The ban on the Greater London Authority (GLA) raising the EU flag on the day of the June referendum anniversary is perhaps the biggest sign that the government has finally realised that its Brexit experiment has failed. The EU flag symbolises one modern day truth shared by us with others across Europe. The people want peace, democracy and resilient and strong human rights.
Does anyone remember Fun with flags, Sheldon Cooper’s looney YouTube podcast in Big Bang Theory? Did he have an episode on the so-called EU flag? You know, the royal blue one with a circle of 12 golden stars, so loathed by the current UK government that it has banned the Greater London authority from raising it on the anniversary of the Brexit referendum 2016.
The Council of Europe flag
It’s hard to understand the government’s antipathy. The European flag was once endorsed by the UK government. The flag had nothing to do with the European Economic Community, the EU’s forerunner which hadn’t even been created when the flag first made its appearance in 1955, ten years after the end of World War II on 8 May 1945.
The flag had been designed for the Council of Europe, formed by ten western European countries on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London. The Council of Europe now has 46 members. The Russian Federation was a member until 16 March 2022 when it was expelled over Ukraine.
The Council of Europe’s guiding principles are: promoting and sustaining the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. One of its first acts was to create and adopt in 1950 the European Convention on Human Rights, so loathed by the current UK government. It came into force on 3 September 1953.
The EEC and EU forerunner – the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951 – did not have a flag. Nor did the European Community, founded on 27 March 1957 with just six member states: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Blue and bolshy: peace through cooperation
What unites these organisations is the idea that peace can best be preserved by cooperation on a range of things as diverse as culture, sustaining human rights and democratic practice. They may do things somewhat differently at times, but the underlying values are the same. And maybe that’s what bugs Conservative governments now and then.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that what bothered them was not so much economic cooperation but the idea that there was a human side to that: one that is linked to employment rights, trade unions, and human rights.
Paradoxically, it was in 1985, when Margaret Thatcher swung behind the idea of creating a single market to boost business and the economy, that Conservative cages started to be rattled.
It wasn’t until June 1985 that the then European Communities decided to adopt the Council of Europe’s flag officially as its own emblem to symbolise two things: commitment to European unity; and the realisation of a common set of rights for EU citizens in the run-up to the creation of the European single market.
A Europe for the people, not just the economics
On 29 May 1986 the European flag was raised for the first time outside the headquarters of the EU Commission. That year was the start of the programme to realise a People’s Europe, to symbolise that Europe was about people not just economics.
Many of us will recognise the tangible tokens of that Europeanness, such as the European driving licences agreed by member states, and the maroon passport. Their creation had also been driven by practical reasons. Some 110 different models of driving licences were recognised in the member states and a source of fraud and confusion for police, and border control officers. So steps to push mutual recognition and harmonise rules on minimum standards, including for driving examiner skills, were gradually introduced, with British approval.
There were other steps that provided ordinary citizens with visible signs that the EU was doing things for their benefit. These included the signs on infrastructure projects funded by the EU social and regional funds. The European flag quickly became the recognisable symbol of EU investment at local levels.
That again provoked a somewhat paradoxical response from successive governments. When the first Euro-weeks were launched in Hull (keen to portray itself as the gateway to Europe, given its location ‘opposite’ Europe’s great port of Rotterdam), initially there was hand-wringing over flying the EU flag.
Blue flag a red rag to the true blues?
By the time the UK referendum on staying in the EU was on the agenda of another Conservative government, the euro had become the official currency of many EU member states and, in November 2015, a commemorative coin to celebrate 30 years of the flag was issued.
We also had a common European anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, sung enthusiastically by BBC Prom-goers waving mini EU flags while others complained about the EU flag being lit up on New Years’ Eve on the London Eye.
During the past years, increasingly looney Conservative obsessions with banning all things ‘European’ have grown. In protest, Banksy painted an iconic stencil on the wall of a building at a key roundabout near the port of Dover. Further Banksy stencils appeared in Hull.
So why all the fuss about just this flag? Could it be that even seven years after the referendum it symbolises what its creators meant it to: democracy and human rights? Only this time, its appearance seems like someone is pointing the finger of disapproval at the current government over its record of curtailing both. Perhaps it draws unwanted attention to what Brexit has done to significantly weaken the economy and living standards in Great Britain compared to our EU neighbours.
Banning the flag: an admission that Brexit has failed
The ban on the GLA raising the European flag on the day of the June referendum anniversary is perhaps the biggest sign that the government has finally realised that its Brexit experiment has failed. It also can’t have escaped public attention that on the same day, the government failed to field a minister for the BBC Question Time Brexit special from Clacton-on-Sea. This simultaneous imperative to act and failure to act is significant and indicates the government knows Brexit is a crumbling project propped up by the flimsiest of scaffolds. It’s only a matter of time before the whole edifice collapses.
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