St George & the flag remain disputed territory.
Ahead of St George’s Day on 23rd April Keir Starmer took to social media urging Labour supporters to support the occasion and wave the national St George’s flag. It is of course that national flag of only one of the four UK nations and even that can be argued about.
Even so it can regularly be seen at sporting occasions when England teams are playing mostly un-controversially so. It is a relatively recent thing as was demonstrated by the recent culture war over exactly what form it should take on players shirts.
There has been a long history of the left trying to claim or reclaim the flag from the right. Whether Starmer knows about that is another matter but broadly its fits into to some kind of patriotic people’s history approach to at least English life. It might be argued that E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class fits somewhere in that except Thompson’s flag remained resolutely led, tinged with a Chartist green.
It was not long before a reminder of the disputed nature of the flag took place. A large group of mostly well refreshed far right and fascist men grappled with police in Whitehall. The right who spend their time attacking peaceful and hugely larger Palestinian protests were generally silent except for GBNews that backed the mob against the police, as it would.
There are St George’s Fields around England but perhaps the best known is in inner South London. It was an historic location for mass protest in the eighteenth century. On 10th May 1768 there was a riot in support of the maverick MP John Wilkes (later Mayor of London and Boris Johnson’s hero) who had been jailed. There were cries of No Liberty, No King. Troops were called in and there were dead and injured.
In 1780 as part of the Gordon Riots another large crowd assembled and burnt property particularly that belonging to religious minorities and specifically Catholics.
By 1795 a huge crowd of 100,000 assembled in June calling for the vote and annual parliaments.
Disputed history is a reality. It can be harnessed to political causes but with more nuance and insight than Starmer managed
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