Fresh Flutterings 2015 by Randall Stephen Hall

With Craigavon Council (soon to be no more), voting to raise the Union flag 365 days a year I sit, once more, upon the egg of an idea and wonder, will it ever hatch?

Upon flags I’m once again focused. Upon a design that began back in 1998. I presented it to the Cultural Diversity Sub Committee of Belfast City Council. “Sub” as in sunken. “Sub”. as in hidden away. “Sub”, as in “Never Ever Land”. And “Sub” as in never to be revealed. (“Sub-woofers! . . .”).

So what is behind this idea of mine? What do we need a third flag for? And the where would you fly it, if at all?

One of the statements I have often heard on the radio the TV and read in the press, about the Union flag, for instance, is . . . “We fought and died for that flag.” An emphatic, emotional connection, through excessive trauma, to a brightly coloured design on a big piece of material, waving in the wind. Deep, deep trauma, through war and the out workings of commercial and colonial competition, amongst a few European states. All that loss 1914-1918 and for what? Only to have a re-match 1939-1945. Another war to end all wars. With our flags, jostling for the top of the hill.

Our shared trauma was the hot coals, forging a belief in a flag and for many of us we were the metal and the shaft being beaten into shape. To create what? . . . and for whom? For nationhood? What is that? Where does it live these days?

Did you really fight for just a flag? (I often ask, in my mind? This imagined conversation with the speaker.) “In reality did you not fight and sacrifice yourselves for your family, your mother, your father, your wife, husband, your children, your relations, your friends and neighbours . . . only represented by the Union flag?”. And, cannot the same thing be said for the Irish tri-colour, (even though its original broad meaning was diverted early on in its existence?).

Flags, in general, have always being used as a rallying point in battle, be it war, politics or the endorsement of an idea or these days, a product. They are a branding divice, herding mechanisms and boundary markers. (Like the dogs in the street. “Weeing”. “We this, we that, we, the other”). They give voice to things for reasons of good and, sadly, for incredibly dark reasons too.

One flag, any flag, can be all things to all people, all at the same time. It can represent hearth and home, love, protection, guidance, belief, fortitude, loyalty to any cause, right down to the singular level of one’s own beating heart. The same flag can represent hatred, disbelief, aggression, murder, deceit, manipulation and divisiveness. A flag can be quite a confidence trickster if used by manipulative people. (I won’t mention Germany, or many other countries then . . .)

All possibilities are there for any flag. And yet all it is, is a piece of material, with others like it, lying in a cardboard box somewhere. It doesn’t actually live until we invest our thoughts in it and project our emotions and politics onto it. So to say that we fight for a flag (as mentioned earlier), is to deny the fact that we just fight for ourselves and what we want. It is not really a crusade for any flag. In a sense you could compare a flag to a glove puppet. It’s not the flag, that’s to blame. It’s who is “wiggling” it, where they are wiggling it, (in whose face?), for what reason and for whom?

Come on, come on . . . Get real and come out of the shadows. Fighting for a flag? A flag? Yeah, I hear you but I don’t believe you.

Which brings me, finally, to “The Talking Flag”. While it looks like a flag, and moves like a flag it is, in some ways, different from the established Union flag and the Irish tri-colour. (“So it’s a flag then”, editor.) Firstly it hasn’t been assembled by a small elite group of people from the polarized past. Secondly, has the process, for selecting either of these established flags for Ireland and Britain ever been a democratic one?

Thirdly, are we at a time in our own development where we can see the good in our own mixed up/shared culture, here in Northern Ireland, Norn Iron, (Tourism N.I), the north of Ireland and my favourite, “NORNIA”? (Thank you C.S.Lewis.). I love my wee corner of the world. It is a beautiful place, but, like an abused child, it still needs great understanding, patience and ultimately . . . deep, deep, healing.

I’ll keep the rest of this as brief as I can. “The Talking Flag”. Not some auld rag, hanging from some auld lamp post. It’s basic colours of green blue and white, representing the Dove of Peace flying over our fields and waterways. The dove ties in with a man who could have been the Patron Saint of Scotland, St, Columba/St. Colmcille. (Colm, the dove). The ancient colours of Ulster have been added. Red and an orange yellow. (Dearg agus Buis. “Buis” is where the Scottish name “Boyd” comes from. “Yellow Haired”.)

The doves and birds in the background are all taking flight with the white dove. They represent us all and anyone who lives here now, from Africa, China, Eastern Europe and beyond. The rising diagonal line, is an echo of the union flag and the British tradition along with the red white and blue in the design. There is also green white and the orange yellow too. As you can see, it is the white which we all share.

So how do you make a new image, (originally a City Flag idea for Belfast,) look strong, look innovative and look forward thinking? If we can only see and accept our own chosen flags (from the past) then we haven’t come as far as we could. For Peace and Progress we have to actually sacrifice some of our old ideas. Leave them behind, on the road from the past. For with no change we will remain in the old rut of “winning”, just winning, at all costs. But does that mean sacrificing the Union flag or the Irish tri-colour? I can’t see that. No, but we do need some kind of visual bridging device to show, to  “reveal”, our shared culture (singular). The more we talk about “cultures, plural” here, the more we will never see that the culture in the north of Ireland, is a new and evolving culture in itself, created, like an alloy, from mixed metals.

For, you see, we can’t go backwards. We can’t create an imagined Ireland from a past, that never was. Nor can we go back to an imagined Britishness that was, quite possibly, only a topping, resting upon our Irish Northernness. We can only go forward with what we have.

Don’t you get it? Don’t you see it? Don’t you hear it in the way we all sound?

We are something. We are something new. We are . . . ourselves. Let no one take that away from us. Therefore we deserve a new vision of what we have, to represent us. All the elements, all the colours, all the diverse, rich culture, like wild birds moving together. What’s wrong with that?

Or is it still just about winning? Doing onto our enemy what we think our enemy has done onto us?  Same old, same old? Business as usual? Give up and shut up? Surely not?

I unfurl me wee “Talking Flag” before you. To leave it here for you to take a look at. “Have a wee gander at thon, like.” Can you see and hear the future within it? Can you see your children and grand children doing wonderful things, both here and out in the world. And could you imagine other countries looking at what “we” have managed to do with our own selves and our own chosen image. “The Talking Flag”. 1998-2014?

I’ll rest my case then . . . until the next time. Good Luck. RSH. 21.1.15