Born Under Two Flags

In one of the most unpleasant comments on race made by a senior Conservative politician since Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, Norman Tebbit claimed in 1990 that 'A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for?' The implication was clear - if you failed to support England against India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, then you didn't belong here.

Glossing over the fact that he was not at all concerned where the sporting loyalties of Britain's Australian population lay, he had grossly misunderstood the opportunity afforded to British Asians when a team from the subcontinent takes on England at home. If you've had the word 'Paki spat at you by the English for as long as you can remember, it is surely difficult to suppress an urge to cheer when a bunch of 'Pakis' turn up and beat the English at their own game.

Tebbit could never have got the same mileage from questioning the loyalty of British Asian football fans. They are still a rare breed, although you might expect a sudden burst of enthusiasm if Pakistan ever faced England in the World Cup. The possibility that they may one day meet in competition underlines the universal nature of the Beautiful Game. Our cricket team will never play a test series against Germany or Brazil. Our rugby team were crowned 'world champions' after winning a competition which involved a mere twenty nations. One hundred and ninety-four countries entered teams into the 2006 football World Cup, thirty-seven from Asia alone, including Pakistan, who failed to qualify after losing to Kyrgyzstan. You can go anywhere in the world these days – even to the USA – and see kids playing football. Loved by billions, it remains the game of the common man. How many of the England football teams were privately educated, like rugby hero Jonny Wilkinson, alumnus of Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire?

Perhaps that’s why the Daily Mail was moved to ask, the week before the 2006 World Cup began, ‘England flags: patriotic or plain chav?’ Highlighting the huge number of English flags to be seen in the poorer parts of London and their relative scarcity in Belgravia, the Mail reported that some residents of the more expensive parts of two were worried that displays of support for the England team might be blighting house prices in the area. The implication was clear. These ‘chavs’ – the media’s favourite derogatory term for the white working class – have no understanding of the proper use of the flag. We raise it, Middle England seems to want to remind the lower classes – your job is to salute it.
And it wasn’t only the reactionary press that felt threatened by chavs with flags. The left-leaning Guardian carried a feature on the subject by Joseph Harker, as full of racial stereotyping as anything seen in the Daily Mail:

I’ve been looking at the drivers of these flag-waving vehicles, and – OK, I admit this isn’t exactly scientific – half of them are in white vans, and the rest are white, male, tattooed, pot-bellied 35- to 55-year-olds: exactly the type I’ve been seeing on TV for the past month complaining about ‘our houses going to the asylum seekers’, or that ‘we’re loosing control of our country’. I can’t tell if these drivers come from Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP gained 11 seats, but that borough is just a short drive from where I live, so who knows?

That’s right, Joseph, just as every dark-skinned young man with a beard is probably a terrorist.
There is a simple reason why so many ordinary people have recently turned to the St George’s Cross as a means of displaying their support for our national team. It’s the only thing that we English have that belongs to us alone. Of the thirty-two countries that competed for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, there was only one which didn’t have its own parliament or passports or national anthem: England.

Of these three, it is the last which rankles most. It’s been years since our Welsh and Scottish neighbours stopped singing the British national anthem, ‘God Save The Queen’, at sporting events. It didn’t take an Act of Parliament, or the United Kingdom to crumble or the monarchy to collapse, to make the change. When the Welsh sing ‘Hen Wldad Fy Nhadau’ they are sending out a message, and even if the language is unfamiliar, the meaning is clear: ‘Hello, we’re from Wales and we’re very proud of it’. England’s continued attachment to the British anthem smacks of a lack of self-confidence and, a worry that, without it, we might somehow be a lesser people. The message sent out every time we sing ‘God Save The Queen’ is one of ambiguity: ‘Hello, we’re the English, but we’re not really sure what that means.’

We used to feel the same about the Union Jack. Look at footage of the 1966 World Cup Final, the holiest event in the canon of the modern English identity; there are more German flags than English ones visible in the crowd. The whole stadium is awash with red, white and blue. Even the mascot of the tournament, World Cup Willy, wore a Union Jack waistcoat.

The transfer of emotions to the flag of St George can be traced back to the 1996 European Football Championships, which were held in England. The organizers came u with a multicoloured football as a symbol of the event and coined the slogan ‘Football’s Coming Home’ in honour of England’ invention of the game in the nineteenth century. The host nation was drawn in Group A, which included Scotland, and a match between the two at Wembley on 15 June created a dilemma for the England ans: should they carry their traditional symbol, the Union Jack, or was it inappropriate on this occasion as it also represented the Scots? There is nothing like an ancient rivalry to sharped the need for a symbolic gesture, and the Scots can always be relied on to rise to the occasion in confrontation with ‘the Auld Enemy’ along with masses of Scots Saltires there was a smattering of banners bearing the numbers ‘1314’ as a reminder of the year that ‘proud Edward’s army’ of English noblemen was defeated by Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn.

It is sometimes said of the Scots that they rely on the English to help them define who they are; on that afternoon at Wembley Stadium, the reverse was true. The presence of so many Scotsmen in the sacred crucible of English pride and desire, for the first time in a generation, served to remind us that we had our own symbol, a white banner crossed with red, and that we were England. The reclamation of the St George’s flag began that day – helped, no doubt, by the 2-0 victory over the Scots. Yet even five years later when our family moved out of the coast in rural Dorset, the most common place to see the England flag was flying from the top of a church tower.

The sudden appearance of thousand of little England flags fluttering from car windows during the 2004 European Championships did cause some anxiety to those of us who traditionally associated such displays with belligerent xenophobia. However, it soon became apparent that the flag had become the symbol of our liberation from that stereotype. Spontaneously, without any prompting from political parties or national institutions, the English had decided they were going to rehabilitate their flag and its meaning.

And not before time. Nobody ever makes the assumption that a white man with the Welsh dragon on the back bumper must be driven by a racist. Scottish car stickers bearing the word ‘Ecosse’ could be construed as a dig at the English, but no one gets called a Little Scotlander as a result. Until recently, however, to display the St Georges Cross on your car was to risk condemnation. Clearly that is no longer the case.

As seen flying form all sorts of vehicles during the summer of 2006, the flag is a symbol of support for our national football team, who reflect England’s diverse society. Men who can trace their English ancestry back for generations play alongside the sons of recent immigrants, all of them proud to wear the England shirt. I share that pride, and view the resurgent popularity of the St George’s Cross as emblematic of a broadening of the English identity, accessible to anyone who wants to be part of it.
This flag fest has also emboldened those whose loyalties lie elsewhere to join in the celebrations. And why shouldn’t they? All Britons are born under two flags and no one thinks it odd if their loyalties are sometimes divided. Whether you feel more comfortable under the flag of your home nation or the Union Jack is a matter of personal preference. England’s appearance at the World Cup has given us all licence to step back from our communal identity as British passport holders and dust off the flag that best expresses how we think of ourselves. For my missus, the fact that Trinidad and Tobago were drawn against England gave her a rare opportunity to revel in her Caribbean identity.

Born in Point Fortin, Trinidad, to white British parents, Juliet doesn’t look like most people’s idea of a Trinny, but her dedication to ‘island life’ explains in part why we live by the sea. Suddenly transformed into a supporter of the smallest nation ever to qualify for the World Cup, she even convinced our twelve-year-old son, Jack, to support the Soca Warriors against England. When our next-door neighbours ran the flag of St George up their rusty flag-pole, we sent off for the T&T flag, which we flew from our balcony.

Juliet and Jack looked up to it in pride, while I was quietly amused by the puzzlement it caused our friends in the village, who were most understanding when I explained that I had no choice in the matter as the majority in our house were supporting the islanders. Although Trinidad and Tobago didn’t go on to win the World Cup, our participation in the flag fest had a positive result: everyone now knows that Juliet is from Trinidad, and Jack has gained a new dimension to his identity.
Juliet has since admitted to me that she was a little hesitant about coming out as a Trinny, concerned that by flying the flag of one of England’s rivals we might attract the attentions of belligerent bone-heads. She needn’t have worried; the fact that Juliet’s Trinidadian identity came as a surprise to our neighbours indicative of that fact that, as a white woman growing up in Britain, her Caribbean background has not prevented her from being accepted as British.

As the 2006 World Cup flag fest was getting under way, I go a wry text from a mate of mine, Big Paul, a black Londoner, conscientious roadie, avid Gooner, on tour with a show in the north of England:

“Hi Billy, in Sunderland just walked out of a newsagents, lady in the shop asked me if I wanted to buy a St Georges Cross flag for today’s match England v Jamaica. I think the flag has been reclaimed from the thugs, Bill.”

The implication of the woman’s question is as clear as that posed by Norman Tebbit: which side are you on? The irony of Big Paul’s comment is that he’d spent many nights on the England, Half English tour listening to me tell audiences that we had to reclaim the flag.

Paul was born in England to Jamaican parents. When I texted him back to ask which team he’d be supporting that day, his answer came back quick as a flash: Arsenal. I smiled. This was his way of letting me know that he’d not changed his view on identity since we’d had a long discussion on the subject one night after a show.

C’mon Paul, I’d said to him, you were born in England, you speak English; admit it – you’re English. No, he replied, I’m not. What are you, then? His response amazed me: I’m a Londoner and I’m a European. Me too, I said, but what about the bit in the middle? No. He shook his head. I’m not English and I’m not British. It puzzled me that he could make such a distinction. He explained it simply enough: in London, I’m accepted. Nobody questions my right to be there. But what about Eirp[e. I asked. I’m glad to be a citizen of the EU, that’s something that was given to me. I didn’t have to kick down any doors to get it. So it’s about acceptance, then? That’s right. What I was growing up, I dreamed of playing football for England just like any other kid, but as you get older you realize that you’re just not accepted. Now people want to accept me, I don’t care. I don’t need a flag to know who I am.

Big Paul and I are connected by a shared identity, but not one symbolized by the St George’s flag or the Union Jack. We are both Londers – even If one of use now lives in Dorset by the sea – and we are Europeans, both happy to be citizens of the EU. The fact that he has never felt accepted by England or Britain has not led Paul to completely reject society as a whole. Instead, he has placed his loyalty in those communities that nurtured him, declaring himself to be an urban internationalist in contrast to the provincial nationalism he encountered when growing up.

Paul’s ability to construct his own sense of who he is, illustrates that, rather than being a matter of blood and soil, identity is personal, each of us defining who we are, where our loyalties lie, how we relate to society. This only becomes problematical when someone else tries to tell you who you are, based on you colour, religion, accent or surname, seeking to deny your individuality by recourse to a stereotype. The right of individuals to be who they want to be, say what they want to say, go where they want to go and believe what they want to believe should be sacrosanct in a democracy, ash should the extension of those same rights to every other individual in society. Respect is the key to this equation, and freedom its end result.