A top Labour parliamentarian has accused those involved in the anti-mass migration campaign to raise the England flag in England of being “extremists”.
Member of Parliament for Norwich South Clive Lewis has claimed that the so-called “far-right” are behind the patriotic “raise the colours” campaign of hanging England’s St George’s cross flag and the Union Jack in his constituency after flags were raised outside of a migrant hotel in Bowthorpe last week.
Speaking to the local Eastern Daily Press, the Caribbean-heritage MP said that while “some” may be flying the flag out of national pride, he claimed that “far‑right groups are using these flags to mark territory and intimidate the vast majority who reject their extreme views.”
“They’re trying to drag the flag back into being just their flag, only for their purposes of division and intolerance, undoing the brilliant way our multi‑heritage England teams turned it into one of unity and pride,” Lewis continued.
“I’ve raised residents’ concerns with the county council – they can’t look the other way when extremists use our streets to send an intimidating message.”
Lewis, a former Labour leadership candidate and member of the party’s Socialist Campaign Group, has previously been asked by police to refrain from attending pro-open borders counter-demonstrations held in opposition to locals protesting the migrant hotel in his constituency.
The police have previously asked him not to attend for fear of stoking further tensions after he was seen at a December protest shouting into a megaphone that some opponents of mass migration were “racists” and “fascists”.
The “raise the colours” acts of peaceful civil disobedience have also been branded as racist, with far-left Black Studies Professor Kehinde Andrews claiming that both the St George and Union Jack flags represent “white supremacy” while quipping that “there ain’t no black in the Union Jack.”
Nevertheless, there appears to be widespread support for the campaign, with a survey last week from More in Common finding that 58 per cent of Britons want to see more Union Jack and England flags raised on street furniture and infrastructure.
Unlike left-wing run councils, which have acted quickly to remove England flags, notably quicker than they did to remove Palestinian flags, the Norfolk County Council said that it will not “prioritise the removal of such flags over any more urgent highway activity.”
Despite the moral outrage from those on his side of the political aisle, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has so far refused to condemn the flag-raising campaign. On Monday, the Labour leader told the BBC: “I’m a supporter of flags.” Starmer added that he has a St George’s Cross in his apartment in Downing Street, and said that the flag is a “great symbol of our nation”.
Under heavy pressure amid the national anti-migrant hotel protest movement, which has seen demonstrations take place across the UK every week over the past two months, Starmer also said that he hopes to end the scheme of accommodating supposed asylum seekers in hotels at taxpayer expense ahead of the previous deadline of 2029.
However, he would not commit to a firm end date for the controversial Conservative Party-era programme that is currently housing over 30,000 migrants, many of whom arrived illegally across the English Channel from France.
Meanwhile, the flag-raising campaign has also begun to spread in neighbouring Ireland, drawing further accusations of racism for raising the Republic’s tricolour flag.
Left-wing Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty sensationally claimed that those raising the Irish flag in Ireland were borrowing from “English nationalism”, despite the tricolour having been the symbol of Irish independence from Britain. Moriarity went on to call for the local Dublin government to “remove flags that have been put up with hateful intent.”
“People are going around putting these flags up, videoing themselves, saying they are reclaiming our city, they’re taking it back, and I think that kind of hateful rhetoric has to be stamped out,” he said.
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