Flags row has derailed what was a wonderful shared day

SIR, — It is with great regret that I read that Down District Council is to abandon the St. Patrick’s Cross in favour of a corporate flag, and wholeheartedly agree with your editorial comment in last week’s Recorder.

It seems incredibly naïve of the Council to propose the introduction of a flag with English and Irish on it to replace a cross-community all-Ireland symbol and not expect it to arouse passions. I am intrigued by the explanation as to the presence of Irish on the flag as being a 

European legislation requirement for minority languages as, while I am certainly no supporter of Ulster-Scots, its absence seems to indicate that this is a nonsense.

Councillor Cadogan Enright suggests the St. Patrick’s Flag was introduced as a symbol without proper research into its history, and that it’s only now that people have twigged that it forms part of the Union Flag. I was taught this in school and in the scouts, I think it’s incredible to suggest that people are ignorant of this fact. 

However — so what? The President of Ireland uses a flag with a golden harp surmounted on a ‘St. Patrick’s Blue’ background. This emblem also appears on the British Royal Standard. By Mr. Enright’s logic An Uachtarán na hÉireann should stop using this standard because of this shared use by the monarch of the United Kingdom.

It’s also worth pointing out that councillor Carmel O’Boyle’s party, the SDLP, who support this change, voted in favour of a design incorporating the St. Patrick’s Cross into the cap badge of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, because it was seen as a shared symbol. What has changed since that time for the SDLP?

I was down in Dublin recently at the Passport Office and saw the St. Patrick’s Cross flying proudly outside the headquarter’s of the Irish Freemasons. I was surprised and delighted but have learned it is also used by other all-Ireland organisations such as the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland, the Church of Ireland, Irish Lights, College of Surgeons, as well as the arms of Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast. Are we to expect these organisations to this symbol? Or maybe they, despite using it for centuries, should “research it’s history better”? Or maybe it’s the councillors who should re-read their history?

The St. Patrick’s Cross may be a lesser known Irish symbol, but it is an Irish symbol nonetheless that predates the Act of Union and has a longer connection to Ireland than the French-designed Irish Tricolour. One would ask why Republicans and Nationalists do not want to “reclaim” this symbol?

Also, should Scotland become an independent state, do we honestly think they will drop the St. Andrew’s Saltire, because of its connections to the Union Flag?

As your paper rightly asks why has it taken 26 years for this symbol to become “contentious”, or is it possibly because there is will beyond the confines of the District to try and make St. Patrick’s Day a nationalist Twelfth and drive a wedge between the community? 

This also typifies the log-jam that exists over the flags issue. When apartheid ended in South Africa the first thing they did was adopt a new shared flag. Fourteen years after the Good Friday Agreement none of the main political parties have made any efforts to create a new cross-community flag for Northern Ireland that can represent all of us, instead we are always to be expected that there will always be a them-and-us.

However, looking at the Council’s efforts for the new flag for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, I shudder to think what corporate logos Stormont could lumber us with. If you want to see some good flag designs, check out: www.facebook.com/newniflag, which has lots of inspiring new designs, many of the most popular proposals for a new Northern Ireland flag all incorporate the St. Patrick’s Cross.

I’m sure the new parade flag was created with the best of intentions, but it smacks of share-out rather than something to unify us. If there was a logic to this reasoning and change I am at a loss to see what it is.

This debate continues to derail what has been a shining example of a cross-community event and represents the Council shooting itself in the foot needlessly. But, as one of the members of the New Flag for Northern Ireland facebook group said, “of course this would all be avoided if they just used St Patrick’s flag”.

Yours, etc.

COMMON SENSE,

Downpatrick.

(Name and Address supplied).