The meaning of a flag…

Darcey Youngman is a writer, from Manchester, who recently graduated with an Masters in Creative Writing at Queens University. She currently based in Belfast and working at the Seamus Heaney Centre. 

When I first moved to Belfast; I didn’t know the meanings of a flag. I didn’t know they stood for so much, and how I knew so little.

I had held a union jack when I was younger, while celebrating the Queens Jubilee. My mum had painted one on my cheek, while I sat with my child friends, eating and drinking, toasting to our monarch, our country.

I wore the England flag around my shoulder as I cheered and screamed at the TV. Hoping for a score from Kane or Sterling. We reached the finals. Italy V England. I had a potluck with the school I worked with at the time. But I didn’t care about the money. I felt pride in a nation. I chanted England, England, England in the pub down the road at the top of my lungs. My mother could hear it from our house.

I bought a Pansexual flag to hang up in my room. Only I would really see it; but it was part of my identity. As was the pride and prejudice poster, and the numerous photos of me and my friend blue tacked to the walls.

A flag is a symbol of identity, of religion, of alliance, of opinion. It’s as powerful as your words and your actions.

I moved to Belfast in 2022 to study a master’s at Queens University. Little did I know about the city, only what a typical person thought. Riots, and bombings and fighting, and two sides. Two sides.

Everywhere I turned in Belfast was flags. Flags in the east, flags in the west, on lampposts and traffic lights. Sprayed on walls, and buildings and pavements. Flags hung in bedrooms, and out of their windows. Some even wrapped themselves around in them, like a blanket for security.

When my mum came over to visit, we took ourselves on the infamous red bus tours. You got to see all of Belfast, and all its history tightly put into a ninety-minute ride. You go through Titanic, and towards Queens. The big fish, and city hall. Then, taking a turn down a darken street, with hundreds of terraces houses you find yourself amongst flags, upon flags, on top of, you guessed it, flags.

The first flags we saw were green, orange and white. Along with a language I couldn’t understand but knew was important. Painted stones told the stories of their streets. A man immortalised by starving for what he believed in. I didn’t struggle to understand why this piece of stone made me emotional.

I had watched Hunger when I was in university. It was in a British Cinema class. Upon reflecting, I don’t know if I entirely feel good about the film being taught in a British Cinema class, especially regarding who the film was about and its content. What would have Bobby Sands thought, if he knew a film about his sacrifice was placed in a curriculum with what he wanted to steer away from?

Then we drove east, past the peace wall and through to the side with the white, red and blue. A decorative wall depicting William of Orange, someone I must admit I have no idea who he was and had to extensively google to explain to my mother. This flag was familiar, this flag was what I had known- yet why did it look so foreign to me? It was mixed in with the Scottish flag, and the Welsh. The English flag wrestled with the wind.

Punting was up. Triangles of the same colours. It reminded me of English streets, when tables lined in the streets, sandwiches and picky bits put in the centre. Chairs from various houses, with people from differing homes.

But it didn’t feel homely. It didn’t feel comforting. It felt political and jarring. I stared at my flag like I had never known it in the first place. The union jack in Belfast meant so much more, than it did in England, or at least in my household.

The Union Jack wasn’t a protestant, or a loyalist. The Union Jack wasn’t a Rangers fan, nor did it put toasters in the cupboard. It didn’t march, or wear orange. It was just a flag. A flag to wave during the Olympics.

I didn’t know how to feel about my flag. I grew to hate it. To hate how people felt when they saw it. That it was a flag to spread hate, a flag to symbolise violence and war, a flag that stood behind a UVF flag. Pictures and painting of King Charles, amongst poppies for remembrance.

Traditions I had grown up with. Mourning those lost in World War one and two, became jaded with promotions of patriotism. I didn’t wear a poppy for the first time last year. I didn’t do the two minutes silence. Instead, I heard people clapping and cheering during it.

I remember having a conversation with my ex-boyfriend about it. That wearing a poppy was to celebrate for King and country, to eternalise all the soldiers that fought in the wars for the promise of their ‘country.’ They died with a promise, a belief. Not so different from the subject of the mural that had shock me so. I didn’t just mourn the ‘British’ soldiers but when I wore the poppy, I mourned all that had died. All that had sacrificed. No matter the side. Not taking a side, is taking a side. Or was I naïve and was just fence sitting.

What really made me feel such a way about my own flag? Why did I know detest it, and everything it stood for? Was I ignorant to the world around me, and its raindrops of opinions and views? I didn’t know anything about Belfast before I arrived here, and I still believe I truly know nothing still.

A girl I spoke to about the flag, a catholic who had grown up in Newry, had summed it up to me in a way I had never considered. It’s their culture. It’s not a flag of hate, it’s just a piece of fabric with different meanings for all those who wave it. A flag as a culture. A flag as a way of life, as the ordinary and every day.

Then I saw it. When Belfast met with fascist riots, several wore union jacks around them. Now, the flag had turned political. A statement to suggest those not ‘British’, or indeed the look of someone who was ‘British’ is not welcome. A flag with history, turned into a tool, used to make a whole nation assumingly share an opinion.

I see the Union Jack but next to the Israelian flag and think what some Israelian citizens who don’t necessarily agree with their countries actions must think about their flag. Do they feel the same?

And that’s what it is. All the above. It’s assumption, and believing in one thing, when the world is full of nuances. A flag holds power for one but can mean nothing to the other. It can be full of hatred, but it also can be a symbol of hope, of progress.

I felt so abandoned, so lost about the union jack, about my country, about being English in Belfast. But that wasn’t anything anyone put on me, it was only when I became more knowledgeable, more aware that it this separation dawned upon me.

I don’t hate England, and in some regards, I love being English, I love being from Manchester and being from the north. I have a love for Manchester music, and history, and its vast multi-culturalism.

But I hate its past. I hate the riots, and what’s happening in England. I hate the politics, and the cuts and the failure of the NHS. I hate seeing my mother tried from working all night, trying to save people lives, all to not get paid properly for it.

And I love Belfast. I love Belfast like I do Manchester. I love its history and its people, how welcoming everyone is. I feel sometimes inadequate to be here, to live here. I don’t feel the past as some of its people do. Everyone asks me why I moved here, why I decided to stay? My answers come from a genuine love for Belfast and how unique it truly is. It’s a city that is growing, and is moving, maybe slower than the rest of the cities it surrounds itself with, but it’s constantly evolving.

It’s complicated. It’s complicated to whole heartedly stand by a flag, and truly believe everything about it. As it is to stand by a country, or a political party.

I just hope that one day I can look at the flags that wash over Belfast, and utterly understand why I feel the way I do when I see a union jack fly high.

This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.