There’s been a lot of coverage of the flag campaign on YorkMix in recent weeks. Here, York resident Andy Shrimpton argues: ‘We’re better than this’
Like many people, I am extremely uncomfortable with the recent coverage of the activities of Joseph Moulton in these pages.
Mr Moulton makes some grandiose claims about his role and impact on our community, while at the same time making, in my view, some very insidious remarks questioning people’s loyalty to our wider national community. It is important to push back.
First off, it’s a shame that Mr Moulton sees the residents of York as being disengaged. Perhaps he’s spent too much time jetting off around the world to have noticed the thousands of people working for hundreds of groups, giving up their time and money, day in day out, to help other people and actively contribute to the community
To name but a few: The Friends of Rowntree Park, GoodGym, Samaritans, York Mind, Brunswick Organic Nursery, Collective Sharehouse, St Leonard’s Hospice shops, Indie York, Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Bike Belles, Tang Hall Food Circle, not to mention all the scout, guide, faith groups, sports and social clubs.
If this is the “lost community” mentioned in the article, Mr Moulton should look a bit harder at his home town. After all, what he’s seen in Japan is happening right here and has been for decades.
His raising of flags and associated litter picking hardly qualifies as an “unprecedented… community collaboration.” Community activism in York is vibrant, inclusive and widespread, and is the product of a long tradition. Like a lot of so-called patriots he appears to only be interested in highly selective forms of community activity.
Overly bombastic
So, to the flag stuff. Why my discomfort? I grew up in a conservative military household in the 1970s, much of the time on RAF bases.
Although reverence for the (Union) flag was part of the ritual of military life, my parents and their peers did not approve of flag waving, or anything they considered to be overt displays of patriotism or nationalism (call it what you like).
The flag was for state occasions, wartime, or sports events – sport being a more or less healthy sublimation of the latter, some might say.
In short, flag-waving was considered very un-British. That odd chap who flew the flag in his garden was considered at best a bit eccentric, or otherwise politically suspect, even in their small-c conservative eyes.
Why was that, you might say: what’s so wrong with such innocent displays of patriotism?
I think it had a lot to do with their and my grandparent’s generations’ experience of the Second World War. Those of my family who talked about it certainly expressed a more nuanced take on issues of patriotism and nationalism than you encounter these days.
They didn’t really draw a distinction but saw both ideas on a continuum, and that led to a discomfort with the whole deal, having seen, sometimes at first hand, where it could lead.
As it was explained to me, it wasn’t just the problem of German nationalism. They shared an instinctive sense, having lived through a time when patriotism, taken to nationalistic extremes, led human beings to the darkest and most depraved of places, and somehow that implicated all forms of patriotism – and nationalism – no matter how ‘innocent’.
Yes, they were ‘patriotically’ proud of Britain’s contribution to defeating Nazism, and their own parts in it, but they associated overly bombastic assertions of nationality with the Nazis, the very thing their generation had fought so hard to defeat.
I think they regarded patriotism as a necessary evil that you needed to call on in wartime but not talk about the rest of the time, except, perhaps, on national sporting occasions when it was seen as a bit of a temporary indulgence, to be put to bed after the game.
‘We’re better than this’
So yes, I inherited all this and then grew up and got an historical education of my own. On the one hand, my education has taught me that all national identities are built on the ever-changing stories and myths that nations like to tell themselves.
If any of it can be described as ‘history’ it, at best, consists of edited highlights. Ultimately, isn’t the premise absurd that one nation is more special than another? I don’t think I’m complacent in assuming that most of my fellow British people also instinctively understand this and that is why they wear their patriotism lightly.
But also, most of us understand that nations usually come with a ‘state’ attached, and as an agglomeration of political power, no state is wholly innocent, especially ours – England or Britain (it gets messy, I know).
Intelligent people know that all nations have done bad things, sometimes very bad things, so we best tread lightly when talking about our own, lest someone bring up some of those edited-out lowlights.
Mr Moulton might think that all this demonstrates that I’m a bit complacent and that don’t I care about my country. But I do – an affection I share with a lot of people. After all, it’s my home.
I love fish and chips, The Beatles, real ale, cricket, the footie, a walk on the moors – all that stuff. I also love the sense of irony and self-deprecation that we share on these isles. I love it that we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Except… when it really matters, and, if we were up against the wall I, like just about everyone I know, would step up.
Mr Moulton talks a good game with his political evasions and words on community, but his ‘patriotism’ like that of all nationalists is highly prescriptive.
York can only be an ‘English’ not an international city (can’t it be both?); Pride is a “very poisonous ideology”; we should all support him as the St George’s flag, “is the one symbol which unites everybody in the country” (has he asked a Welsh person?).
It’s a patriotism that can tolerate no other – as he sets about removing the flags of other nations – and one that must provocatively, in-your-face assert itself towards foreigners, as he flags Field Lane by the University of York with all its international students. Welcome to Inger-land!
We’re better than this. We don’t do the kind of aggressive nationalism that insists on the widespread flying of flags as a demonstration of allegiance, a nationalism that questions your loyalty to the community if you don’t wholeheartedly embrace it.
Mr Moulton says that if you feel it doesn’t represent you “then I assume you want to leave the country and I hope you achieve that”. I’ve got news for you Mr Moulton: I’m going nowhere.
We recognise this as the coercive tactics of authoritarians the world over and since time immemorial. That’s not what this country, our tolerant country, is all about. Flag waving? No thank you. We don’t do that stuff.
- Andy Shrimpton is a York businessman
