British Patriots Defy Local Leaders Across England and Hoist Flags of St. George, Union Jacks To Protest Unfettered Immigration
Ignoring edicts from city councils declaring the banners public safety hazards, locals across England rally around ‘Operation Raise the Colors.’
A fight over raising the national flags of Great Britain that began a few weeks ago is spreading across England and sparking fresh debate about nationalism in a country that has traditionally shied away from such public displays.
The flag-raising started when locals at Birmingham began mounting scores of St. George and Union Jacks on buildings, starting with Weoley Castle and then in several neighborhoods around the city. Now residents have formed a volunteer brigade to hoist British flags onto lampposts in a show of patriotism that the city’s left-wing Labour-led council is trying to shut down.
The banner of St. George, with its red cross on a white background, is the flag of England. The Union Jack, a combination of the St. George Cross and the flags of St. Andrew, from Scotland, and St. Patrick, from Northern Ireland, is the national flag of the United Kingdom.
Operation Raise The Colors began as an effort by a group that calls itself the Weoley Warriors, a self-described collection “of proud English men with a common goal to show Birmingham and the rest of the country of how proud we are of our history, freedoms and achievements.”
The effort received significant support on the 11,600-member Weoley Castle Community Facebook page. The group launched a GoFundMe page that raised more than £9,700 to purchase flags, poles, and cable ties.
However, the city council soon began taking down the flags, declaring them a hazard that needed to be removed because work is beginning soon to upgrade the city’s streetlights. “Lamp columns need to remain free from attachments so work can be carried out as quickly and safely as possible,” the city said in a statement.
In the extensive statement, the council also said that people who attach unauthorized items to lampposts are putting the lives of motorists, pedestrians, and themselves at risk because the flags had not been stress tested and could fall, cause lampposts to tip over, or create electrical fires.
The city’s statement was roundly mocked by flag supporters, as several community members immediately returned with cherry pickers and ladders to install new banners, fitted about 20 feet above the ground.
“Rednal, Birmingham. Can confirm that nobody has been killed by the flags,” a conservative British commentator, Chris Rose, wrote.
Mr. Rose and others suggest that the 100-member council’s opposition to the flags is less about safety and more about fear of offending Birmingham’s immigrant community. Thirty percent of Birmingham residents and 25 of its councillors, all of them members of the majority Labour Party, are Muslim.
As the city copes with a bankruptcy and a trash workers’ strike, flag supporters said councillors had no problem raising a Pakistani flag at the Library of Birmingham to celebrate Pakistan’s independence day last week. They also questioned why Palestinian flags are flying on lampposts around the city in support of Gaza.
A letter leaked in February written by a Labour councillor. Majid Mahmood, reportedly stated that taking down Palestinian flags from lampposts would require police security, suggesting that removal would incite violence.
“We are taking these down, but we need the support of the police due to issues that have cropped [up] when we first tried to take them down,” the letter reads.
Shadow Lord Chancellor Robert Jenrick called the contradiction “pathetic.”
“Birmingham council seem to be ashamed of our country — celebrating everyone other than ourselves. This pathetic self-loathing needs to end. We must be one country, united under one flag,” he wrote on X.
