FadeTheButcher
10-23-2004, 12:35 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/13/neng113.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/06/13/ixhome.html
The madness of St George
By Quentin Letts
June 13, 2004
From flags to face paint, bunting to bed covers, England has been engulfed by a wave of patriotism - and it's not just the Euro 2004 football fans. Quentin Letts reports on a red and white revolution
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2004/06/13/neng13.jpg
From a factory in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, last week came a "vraaaap, vraaaap" of sewing machines, ever more frantic. Rows of seamstresses with nimble fingers manipulated cloth from bolts of red and white cotton. A growl from the needlework motors, a few flash-quick turns of hand, and another St George's flag, toggled, roped and folded, was ready for one of millions of eager buyers.
This air of enterprise is being reproduced across the country at flag lofts, warehouses and corner shop counters. St George's flags are selling as fast as they emerge from the production line. Some buyers want cheerful cheapies, plastic flags at £1.99 or so. Others hunger for 36ft standards costing £80, big enough for the roof of a minor stately home.
Suddenly everyone seems to want the Cross of St George. Be it bunting or a bed cover, a kitchen poster or a kiss-me-quick hat, the red-and-white emblem is impossible to miss. It flutters from cars, dangles from windows and plays from private flagstaffs. Chesty girls in the high street sport it on their T-shirts. Likely lads on construction sites have it tattoed on their tanned, bare backs.
Jeanette Rooney, 36, a Merseyside dinner lady and proud mum of England's 18-year-old player Wayne Rooney, draped two enormous St George's flags across the entire front of their £600,000 house in West Derby, Liverpool. The round-shouldered, vowel-twanging Scouse Rooneys for once found themselves on the cusp of fashion.
The England cricket XI acquired a red and white flag for its pavilion balcony at Trent Bridge. The Cross of St George appeared on City trading floors. One was even to be found in the window of Cath Kidston, perhaps Chelsea's most chi-chi interiors and accessories shop. My dears! No wonder a spokesman at MrFlag.com in Swansea said that "orders have gone through the roof" - for the St George's flag, at least.
Despite last week's European elections, there has been no such surge in demand for the blue-starred flag of Europe. Sorry, Brussels.
Tonight's big soccer match against France is only part of the reason for the St George surge. Something remarkable is happening. The reticent English middle classes, having long been queasy about flag-waving, are rediscovering - reclaiming - their national flag.
The St George Cross has not always had a good press. With the Union Flag it was hijacked by the far Right during the 1970s and 1980s. Rat-faced youths with swastika armbands and skinheads would stick flags on the walls of provincial lock-up garages and strike clenched-fist poses.
Few others, apart from the eccentrics at the Last Night of the Proms, embraced the flag. High-1980s Thatcherism saw frenzies at the Conservative party conference when young men resembling Harry Enfield's Tory Boy would wave little Union and St George's flags and yell "five more years!" They probably deterred as many voters as they impressed.
"The National Front used the St George's flag in pathetic imitation of Nazi rallies," says Michael Faul, a vexillologist, or flag expert.
"They tried to put themselves forward as the real patriots and some people unfortunately accepted that identification. In doing so, they let the far Right get away with this lie."
A council in Cheshire which last year tried to prevent its town hall flying the "too nationalistic" Cross of St George was subjected to national ridicule. Last April the Asian mayor of Pendle, Lancs, defiantly ran the St George's flag up his council HQ's pole. Mohammed Iqbal, 32, explained: "That'll piss off the BNP."
Mr Faul, 63, a retired history master originally from Zimbabwe, helps run the York-based Flag Institute and in recent weeks has radiated the glow of a John the Baptist proved correct. His enthusiasms have at last been seized by the nation. "What we are now seeing is the St George's flag being used as a celebration of national unity by all ethnicities, all types of people," he says.
Back in 1996, white van man started flying St George's flags from his Ford Transit and urban professionals followed suit. Before they might have sneered, but now they thought, "why not?". Black athletes such as Linford Christie and Colin Jackson wrapped themselves in Union and St George's flags after big race wins.
Three other events helped. The first was devolution, which saw excited Scottish and Welsh nationalism. The English watched and thought "we'll do the same". Second came the Queen's Golden Jubilee when flags of all descriptions were waved hard. And then England won the Rugby World Cup, our first real thumper of a sporting success for more than 30 years. The team's captain, Martin Johnson, threw a St George's flag over his enormous shoulders and there it sat like an antimacassar. The Cross of St George became a middle-class brand.
Tim Tansley, the marketing manager of the House of Flags, says that sales have doubled - and it is not just football fans who are buying the St George's flag. "Many of our customers are prosperous people who have recently erected flagpoles in their gardens," says Mr Tansley.
The British have traditionally been reluctant to wave flags. "Loyalty in America is to the constitution and the constitution is represented by the Stars and Stripes flag, one star for each state," says Michael Faul. "In Britain, loyalty is to the Queen and at places such as courthouses this has in the past been expressed by a discreet royal coat of arms." At sea the Cross of St George was reserved for admirals. On land it tended to be the preserve of the Church of England, flying from church towers.
St George himself was a shadowy figure. Legend has him slaying a dragon. History is more cautious, suggesting he was a bishop of Alexandria, or a Roman soldier who did good works and became a martyr. His Cross was adopted as England's flag after 1152, when Henry II's wife arrived from Aquitaine (whose flag depicted a red cross which, for reasons unknown, was attributed to St George). Richard the Lionheart took the emblem to the Holy Lands - the first example, perhaps, of an away match with team favours.
The flag came to the fore during Cromwell's Commonwealth, when it temporarily replaced royal banners and flags. Is there a hint of anti-royalism here? Probably not. It was used during Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee and the latest surge in popularity may have more to do with the fact that it is a simpler emblem to produce (and draw on a child's face) than the Union Flag.
Who knows how long the England team will last in Euro 2004? As long, possibly, as a June dew. Or Tim Henman at the Stella Artois last week.
The resurgence of the Cross of St George looks a longer-term bet. On the M25 it seems that every lorry is fluttering red and white from its superstructure. Even the Guardian - the Guardian! - plastered it over its pages. And a Scotsman, Douglas Reid, allowed his English wife, Julie, to paint the entire outside of their Co Durham house so that it is now red and white. "It's all just a bit of a laugh," said Mr Reid.
A Scot? Happy to celebrate the greatest symbol of English national pride? That really is progress. C'mon England! C'mon St George!
The madness of St George
By Quentin Letts
June 13, 2004
From flags to face paint, bunting to bed covers, England has been engulfed by a wave of patriotism - and it's not just the Euro 2004 football fans. Quentin Letts reports on a red and white revolution
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2004/06/13/neng13.jpg
From a factory in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, last week came a "vraaaap, vraaaap" of sewing machines, ever more frantic. Rows of seamstresses with nimble fingers manipulated cloth from bolts of red and white cotton. A growl from the needlework motors, a few flash-quick turns of hand, and another St George's flag, toggled, roped and folded, was ready for one of millions of eager buyers.
This air of enterprise is being reproduced across the country at flag lofts, warehouses and corner shop counters. St George's flags are selling as fast as they emerge from the production line. Some buyers want cheerful cheapies, plastic flags at £1.99 or so. Others hunger for 36ft standards costing £80, big enough for the roof of a minor stately home.
Suddenly everyone seems to want the Cross of St George. Be it bunting or a bed cover, a kitchen poster or a kiss-me-quick hat, the red-and-white emblem is impossible to miss. It flutters from cars, dangles from windows and plays from private flagstaffs. Chesty girls in the high street sport it on their T-shirts. Likely lads on construction sites have it tattoed on their tanned, bare backs.
Jeanette Rooney, 36, a Merseyside dinner lady and proud mum of England's 18-year-old player Wayne Rooney, draped two enormous St George's flags across the entire front of their £600,000 house in West Derby, Liverpool. The round-shouldered, vowel-twanging Scouse Rooneys for once found themselves on the cusp of fashion.
The England cricket XI acquired a red and white flag for its pavilion balcony at Trent Bridge. The Cross of St George appeared on City trading floors. One was even to be found in the window of Cath Kidston, perhaps Chelsea's most chi-chi interiors and accessories shop. My dears! No wonder a spokesman at MrFlag.com in Swansea said that "orders have gone through the roof" - for the St George's flag, at least.
Despite last week's European elections, there has been no such surge in demand for the blue-starred flag of Europe. Sorry, Brussels.
Tonight's big soccer match against France is only part of the reason for the St George surge. Something remarkable is happening. The reticent English middle classes, having long been queasy about flag-waving, are rediscovering - reclaiming - their national flag.
The St George Cross has not always had a good press. With the Union Flag it was hijacked by the far Right during the 1970s and 1980s. Rat-faced youths with swastika armbands and skinheads would stick flags on the walls of provincial lock-up garages and strike clenched-fist poses.
Few others, apart from the eccentrics at the Last Night of the Proms, embraced the flag. High-1980s Thatcherism saw frenzies at the Conservative party conference when young men resembling Harry Enfield's Tory Boy would wave little Union and St George's flags and yell "five more years!" They probably deterred as many voters as they impressed.
"The National Front used the St George's flag in pathetic imitation of Nazi rallies," says Michael Faul, a vexillologist, or flag expert.
"They tried to put themselves forward as the real patriots and some people unfortunately accepted that identification. In doing so, they let the far Right get away with this lie."
A council in Cheshire which last year tried to prevent its town hall flying the "too nationalistic" Cross of St George was subjected to national ridicule. Last April the Asian mayor of Pendle, Lancs, defiantly ran the St George's flag up his council HQ's pole. Mohammed Iqbal, 32, explained: "That'll piss off the BNP."
Mr Faul, 63, a retired history master originally from Zimbabwe, helps run the York-based Flag Institute and in recent weeks has radiated the glow of a John the Baptist proved correct. His enthusiasms have at last been seized by the nation. "What we are now seeing is the St George's flag being used as a celebration of national unity by all ethnicities, all types of people," he says.
Back in 1996, white van man started flying St George's flags from his Ford Transit and urban professionals followed suit. Before they might have sneered, but now they thought, "why not?". Black athletes such as Linford Christie and Colin Jackson wrapped themselves in Union and St George's flags after big race wins.
Three other events helped. The first was devolution, which saw excited Scottish and Welsh nationalism. The English watched and thought "we'll do the same". Second came the Queen's Golden Jubilee when flags of all descriptions were waved hard. And then England won the Rugby World Cup, our first real thumper of a sporting success for more than 30 years. The team's captain, Martin Johnson, threw a St George's flag over his enormous shoulders and there it sat like an antimacassar. The Cross of St George became a middle-class brand.
Tim Tansley, the marketing manager of the House of Flags, says that sales have doubled - and it is not just football fans who are buying the St George's flag. "Many of our customers are prosperous people who have recently erected flagpoles in their gardens," says Mr Tansley.
The British have traditionally been reluctant to wave flags. "Loyalty in America is to the constitution and the constitution is represented by the Stars and Stripes flag, one star for each state," says Michael Faul. "In Britain, loyalty is to the Queen and at places such as courthouses this has in the past been expressed by a discreet royal coat of arms." At sea the Cross of St George was reserved for admirals. On land it tended to be the preserve of the Church of England, flying from church towers.
St George himself was a shadowy figure. Legend has him slaying a dragon. History is more cautious, suggesting he was a bishop of Alexandria, or a Roman soldier who did good works and became a martyr. His Cross was adopted as England's flag after 1152, when Henry II's wife arrived from Aquitaine (whose flag depicted a red cross which, for reasons unknown, was attributed to St George). Richard the Lionheart took the emblem to the Holy Lands - the first example, perhaps, of an away match with team favours.
The flag came to the fore during Cromwell's Commonwealth, when it temporarily replaced royal banners and flags. Is there a hint of anti-royalism here? Probably not. It was used during Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee and the latest surge in popularity may have more to do with the fact that it is a simpler emblem to produce (and draw on a child's face) than the Union Flag.
Who knows how long the England team will last in Euro 2004? As long, possibly, as a June dew. Or Tim Henman at the Stella Artois last week.
The resurgence of the Cross of St George looks a longer-term bet. On the M25 it seems that every lorry is fluttering red and white from its superstructure. Even the Guardian - the Guardian! - plastered it over its pages. And a Scotsman, Douglas Reid, allowed his English wife, Julie, to paint the entire outside of their Co Durham house so that it is now red and white. "It's all just a bit of a laugh," said Mr Reid.
A Scot? Happy to celebrate the greatest symbol of English national pride? That really is progress. C'mon England! C'mon St George!