Let’s remember that St George’s flag is a progressive symbol too

When I was growing up I was like any other working class lad, I spent most summer days out on the park pretending to be Alan Shearer booting a football around the grassless field in my 1996 England shirt and every football World Cup or European Championship I would proudly display my St. George’s flag from my bedroom window.

I’m proud to be English. That’s a phrase that many on the left struggle to say, but not me. You see for me one of the best things about England is its diversity. It’s the fact that our country is and always has been a global nation, people from with many different backgrounds together working towards a common good.

I did find it difficult to think of myself as English for a long time, mostly because the people who were celebrating their Englishness the most it seemed we people who would struggle to accept me as one of them. I remember walking past a St George’s Day parade in Derby and seeing a man in a St George’s flag suit shouting about England needing to be for the English, just how George would’ve wanted it.

Nothing personifies England more than our Patron Saint. You see contrary to popular belief St George wasn’t born in Thanet. He wasn’t even born in Europe. In fact there is a fair chance that he wasn’t white. He was born in the Middle East and is not just the English saint, in fact he patron saint of Bulgaria, Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Palestine, Serbia, Romani People, Slovenia and many other places. How ironic that Roma people and Bulgarians so often the target of xenophobia by the far right celebrate our saints day.

I believe that as a party we need to start celebrating the real England, its history shared with other nations in the UK; such as the battles of the trade union movement, the suffragettes, the abolitionists and the anti-fascists on Cable Street. Our country was built by people who got together made demands and told the truth to the powerful. That is the England that Labour built.

As a movement and a party we cannot be afraid to be proud of England, though I do believe that it is time for progressives to set the narrative. During the challenger debates that Cameron was too frit to take part in, I saw a tweet from a Scottish friend suggesting that Sturgeons harder chat on immigration was to try and pander to right wing English voters. It was a characterisation I didn’t recognise. Is that how the rest of the UK sees us here? If so why? The only force in this country that can set an English narrative that isn’t built on xenophobic, far right prejudices is the Labour Party.

So the next time you see an England flag, remember that it represents progressive ideas and it needs to be reclaimed.