Friday, 10 May 2019

Leave our flag alone


It was with great interest that I listened to an excellent sermon by the local vicar during our recent patronal service.  Normally this service is closer to St George’s Day on 23 April, but given the timing of Easter this year, we observed the service last Sunday.  Some may find this a little odd, but as Revd Becky pointed out, in Palestinian culture the feast is held on 5 May, so we were bob-on for the celebration somewhere in the world.

Our church is named ‘St George the Martyr’ so there’s a connection to England’s favourite dragon slayer and we’ve an excellent stained-glass depiction of him jabbing ‘Ascalon’[1] through the subdued reptile’s belly.  I suspect that a lot of people in the UK associate St George with this warrior saint from the Crusades (actually, I suspect a lot of people haven’t got the foggiest notion about him, but in the interests of narrative expression, I’ll stick with my assertion).

However, the legend of Saint George and the Dragon has been borrowed and distorted on so many occasions that there’s no clear definitive source to its origins.  It’s suggested that it has pre-Christian roots in Greek mythology and has been attributed to plenty of other saints before George even had a sniff, though he got the lasting credit sometime during the 11th Century, presumably when someone said “My saint’s bigger than your saint.”

That does beg the question, “Who is the real St George?” and I’m glad you asked.  He’s not remotely English for a start.  He didn’t so much as pay a visit to Blighty.  Nope, George was a Cappadocian Greek soldier who was sentenced to death and executed for refusing to recant his Christian faith on 23 April 303 AD.  Yes, he was a soldier (for the Romans, so probably an immigrant), no, he didn’t slay a dragon, and by the time the Crusades got going, he’d been pushing up daisies for about 700 years.

So for the far-right to add to the distortion and adopt the English flag, with it’s Christian association of the blood of Christ on the cross, and suggest that St George is the embodiment of all that is English and a staunch defender of our ways and customs is, I’m delighted to say, a load of bollocks.  Albeit, our lovely vicar managed to express that sentiment somewhat more eloquently.

Politics and religion shouldn’t mix; the founding fathers in the US were particularly specific about separation of Church and State, but there’s about as much hope of that happening as Barça winning this year’s Champions League.[2]

I tend not to ‘do’ politics.  Not because I don’t have an opinion, but rather because I have so many, most of them conflicting.  Election time for me is genuinely a time to reflect on the options before me and make a choice based on what I think will represent the best outcome.  Being a liberal conservative with a strong sense of social justice doesn’t half make it hard to have an argument about the need for austerity whilst ensuring we have greater levels of funding for education and the NHS and, whilst I’m at it, we have a desperate need to bring both highly-skilled and hardworking immigrants into the country to keep our institutions running and the country fed.

Equally, expressing my religious affiliation is something that I tend to steer clear of unless asked, primarily out of respect to others who might exercise their right to follow a different faith or none at all.  I don’t wish to evangelise and I’m not looking to be recruited.  I am content simply to be a part of my local church community, worship with like-minded people and try to observe the tenets of my faith, conscious that every time I’m being critical, I’m casting the proverbial first stone.

On this occasion, I’m going to make an exception for both which is to make a statement to the far-right politicians and their followers, which sadly, will probably go unheard.

The flag is not yours.

The flag of St George doesn’t represent your views.  It isn’t an embodiment of nativism, racism and xenophobia.  It doesn’t stand for a country that rejects social equality and favours white supremacism.  It’s a Christian symbol, of an immigrant soldier that is deeply rooted in his values and beliefs.  So, “Eff-off and leave it alone.”

Far-right ideology is poisonous.  It invites hatred, it creates divisions, it is manifestly evil and its proponents are destroying our country, which is already bitterly divided over Brexit.  Our country was led down the garden path by lying and scheming politicians that include prominent establishment figures such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.  The BBC and other mainstream media are once more giving Nigel Farage disproportionately more airtime than other pro-European politicians so that he can peddle his odious message which is undermining the fabric of our country.  They should stop.

In recent local elections, pro-European parties, in particular the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, presided over a significant shift in the local-body political landscape.  I believe that those results suggest that the country has woken to the truth that we were lied to during Brexit campaigning, that we will be considerably worse off out of the European Union and that we’d like to have the opportunity to vote again on the subject now that we have a much better understanding of reality.

Astonishingly, Theresa May stated that the “local elections send a simple message to just get on and deliver Brexit.”  That is utter nonsense and yet another illustration of a Prime Minister who has lost touch with her party, the electorate and her senses.  Clearly the pressures of dealing with a divided government, an insidious party, and an incoherent opposition have sent her out of her mind.

It all makes for a state of despair, and gives me something truly GOM-worthy to moan about.  Sadly though, this rant doesn’t make the situation any better, but does leave me with a genuine question, “How do we make our politicians listen?”  The answer, unfortunately, is probably by saying things that they want to hear, which is incredibly maddening and unlikely to happen, unless of course Mr Farage wants me to call him a self-serving, narcissistic, arrogant prick; in which case, I will.

What more can we do?  A million people marching in London to call for a People’s Vote, an overwhelming swing in the fortunes of those parties that favour remaining in Europe, and the emergence of fraudulent activity and dishonest claims in the original referendum, seem not to be enough to foster action to revisit our malaise.

Unlike St George who was martyred for upholding his beliefs, Theresa May’s dogged determination to stick to a flawed Brexit result will not result in her canonisation.  Rather, she’ll take the country a step closer to a ruinous landscape that will leave us all worse off, the far-right included.


Twitter: @GOMinTraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019
10 May 2019


[1] If you watch Game of Thrones, you’ll know that all the best swords have a name.
[2] Did I mention I’m a Liverpool fan?

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