 1961.  Now by virtue of some magical privilege of time, people don't see our family as foreigners and my family has the right to vote, if we wanted, for the likes of UKIP, in order to demand that others are shut out.  It's worth remembering the simple fact that the family heritage of virtually every UKIP supporter will be the same: we are all immigrants to this country.

I can argue about economics, and how both skilled and unskilled labour are a huge benefit to us.  So many successful economies have realised this, from the Netherlands and Prussia inviting in the religiously persecuted in the 17th and 18th centuries to huge benefit, through to more recent "immigration nations" such as the United States and Australia.  Skilled workers are always focused on, but unskilled ones, who are prepared to work hard doing jobs that others feel are below them, are important too.  They do vital service jobs, often for low wages, pay taxes and spend money just like everyone else.  Blaming them for our economic situation is simplistic, stupid and spiteful.  If our unemployment is too high or our growth is too low, let's look at the way we as a society, and successive governments have run our own economy, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of blaming immigrants for our woes.

I can argue about the enrichment of our culture.  People of different backgrounds bring different cuisine, music, art and other hugely broad-ranging influences.  How many anti-immigration supporters' favourite food is a curry, kebab or Chinese takeaway; and how many love downing an East European beer?  I spent my first 12 years abroad and it's not tricky for me to remember just how limited the choice of anything non-British was in the average supermarket in 1983.  It was absolutely striking.  There has been a sea-change in this time, unnoticed, I suspect, by most people.  Modern day Britain is an absolute cultural melting-pot and I adore the very real variety this brings in my day to day life.

Hitler loathed Vienna.  It was too Slavic, too Jewish, too multicultural and too cosmopolitan for his tastes.  When he moved to Munich he declared "Finally, a German city".  After the War, (by now ethnically cleansed) Vienna was by all accounts a stiflingly dull place.  It's how I remember the city in the early 80s on my first visits.  Then, after 1989, it again became the cultural crossroads it always was, and it's a far, far more pleasant and interesting place for it.  For a regular visitor such as me, the change in 20 years is absolutely striking.  It is a brilliant embodiment of how immigration can enrich and change a place in a very short space of time.

I can argue on the grounds of basic humanity.  I don't see what gives me the right to regard all the good fortune I have, by accident of birth, as being my right to the exclusion of all others.  There are people who suffer terrible misfortune and persecution in their own countries: it was the Russian pogroms that brought the wave of Jewish immigration here in the early 19th century despite the spite and hatred spewed out at the time by the right-wing press.  It is the right thing to do for us to take in people who face hardship elsewhere, I am proud to be part of a society that agrees, and I think we will also benefit in the long run.

Ultimately though, UKIP seems to have tapped into a simple emotional, basic response.  Their supporters just don't like immigration.  If they have the right to argue on this simple, basic level, so shall I.  I like immigration.  We have always had it, and long may it continue.  The more of us who agree and who state this clearly, the better.  It is our society, and our country, and we deserve to be heard too. 

70s German slogan: All people are foreigners. Almost everywhere.

 
  

Movement

A mother and her daughter exit a gate on a rainy May day at Óðinn's preschool, Grænaborg. He graduated yesterday in an official ceremony, complete with being called up to receive a diploma and rose, and to shake hands with the wonderful people who have been caring for him daytimes for the past four years. They're like family, and the safety and security of such a small school will be much missed.

But we grow and get older and change happens in our lives whether we like it or not. For a kid who just turned six this transition - from a cozy preschool campus to Austurbæjarskóli with its rich 82-year history, hundreds of students (many with families who have recently immigrated here) and geothermally-heated indoor swimming pool - is a huge deal. Never mind that the two schools are less than quarter mile apart, on either side of Hallgrímskirkja. This is as dramatic as an intercontinental relocation!

His father and I considered private schools, but ultimately I'm really glad that our boy will be attending an urban campus only yards away from our home, that encourages multicultural education without that drive to total assimilation into Icelandic society that has been such pressing and often destructive force here. (I often tell people that even though I am a 'pure-bred' I still choose to speak Business American on the phone when dealing with companies or banks or anything money related -- basically when people only hear me with my accent I seem to get much worse service! If I show up in person, though, and speak my Icelandic [which is admittedly a totally unique language ;] all is fine: I look Icelandic [whatever that means these days!] and am forgiven my less-than-perfect conjugations. *Not cool!*)

When Iceland opened itself up in the 80's to becoming an active part of the global capitalist conversation, allowing an influx of foreign goods and services to dilute the cultural 'purity' and isolationism of the previous centuries, it effectively gave up the ability to control the rampant growth and often destructive effects of consumerism. The foreign-born talent and labor that has followed in the wake of globalization, and especially the children of these immigrants, simply cannot be denied the same opportunities and rights as the 'pure-breds' whose ancestors have clung to this lava rock for over a millennia now.  A human is a human is a human, and we're all in this Life on Earth thing together. I'm happy that Óðinn will continue to get the chance to meet kids from all over the world at school, and grow from that experience : )

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