Over the last few weeks, Brits across the country have been adorning streetlights and roundabouts with Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses. This is perhaps one of the most benign demonstrations of national pride possible – yet it is being treated by some as a revolutionary act. A recent BBC piece felt it necessary to state that ‘both flags have been used as emblems for far-right political movements,’ as if a country having a flag is far-right. This bizarre self-loathing is one of the reasons the movement has spread like wildfire.
Moulton and his team have since bought more than a thousand flags and raised tens of thousands of pounds for more
Joseph Moulton is part of the original group that inspired this patriotic contagion. He’s spearheading the effort in York, and is a founding member of Flag Force UK, which he estimates is the largest flag-organising body nationwide.
I met Joseph five years ago, in Armenia, when I was reporting on the war in nearby Nagorno-Karabakh. He was a fiercely ambitious and idealistic 18-year-old who cared deeply for his country, but found himself disillusioned with the state of Britain – especially its lack of communitarian ideals. ‘Britain can’t just be an economic zone. We currently don’t have any national dream or civilisational aspiration,’ he said then.
In Armenia, Moulton found a society that was reeling from war, and poor by British standards, yet it was held together by an unshakable national pride and collective dignity.
‘I witnessed a vibrant community – everyone being only one degree of contact away from the next – despite being in a city of millions. People were considerate and familiar, unified by their shared hardship and religion,’ he said. It reminded him of a Britain he was told stories of but never had the privilege of knowing.
‘My Nan lived in Thurnscoe, a small mining village, before Thatcher closed down the mines. Everyone knew each other, they would police themselves, if there was an issue in the morning then people would resolve it in the pit that night,’ he said. ‘These were stories of an England I was not born into, unfortunately. An England which was gutted along with the industries which supported it in favour of cheap imports and labour.’
The idea of plastering York with English flags began with a conversation between Moulton and his mates. ‘We rarely see British or English flags flown outside sporting events or like a coronation, whereas in the rest of the world, it’s common to see national flags all over the place, all year round,’ he tells me when we catch up over the phone this week.
They started by putting up flags on a few lampposts on their local street and forgot about it for a while. But then they discovered locals on a community Facebook page were clamouring for more. So they ordered more flags – Union Jacks and St George crosses in equal shares – and got to work.
Moulton and his team have since bought more than a thousand flags and raised tens of thousands of pounds for more. Other flagging groups have since popped up across Britain. What started as a gesture of national pride is being paired with community service. As the York flaggers walk between lampposts, they have bins to collect rubbish on the side of the road. Moulton is helping to facilitate these efforts nationwide.
After Armenia, Moulton had an exotic and intriguing life as an entrepreneur. He met a security contractor who needed help with business development and sales, so he went to work for them in Ukraine and Libya. He then went out on his own for a similar venture in South Korea. But he never abandoned Britain, and Britain always managed to find him, usually in the form of another wandering Brit. Shortly after meeting some bloke in a dodgy bar, in an even dodgier country, they’d get chatting ‘as if we’d known each other for years.’
‘It’s that free speaking and friendliness which is being neutered by the government and reinforced by a censorious, stuffy culture. It prevents the people from developing a political consciousness. But when I’m abroad, that inhibition is just dropped,’ he tells me.
Moulton was again inspired by his experience working out of Japan. ‘I really felt a degree of culture shock I hadn’t experienced since I first started travelling. I was enamoured by the silent etiquette around how you behave in public, the immaculate streets, and the community volunteers or “Chonaikai” who help keep their local areas clean, safe and happy,’ he said.
The Chonaikai are neighbourhood or residents’ associations in Japan that handle local community matters – such as disaster preparedness, festivals, waste management, and mutual aid – serving as a grassroots level of self-governance. It’s this communitarian spirit that Moulton is hoping to cultivate with Flag Force.
He emphasises that the movement has legs of its own and he’s just a spokesman for the York-based team. Others are scared of being linked to the movement, in case they face repercussions.
If some of the other organisers were to be as outspoken as Moulton, ‘people may call in their work and try to get them fired or do targeted harassment. Abhorrent stuff, but it’s a reality for many people, particularly when it comes to expressing patriotic sentiments,’ he says.
Not everyone has appreciated this conspicuous reminder of the nation they belong to. Moulton says that of the 300 flags his group has raised, 25 were taken down by the local council, and another 15 by unknown locals.
York council only took down flags on a street leading toward the Ebor festival, York’s most important annual spectacle. ‘Potentially, they can claim there are security concerns over people hoisting flags on their own accord, but it’s a stretch,’ he says.
Outside of that, he says the council has been conciliatory and won’t be taking down any of their other flags. But he is demanding the council return any confiscated flags to Flag Force as they belong to the donors whose funds were used to purchase them.
‘Ultimately’, he says, ‘the flag belongs to its people and not a government which continues to fail us.’
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