Okay, I'm a Brit - but a Scot, so I do probably have some sense of thinking of the Union Jack, at least partly, as a 'foreign flag'. I remember being taught about it in Primary School, being told how the English, Irish and Scottish flags combined (and wondering why the much more interesting dragon on the Welsh flag wasn't included), and how to draw it with the asymmetric proportions of the red/white diagonals.
As a child, then, I associated it with public holidays, especially the relative excitement (if you grew up in Aberdeen) of the Royal Family visiting. I can just about remember the Silver Jubilee year, and all the crappy little plastic Union Jacks (and, at the age of seven, I didn't even register punk).
Later, as a teenager, I remember it becoming associated with an excess of patriotism, nationalism, racism... and Morrissey, in a sparkly shirt, draping himself in the Union Jack onstage at Finsbury Park, and being booed off by Madness's audience.
Then the cover of 'Luther Arkwright'.
Then the gradual 'cooling' of the racist overtones. Geri Halliwell in a Union Jack tea-towel, and suddenly it seemed to be everywhere. FCUK co-opting it in various hues, and me buying a pair of glittery Union Jack cufflinks (which, in retrospect, are so tacky I almost never wear them).
So... what does the Union Jack mean to me? Sunny childhood days off school, BNP skinheads, Morrissey's dodgiest hour, Luther Arkwright, Geri Halliwell, FCUK, cufflinks. |
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