Toby Neal on VE Day spent abroad, national pride and what a flag can mean
In a week in which we have remembered VE Day and feted the dwindling number of surviving veterans, Union Jacks have festooned our cities, towns, and villages, symbols of our national pride and coming together.
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But, in modern Britain, the Union Jack does not necessarily mean that to everybody.
I happened to catch a "flags debate" on the Jeremy Vine show (hosted temporarily by Tina Daheley) arising from that Reform fuss and hear the input of an "activist and comedian".
“I’m not somebody who is particularly proud of being British," she said.
"I think that there are good things about the UK like the health service, like our education service, and there are awful things like colonialism and military expansionism around the world.
"We marched behind it (i.e., the Union Jack), as we colonised the world and the transatlantic slave trade and all the horrors that were committed with that.
"Let’s not pretend for a second that it isn’t the flag behind which we marched through Africa, through India, all of those places, enslaving people.”
