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Opinion

What Will It Say?

By Mark Mansfield
Welsh Flags

Ben Wildsmith

We had friends from England visiting this weekend, so I was excited to show them round our corner of Cymru. When people aren’t familiar with the countryside around the Rhondda valleys, they are always surprised at how dramatic it is.

Looking over from the viewpoint on the Rhigos towards Bannau Brycheiniog, or back on Aberdare and Mountain Ash from Maerdy mountain, I feel proud showing it off. It’s a special area to call home.

Likewise, in the evening when we visited Pontypridd Museum for a concert featuring the sublime harmonies of Hazel & Grey alongside the aching, plangent, bilingual songwriting of The Gentle Good, I felt a proprietary swell at the cultural treasures to be found on our doorstep.

The music swirled around the old building for a sell-out crowd who were surrounded by the stunning artworks and historical artifacts that make the museum so special.

Union banners competed with Nan Youngman’s Rhondda streetscape as we waited for the music to commence.

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Sacred ground

There was a little discomfort, though, on our drive; a new phenomenon that sat uneasily with my tour-guide enthusiasm. Climbing up from Tylorstown to Penrhys, I pointed out the rugby club, where miners had levelled the pitch out of a steep gradient after shifts at the face. At the top of the hill, I mentioned that many of my family were buried in the cemetery there, and that it had been sacred ground since medieval times.

There was a new feature to ‘Little Switzerland’ too. The lampposts around the estate had Welsh flags attached half-way up them. Our visitors pointed these out, they look quite jarring all at half-mast. Had they always been there?

Well, no, they haven’t. When we drove down into the Fawr and continued on to Treorchy, there was another display of flags and these have been there for ages, flying from permanent poles on shops, and defining that vibrant high street as a proudly Welsh community.

Now, I don’t know why flags have suddenly appeared in Penrhys. It might be for the same affirmational reasons that they fly in Treorchy, but it’s hard not to suspect a link to the ‘raise the colours’ movement that has recently seen St George crosses flags flown and painted across England and even into Wales.

Whilst flying a national flag is, of itself, a neutral act, the loud support for this movement from anti-immigration politicians suggests motives beyond benign love of country.

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Xenophobic politics

Recent pronouncements from the fascist ‘Voice of Wales’ group demonstrate a desire to capture the Welsh flag for xenophobic politics. The Union Flag and St George cross have become interchangeable in England, and for these characters, adding Y Ddraig Goch to them would underscore an alliance of nativism and unionism.

So, two sets of Welsh flags, a couple of miles apart from each other, but potentially flown in service of conflicting values.

Peering into the future, it seems we will have to define what our flag stands for in the context of a radically different political landscape.

Labour’s hegemony in Wales has engendered a laziness to our politics. Until now, nobody alive has needed seriously to consider what the ideological character of our nation is.

Whilst internal dissent, from the Liberals, Plaid Cymru, Conservatives, and Greens has existed and been heard, the results have spoken for themselves. Labour’s slow unravelling from radical vigour to establishment complacency has taken a century and during that time its characterisation of Wales has become a dependable cliché.

Self satisfaction

Inoffensively to the left of England, communitarian, inclusive, and progressive, the nation’s political face has been a fixed rictus of self-satisfaction that defies the economic and social ills of many of its residents.

On the way back to the car after the concert we could hear the 1980s night coming to a close in Ynysangharad Park. The folks there had endured driving rain to enjoy Martin Kemp, of Spandau Ballet and Eastenders, perform a DJ set. The thumping bass and lights were far from the genteel evening we’d enjoyed at the museum, but no less culturally authentic, or of the environment: horses for courses.

If, as seems likely, Labour’s paternalistic hold is about to be broken, then we shall need to remake ourselves in its absence. How we imagine our nation, on its own terms, and in relation to the rest of these islands, could define us for another hundred years, or see us disappear altogether into dreams from elsewhere.

When we fly our flag in a decade’s time, what will it say?

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10 comments

Fi yn unig

Perfectly deciphered. I thought that I would always love to see our national flags flying anywhere regardless of the reason but not so this time from the lampposts to the motorway bridges, they have been put there for sinister reasons that our country will neither condone nor permit. They will never take ownership of them here. A statement needs to be made in our Senedd to that effect.

Reply
TheWoodForTheTrees

How do we stop the Welsh flag being hijacked for ugly reasons? I would hate to see it mired in right wing racist connotations the way the English flag is. How is it stopped though?

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Adam

By us broadcasting our hatred of intolerance, loudly. Make it the norm to have racists treated as unwelcome, make sure Wales has an unbreakable reputation of not allowing extremists into its communities. Get our pubs, restaurants, clubs and businesses to implement a complete ban on haters. We don't need walls, flags or borders to keep our home clean.

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Fanny Hill

Stopping the Welsh flag being flown is not really an option any decent person would want to see but here's a suggestion, Plaid, as the Party of Wales could take ownership of this action. Whether they actually put them up or not would be a matter of conjecture, but it would steal the thunder of those far right groups responsible for abusing our national flag and expose them for what they are.

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Bethan

Who can say? It's speculation as to why they're up. If it is anti migration sentiment then the Welsh aren't exactly making it clear unlike the English so it's a bit pointless if that's the case. You think the English tactic is apelike aggression whereas the Welsh would adopt a more covert approach. With thousands of Welsh what... secretly hating certain populations enough to put up a few flags but not enough to explain what the flags mean? I'm not worrying yet. It could just as likely (or more likely) be pushback against the English 'Raise the colours movement'. The Welsh don't exactly love it when England start throwing their weight around. Union Jack's spotted along Monmouthshire roads though.

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Cwm Rhondda

A thought provoking article. It's likely the flags which have recently appeared in Penrhys are there in support of the pathetic 'raise the flag' campaign. Plaid should have done more over their 100 years in existence to have taken political ownership of our flag. The unionist parties of so called Welsh Labour and even the oxymoron entitled Welsh Conservatives have made more use of our flag on their election placards. Now the true scum (even worse than the Tories, I never thought that was possible) Reform UK are using our flag. An English nationalist party using our flag, unbelievable!

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Ben Davies

I think everybody should fly the flag. I think we should write croeso above the dragon too. I also think it's time that we stopped tolerating union flags. They are something to be ashamed of, not revered.

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Adam

The union flag stands for genocide, theft and intolerance. It's literally a hate crime on cloth.

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Zarah Daniel

I noticed flags new flags halfway up lampposts on the Loughor bridge whilst driving from Llanelli to Swansea and wondered why they had appeared - I too had that uneasy prickling down my spine. Until now, I never thought that Welsh pride could be equated to racist hatred and I don't see any reason to let them make it so now. The Welsh ARE immigrants!! I doubt there's a country in the world that doesn't have at least a few of us roaming about. Many countries have huge , long term Welsh communities (and no, I'm not just talking about Patagonia). There's a reason why one of the more sought-after universities in the USA is called Bryn Mawr! There are Welsh communities in Japan. We go everywhere and then everywhere comes here - often tracking down family trees to towns they have never seen but have heard of in family legends. I moved to England for 20ish years and, when I moved back to Wales I had friends come to visit. They couldn't stop talking about how amazingly friendly absolutely everyone in the entire of Llanelli was - EVERYONE!!!!! As far as they had experienced (and this was different friends on different visits), every single person in the whole of Wales was kind, welcoming, friendly, helpful and just generally super-nice. This is the Wales they believe in. I'm not about to let the smooth talking liars of Reform convince people who are just poor, tired and fed up of nothing going right that the reason for their problems is people fleeing violence and horror. We all know the reason wages are low - rich people want you to be poor because it keeps them rich. Why are there no council houses? Thatcher encouraged people to buy their council housing at a discount, then the interest rates inflated to a point where no ordinary people could possibly pay these mortgages. They all got evicted by the banks, who sold the houses off cheaply to rich people who had cash on hand to pay for these properties, which they then rented back to the families at twice the rent they used to pay. At the same time, councils were prevented by government from building any new council housing. None of this had anything to do with immigrants What about the NHS? Well, in the last year and a half I've been hospitalised 4 times and all but two of my consultants have been immigrants to this country, and about half of the nursing staff. I'm incredibly thankful for all of them as I have been uncomfortably close to death at least three times. Instead of USING up the NHS, immigrants are actually PROPPING UP the NHS and, because they made that choice, I get to be not dead - which I prefer to the alternative. We MUST challenge the narrative. When people claim that immigration costs this country money we must point out that immigrants actually financially benefit the country. They rarely claim benefits, they rarely commit crime, they tend to push their children to work hard at school and to be well behaved because they value the security of being here, away from whatever nightmare they left behind. When they claim that immigration waters down Welsh culture, tell them that Welsh culture was built on mingling with peoples of many nations from the tribes of Scotland and Ireland to the north and west, to the peoples of Europe and beyond to the east and south. Not only did we trade with them but we occasionally lent warriors to go and fight on behalf of others. Our habit was to be open-minded and multi-cultural even then. Reform are making promises to help the steel works and reopen coal mines and it's all nonsense - they are making up things they think Welsh people want to hear. What about jobs for the future, not jobs from the past? What about electrifying the whole of the trainline as far as Carmarthen, or even Milford Haven? Or does nothing exist past Cardiff for Reform too? The flag, and the culture have to stand for a Wales we can be proud of and that is not one that blames it's problems on the desperate and war-torn.

Reply
Jones

Unfortunately many of these areas are Reform areas as we know from the last election. VoW has been active in Llanelli since Stradey and sowing the seeds of hate. It was the trial run for what has been happening this summer.

Reply

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Replying to TheWoodForTheTrees Cancel

How do we stop the Welsh flag being hijacked for ugly reasons? I would hate to see it mired in right wing racist connotations the way the English flag is. How is it stopped though?

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