“The whole thing has gotten completely out of control… It needs to stop.”
These are the words from Peter, a former member of Raise the Colours, a group founded last summer to place St George’s Cross flags around Birmingham.
Some believe that blanketing the streets with England flags is a symbol of pure patriotism; others say it’s an emblem of racism as the country deals with a migration crisis.
For Peter, the flags showed his love for his country and a desire to protect it from what he saw as rule-breakers: His frustrations “were never race”, he said, but about people from any nation coming into Britain without the correct border checks, be it America or Afghanistan.
“I enjoyed seeing the flags for no other reason than patriotism,” Peter said. Now, “I don’t even know what that word means anymore.”
