I never watch the Last Night of the Proms. To be frank, I can’t stand all the hubris, the faux patriotism and the flag waving. It’s not my cup of tea.
This year though I have been much amused and even a little bemused by the reaction to the waving of European Union flags at the event. The group Thank EU for the Music was behind a campaign to make the flags available for people to wave alongside the Union flag. They looked good and brought colour to the event and to the cheeks of the Brexit supporters.
Certain sections of society were outraged. ‘BBC blasted for showing sea of EU flags in Last Night of the Proms coverage’ said the Telegraph. ‘BBC blasted as Proms ‘hijacked’ by ‘seething mass of remainers’ with EU flags’ said the Express.
Those that call voraciously for free speech wanted it all to be banned. Those that moan about cancel-culture want it to be cancelled. Those that use woke as a pejorative have turned to snowflakes.
There have been the usual calls to defund the BBC for showing it but what are they supposed to do, pixelate them all out? There has even been a call to use The Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 which states that the EU flag requires express consent from the local planning authority before it can be flown. The only problem being that the Albert Hall isn’t a government building and the flags were not being flown but rather waved about.
I think their incandescence came about because there seemed to be more EU flags on display than Union flags.
What does this all mean? It was a clever political stunt. Flags were handed out to a sympathetic audience and it was a personal choice whether to wave them or not. It shows that Brexit is far from over though it cannot be claimed that the audience is necessarily representative of the country as a whole. It shows that the leave side knows that the tide has turned against them and that they are annoyed and perhaps afraid of the seething mass of remainers.
They were only bits of cloth yet history tells us that such things can stir strong emotions.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 