- Wed Aug 27, 2025 8:08 am
#94982
From Samuel McIllhaga :
A few months back, when I was reporting on the bin strike in East Birmingham, I felt a pang of recognition. During a ten minute journey between Small Heath and Sheldon, I noticed something change, gradually and then explicitly. Each neighbourhood was displaying very different flags. Within a short car journey, the houses had gone from flying Palestinian, Somalian and Lebanese flags to St George’s crosses and Union Jacks.
I suddenly felt like I was back in Belfast or a neighbourhood in the south or east of Glasgow, places where clashing flags, colour schemes and murals predominate, illustrating tribal and spatial divisions between Irish Catholic and British Protestant communities. In the England I was familiar with, a sense of patriotism was always worn lightly: with Union flags only appearing on churches, posh hotels and government buildings. Instead, it was at the edges of the British state, in places like Northern Ireland, where national identity was most strongly reasserted.
In that moment, and only for a moment, Birmingham felt like Ulster: starkly visually divided into ‘us and them.’ For years now, commentators have brought up the prospect of the mainland becoming more like Northern Ireland, more divided, more angry, more tribal, summoning the term ‘Ulsterisation’ to describe the process. I ignored this feeling, and the idea of Birmingham’s ‘Ulsterisation’ until recently.
However, when The Dispatch heard that dozens, if not hundreds, of English and British flags were appearing in outlying Birmingham suburbs, the notion came back to me. Last month, in areas of southwest Birmingham like Weoley Castle, Northfield, Allens Cross and Bartley Green, St George’s Crosses and Union flags started appearing in their hundreds. Many of those responsible for the flag raisings in Birmingham, describe the activity on Facebook groups in positive terms: “it uplifts people's spirits & gives the [people] hope that we can still live in a nice & safe city.” As I was to find, not everyone agrees.
A ‘forgotten’ area
Consensus has it that the vast 1930s residential estates of Weoley Castle are ground zero for this phenomenon, areas that rank highly for deprivation. The flags continue throughout the neighbourhood, and then suddenly, at the borderland between Weoley Castle and Selly Oak, they come to an abrupt stop.
Whether this is down to the ‘flaggers’ running out of Union Jacks, or some unspoken psychic boundary between the two neighborhoods, I don’t know. But it adds to the sense of spatial segregation. Some flags have gone up in wealthier areas like Solihull; unlike those in Weoley Castle, these banners have been greeted with annoyance by local residents, who have complained that they “cheapen the area.”
“I do believe it's a lot to do with having some pride in our area,” Paul Allen, a Northfield community campaigner, tells me. “I think a lot of people of all races feel forgotten in south Birmingham. A lot of the area is deprived; ever since the Rover car factory closed there has been little investment. I think it's partly to say we're still here. We're proud and we deserve better from our city. Birmingham is really in the dumps at the moment.”
The group who have taken responsibility for the flag phenomenon call themselves the ‘Weoley Warriors’; they are rumoured to run their operation out of the Weoley Castle pub in the centre of the estate. Their recently created, private Facebook page currently has 2100 members; its header image depicts Genners Lane, next to Bartley Green reservoir, decked out in St George’s Cross flags.
One post by a Weoley Warrior admin, declares that: “we have everything to celebrate, don’t let them demonise our flag: in a time when it is OK to fly every other flag, other than our own. We are made to feel ashamed of this great country. A group of proud Englishmen from Weoley Castle have decided to make a stand.”
The posts in the group range from the mild to the extreme. At one end of the spectrum there are pictures of grandmothers baking St George’s Cross cakes, people trying to organise litterpicking and bad AI generated memes about Birmingham’s inability to pick up rubbish.
At the other, there’s a smattering of antagonistic and conspiracy-minded posts about “migrant hotels,” “fifth-columns of hostile foreigners” and “white leftist traitors.” Some memes even joke about ‘Loyalist Northern Ireland’ with taglines like: “kinda funny seeing English councils losing their minds over people putting flags up. Wait till we teach our English neighbours the ancient art of painting kerbstones.”
Poking around outside the Weoley Castle pub, I bump into an older man named Peter. He’s in a wheelchair, having lost his legs to vascular issues, and clearly a popular local: friends keep coming up during our chat to check on him.
“I think the flags are a good thing,” Peter tells me. “I love it. It's celebrating our nationality, what’s wrong with that? The council is trying to make it either racialist or political, and it's not!”
One of Peter’s friends brings him a pint, and with it, a less diplomatic view. “All the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Palestinians, they have their flags in Birmingham,” says the man, who won’t volunteer his name.
“You go over to America and they have their flags out there, Ireland has its flags flying. You know, as well as I do, what it is — it's about all those Palestinian people taking over our country: well you're not taking over around here. Soho Road has Jamaican flags, Warwick Road has Somaliland flags. There are places in Birmingham, like Alum Rock, where the white man can’t walk.”
Others I speak to are less forthright. Elliott Hancock has just moved back to the area after university and recently joined the Weoley Warriors group, where he advocates for litter picking. Hancock thinks his home city is more divided than its leaders would care to admit. “Birmingham boasts about being diverse,” he tells me, over the phone. “I completely disagree. We’re a city with a lot of ethnic diversity filled with segregation. If you live here, you know the different areas and what majority ethnic groups live in them. I don’t think the community really felt together before the flags.”
That said, he draws the line at more inflammatory displays: “I’m a patriotic person, but I don’t like flags being used to represent right-wing opinion. I’ve heard there’s a St George’s banner in Longbridge saying ‘send the boats back,’ I’m not a fan of that.”
A national craze
Robert Jenrick MP, flying the flag in Newark. Photo via X.
Brum is not alone in its flag-waving; this summer the phenomenon has spread from Epping to York, coinciding with a rash of protests against housing asylum seekers in local hotels. In Birmingham, the official response from the Labour-controlled city council has been a promise to see the flags removed, citing health and safety concerns.
However, the Birmingham Conservative group have called for the flags to stay, and for the council to prioritise dealing with ‘flyposting’ instead. Some Conservative activists, like Weoley locals George Webb and Jigar Bhagalia have even taken to flag raising in front of local pubs. Bhagalia told The Dispatch that: “our national flag is more than just a piece of cloth — it represents a shared identity that brings together people from every background who call this country home. At a time when Labour are more interested in removing flags than dealing with the issues residents really care about, it’s vital we support our communities.”
National politicians, like shadow Lord Chancellor Robert Jenrick have also jumped on the bandwagon: he hitched a flag to a lamppost in Newark, his constituency in the East Midlands, last week. In response to Birmingham City Council threatening to take down the banners, the Weoley Warriors have set up a GoFundMe page, to buy replacements, raising £19,937 at the time of writing.
Back in South West Birmingham, most residents seem to see the appearance of Union Jacks as simple patriotism, asking why they shouldn’t fly the national flag in an open and inclusive way that is fairly common in places like the United States and Ireland. “I think they're fine,” says a woman I waylay while she’s walking her dog. “I got one right outside my house, it's a bit of British spirit, isn’t it? We’ve got VJ Day coming up in a bit.”
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Others, meanwhile, understand the flags as an expression of ‘identity.’ One mother wielding a toddler in a pushchair tells me: “We’re not bothered by them. It has caused a lot of controversy though. I work in Northfield and a lot of people who aren’t British talk about how they don’t like it, how it's disrespectful. But we’re British, you show pride in the place you live, don’t you?”
A significant minority, I speak to view the banners as a racist and exclusionary provocation, inextricably linked to unwelcome far-right activism in poor areas of Birmingham.
Indeed, the Birmingham Mail has reported that two anti-racist organisations in the city, Stand Up Against Racism (BSUAR) and Birmingham Race Impact Group (BRIG), have demanded the immediate removal of flags in Birmingham, calling the phenomenon: “a far-right operation aimed at intimidating asylum seekers, migrants, and Muslims.” Additionally, Hope not Hate have reported on connections between the flag campaign and radical right figures such as Tommy Robinson associate Andrew Currien.
In contrast, lots of people I talk to see the flags as a collective community stunt, a way of taunting Birmingham City council after decades of underinvestment in the fringes and forgotten estates of the city. For these people, the specifics of the flags are besides the point. Instead, what matters is that the local authority in the centre of Birmingham is shown up as powerless and incompetent. A common phrase I hear is: “they can take the flags down, but they can’t take my bins out?”
Yet the flags have inexorably been pulled into the ongoing immigration debate. Austin John Lester, Weoley Warriors member who has been photographed putting up multiple flags in the neighbourhood, claims this wasn’t intentional: “[it’s] gone from people wanting one thing to it being turned into another. It was never against RACE OR RELIGION but now it seems to be getting portrayed that way,” he tells me over Facebook. “We are not racist far from it.”
Then Lester adds: “The whole point to this is to show the government and the people of England that the 10.7 million FIGHTING AGED MEN (illegal immigrants) that have been let into our country (not women or children in need of help) are not welcome here.”
However, it’s not just one type of flag being waved in Weoley. While walking down a long residential road, I spot a 1930s terraced house emblazoned with large Palestinian and Trans Pride flags, facing off against the rows of Union banners tied to lampposts. I knock on the door and end up speaking to Isaac. “It seems a bit excessive and over the top,” he tells me, when I ask about the British flags. “Lots of people support it, but I have heard about more right wing undertones. I thought it was for VE day initially.”
Matthew Lloyd, a politics researcher and former Labour staffer who lives in the Weoley area, sees the flag campaign as a hijacking of public space: “as a resident, and someone who is very proud of the Union Jack, random people don’t get to decide what our streets look like,” he tells me. “It's up to residents to decide what our streets look like, not some people who happen to have a van and ladder to climb lampposts. What happens when all of these flags get hit by the autumn rain and wind and look like a mess?”
As I trudge up Shenley Fields Road to catch the bus back into town, I spot several children on a climbing frame, surrounded by St George’s and Union flags snapping in the wind. They seem completely oblivious to them. However, their parents, sitting on benches surrounding the litter strewn playground, glance up at the flags every now and again. From where I’m standing, it's not obvious whether they’re smiling or frowning.
The administrators of the Weoley Warriors Facebook page have been approached for comment.
"The opportunity to serve our country: that is all we ask.” John Smith, May 11, 1994.
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