White Rabbits! If that is not racist? Pinch, punch first day of the month! Oh you want a ruckus do ya? It's September 1st and what better way to start the month than with a new blog post with a salacious title. There were a series of 4 films made in the 1970's with the title Confesssions of a Window Cleaner, Confessions of a Pop Performer, Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Confessions of a Holiday Camp with Robin Askwith as the main lead in most but not all. I haven't watched any of them, honest guv! They were of a time and place, the sexist 70's with their saucy postcards. The decade of the Carry On films. The decade of football hooligans travelling by British Rail. They were violent and racist times offset by the slapstick and sexist humour. It's only sexist in hindsight mind (to the male gaze)
So you are expecting me to confess to shagging flags? Well not as far back as the 1970s. No my peak flagshagging years were the 1990s. My flagshagging reached its zenith on September 18th 1997 when Cymru/Wales voted by a hairsbreadth for a Senedd/National Assembly. I carried Y Ddraig Goch from Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff where we were listening to the results of the count to the Welsh College of Music and Drama where the Leaders of Plaid Cymru, the Liberals and Labour had gathered, the pro Welsh Devolution Referendum parties. This was a Welsh National flag that I had bought in Siop y Pethe in Aberystwyth in 1991 when a gang of us were up in Ceredigion canvassing for the first joint Green/PlaidCymru MP in Ceredigion. Cynog Dafis won that election so it became a lucky flag and then when a devolved government was narrowly passed in 1997 it became an even luckier flag.
On the night of September 18th the flag disappeared only to be spotted in the hands of some fellow/rival flag shaggers who had taken a fancy to the old fashioned canvas/hessian nature of the flag as opposed to the cheaper ones doing the rounds. A verbal tussle ensued with myself shouting in Welsh "Give us our flag back". I took it home, hung it up on the living room wall of a two bedroom terraced house in Grangetown and carried on with life as abnormal.
Welsh Devolution had happened 18 days after the death of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales (by marriage to Prince Charles who had the title English Prince of Wales bestowed upon him at Caernarfon Castle in 1969) It was an odd and uncertain time culturally and politically. Tony Blair had only been Prime Minister since May so the shifting of these tectonic plates were huge so early on in his tenure. And you think Keir Starmer has been having a rough ride?
1997 was the end of my flag shagging! I lost interest. I became depressed. I went to the GP who said my depression wasn't sufficiently bad for me to be referred to the specialist service in Cardiff Docks. It became Cardiff Bay in 1999. So I was not in the correct mental space to continue to shag flags. I was starting to suspect that there might be a bigger world out there. Bigger than the confines of Offa's Dyke and West is Best.
I was to make the move to England in 2000 and lasting four years before returning with my mental health considerably diminished not by being in England I hasten to add. I enjoyed living in South East London. It was only my second sojourn away from Cymru/Wales having been in College in Watford for two years before that. No my depression, my anxiety, my undiagnosed bipolar disorder, my over sensitivity, my potential for being on the neurodivergent spectrum all caught up with me.
Once you have left Cymru/Wales it becomes less important.
"Cymro Gorau, Cymro oddi gartref"
Only if you live in Australia or New Zealand perhaps.
So you've had the potted autobiography what has this got to do with our current day flag shaggers and roundabout painters in England?
Well I've mentioned Tony Blair and Keir Starmer. Neo-Liberals, Red Tories. There are huge pockets of deprivation and poverty in the South East of England where people have very little other than their flags. Having a flag if you are white and feel under threat shows that you are part of a gang. Every body else has got a gang or a religion to be a part of. Why can't I wave my flag proudly? The answer perhaps is that English flag shagging comes from a place of fear and threat whereas Welsh and Scottish flag shagging comes from a place of defiance. By shagging our Celtic flags we were standing up against the British State which had subsumed us.
There is an unfortunate trend among those who are denigrating the English flag shaggers and the midnight roundabout painters where those who have been blessed with a more liberal arts education are critiscising them for having no education, being unemployed, waiting for Wetherspoons to open, the usual lazy tropes used to describe the English Working Class or in this case the Under Class.
I was a Teacher in a Secondary School on the Downham Estate in South East London. It was an overspill estate from the East End of London after the Blitz and Bombing of the Second World War. The school provided a poor education. There was no grass for children to play on just a concrete quad. It is a fact that the education in the poorer areas of Britain is not of an acceptable standard and then to have that fact thrown in your face as an adult after you've left school adds insult to injury.
Many of the towns and cities who are producing the flag shaggers are concrete jungles. New Towns in Essex created by Town Planners who had forgotten or chosen not to include green spaces. If you don't see nature then your heart turns to stone in my opinion and many people in the inner cities of the UK, their hearts have turned to stone because of poverty, austerity and lack of opportunity. The television is on all the time and who is on there all the time? Nigel Farage. The mood music is one of white flight, small boats, migrant hotels. You are under siege in your concrete jungle from people with different colour skin. You know, your class mates. So a friend becomes your enemy because a posh twat on the telly tells you so. He must be right. He sounds so educated and confident.
Even though the 1970s seems a long time ago it set in stone in the minds of some men that this was the way that Britain was meant to be. These were the sons of the men who had fought in the Second World War. They'd been listening to the Conservatives and Enoch Powell. They felt they had no say then and they feel that they have no say now. If a modern day Enoch Powell like Nigel Farage rides in on a white charger then the sons and grandsons of the 1970s are going to sit up and take note.
I've shagged the Welsh flag and I feel sorry for those who are shagging the English and British flags now because it is borne of fear and not pride. It is borne of fear of extinction. Never mind the history lesson about the British Empire, I'm worried that I don't exist, I'm worried that I don't count are the thoughts tickertaping through the mind of the roundabout painter.
