Walking amidst the busy hustle and bustle of Connaught Place in the middle of New Delhi during the general elections in India last year, one thing caught my eye immediately – a young Indian girl wearing a t-shirt sequined with the Union flag!
As my friends and I wound down our day at an English pub called Pebble Street, in the middle of downtown Delhi, it was clear as day – the immense goodwill enjoyed by Britain and our Union flag recognised around the world as the flag of democracy and liberty.
Yet upon arrival back in London, it was a stark, depressing contrast as to how suppressed our patriotic pride is in Britain. Landing at Heathrow, the Union Flag is seldom seen when even the immigration queue displays numerous foreign flags and merely lists us as “UK”.
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Now compare that with Delhi airport, where the first thing you see upon entry is a massive 100ft high tricolour soaring high proudly or when you land at New York JFK, and you are greeted by the brilliant Stars and Stripes. Yet who can forget the scenes when the Iron-Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, famously covered the model.
As a proud British Indian, my love of the Union Jack is an inconvenient truth for the racist Left - Aman Bhogal
|Getty Images
Now compare that with Delhi airport, where the first thing you see upon entry is a massive 100ft high tricolour soaring high proudly or when you land at New York JFK, and you are greeted by the brilliant Stars and Stripes. Yet who can forget the scenes when the Iron-Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, famously covered the model.
British Airways plane with a tissue when BA replaced the Union Flag insignia with global motifs.
Truth is for far too long, with the failed experiment of multiculturalism foisted upon us by three decades of the Blairite orthodoxy, we in the United Kingdom have had successive governments who have allowed our national flags to be labelled as “far-right” “offensive to minorities” or even “dangerous” sidelined and sullied all in the name of so-called “community cohesion”.
Yet for me, as an immigrant, who made Britain his home – for me and millions like me, the Union Flag has always served as a ground root of my integration as British.
As it is the flag which unites us all, acting as a declaration of our love and affinity for Britain, a gesture of respect for our civilisational heritage, and a nod in awe of the freedoms afforded to us by Britain.
Our glorious Union flag tells a civilisational story of who we are as a great nation, what we value – freedom, liberty and democracy, and how we see ourselves – a force for good and a beacon of hope. For us, the British people, the Red, White and Blue is a profoundly potent declaration of our allegiance, pride, and identity.
And that’s exactly why when a disgraceful local council, tears down our union flag and the cross of St George put up proudly by local people, it is the clearest proof if any was needed, of the caustic failures of state-sponsored multiculturalism which has sought to turn Britain into some identity-confused, wishy-washy nation without borders – a home for everyone but a home of no-one.
A country used by so many to agitate for endless foreign conflicts and disputes from “back home” is imported into our towns and imposed onto our politics.
When Britain sees, local mayors raising foreign flags to “celebrate” foreign independence days at British townhalls; hostile crowds of unintegrated third or fourth generation immigrants and a ragtag assortment of homegrown Hamas/Pakistan-friendly, Britain-hating Marxist mugwumps, more at home flying a sectarian ‘Free-Palestine’ or ‘Free-Kashmir’ flag whilst treating the Union flag as “foreign”, “hostile”, “colonialist” - then the nation wants to know - what on Earth are you doing here in Britain?
Truth is, patriotism has been besmirched as a dirty word. Nation-first patriots maligned by the legacy mainstream media and the metropolitan liberal establishment elite as “far-right”, and far too many legacy politicos for far too long, turning out to be borders-abolishing Janus-faced, plastic patriots using our national flag as a mere pop-up prop.
If we are to protect our great civilisational inheritance, conserve Britain as Britain, and stop in its track this mad self-immolation of the very foundations of our national unity, then we ought to take a leaf out of the Stars and Stripes pride which flows through the hinterlands of the United States and the Tricolour unity which soars high to unite a billion Indians. The time-tested truth is - national unity unites, divided diversity divides.
The bottom line is - this great red, white and blue – let’s take back control and not let any jumped-up, Leftwallah townhall busybody tear down our own flag in our own country – this is my flag, this is your flag, this is OUR flag! Be proud, fly the flag, be a patriot!