Culture

The hidden danger of the UK’s flag obsession

Research suggests that the increasing use of the national flag could have a damaging impact on social cohesion

In the weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the American flag began appearing in places where it had never been seen before. Suddenly, the stars and stripes were everywhere: hanging in windows, displayed on bumper stickers, on pin badges worn over the heart, from rural Tennessee to downtown Manhattan. Surveys found three quarters of Americans responded to the traumatic events by displaying the national flag on their home, their car or their person.

A similar process is currently underway in the United Kingdom, driven not by an upsurge in patriotism among the populace, but as part of a seemingly concerted effort by the ruling Conservative Party. The Union flag, which you used to only see during the Olympics, or if you wandered into a particularly touristy area of central London, is becoming ubiquitous.

It’s flying from government buildings, and formed the backdrop for 10 Downing Street’s short-lived £2.6 million briefing room. Soon, if health secretary Matt Hancock gets his way, it’ll be flown proudly from the roofs of underfunded hospitals. It’s strategically positioned behind government ministers when they give video interviews from their offices and homes, and – at a cost of some £900,000 – it adorns the tail of the Prime Minister’s private jet. In an absurd parliamentary committee hearing, the director-general of the BBC was quizzed by a Conservative MP on why there were no UK flags in the corporation’s annual report.

“Your government is trying to tell you something,” says Markus Kemmelmeier, a social psychologist at the University of Nevada who has researched the psychological effects of exposure to flags. At the present moment, with Britain facing twin national traumas – one external, the other self-inflicted – the use of the flag could be seen as an appeal to national unity, the Conservative government’s way of trying to convince the public that “we’re all in this together”.

But symbols are powerful, and psychological research suggests that the increasing use of the national flag could actually have a damaging impact on social cohesion. “Flags are tricky,” Kemmelmeier says. “If you allude to a collective and say, ‘This is us,’ there’s always somebody that’s not included.”

Decades of research has demonstrated that simply assigning a symbol, such as a flag, to an arbitrary group can cause a hardening of attitudes. A study published in 2016 by social psychologists Shannon Callahan and Alison Ledgerwood found that people perceived others as less warm and more threatening if the group was assigned a flag. “A consistent picture emerges,” writes David Smith, a psychology lecturer from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. “Flags bond insiders but make outsiders feel unwelcome.”

In an interview, Smith points to a number of infamous studies from the early days of social psychology which bear this out. In the 1950s, for instance, the Robber’s Cave experiment split 22 pre-teen boys into two groups and socialised them to hate each other. “One of the ways they socialised the boys, they picked out the group name and made a flag,” Smith says. “One of the aggressive acts the boys did was burn each others’ flags.”

In fact, the mere presence of a flag can increase division, according to a number of startling experiments. A 2008 study found that a 15 millisecond flash of the Confederate flag made white participants less willing to vote for Barack Obama than those shown a neutral symbol. Similar research in Germany revealed that exposure to the national flag increased feelings of prejudice against immigrants.

In 1998, Kemmelmeier and David Winter from the University of Michigan asked participants to fill out a survey about patriotism and nationalism in a room that either had an American flag pinned to the wall, or no flag at all. The mere presence of the flag increased feelings of nationalism, but not patriotism – it sparked not a love of one’s own country, but a feeling of superiority over others. These effects seem to be remarkably persistent – one study found that a single exposure to the American flag shifted support toward Republicanism up to eight months later.

But Britain isn’t America (yet). Kemmelmeier points out that the exact effect may depend on what associations individuals have with their particular national flag. Most research has been conducted in the United States, which reveres the stars and stripes – children grow up pledging allegiance to it every morning before school, so it is perhaps natural that it brings out more patriotic tendencies. (Even placing a hand on the heart in a completely different context can evoke feelings of national pride in Americans).

The Union flag occupies a slightly strange position in the UK, where many people may feel more closely connected to the symbols of England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland than the overarching national flag. “I would expect that the flag brings up different ideas for different people,” Kemmelmeier says. “I would expect that there would be a certain polarisation.”

As a symbol, the national flag has become associated with a particular political outlook – in a repeat of what’s happened to the flag of England in the past. On social media, the Union flag is a quick signifier of someone’s views on everything from Brexit to Black Lives Matter, just as putting the flag of the European Union in your display name represents the opposite worldview.

The government knows this, of course. It’s using the national flag not in an effort to unite the country under a signal banner, but as a signal to its supporters that it shares their views. It’s tangling up a symbol that’s meant to represent all of us with a divisive politics that scapegoats outsiders, fuels racism and hatred, and then publishes dubious reports pretending that it doesn’t exist.

This isn’t a new tactic. “In the US a really strong trend is that the flag has been used primarily by people on the right to claim, assert and display a certain version of the nation,” Kemmelmeier says. “‘We are the true patriots, you are not’. The left has ceded that space. That puts the right in a really good position.”

Combined with the research showing the effect that even a single exposure to the flag can have on our attitudes towards others, that paints a worrying picture of a country where a symbol that's associated with divisive views perpetuates those views by its very presence. But there is another, more hopeful lesson to be taken from the research. “The meanings of flags do change,” says Kemmelmeier. “It can be a vehicle of a certain aggressive sense of nationalism but it doesn’t have to be.”

A flag can be reclaimed, but it will require a movement of people willing to risk social status by going out on a limb and displaying what’s become a toxic symbol in some circles. “It’s a social dilemma,” Kemmelmeier says. “Your individual outcome is very much contingent on what everyone else is doing.”

One potential tactic could be to display the Union flag alongside other symbols – the stars of the European Union, the colourful stripes of the Pride flag. It’s a way of saying that yes – despite what some people might think – you can be European and British, or trans and British or Black and British.

There are also powerful moments in history where symbols can transform. During the Vietnam War, the American flag became an unlikely symbol of protest. At the Olympics this summer, Covid-permitting, the Union flag will be draped over the shoulders of British athletes of all backgrounds and faiths, as it was in 2012 when it represented a vibrant, inclusive vision of Britain that seems to have disappeared.

We can get back there. “It takes somebody to come up with a campaign to start reclaiming the flag and associating the flag with a certain idea,” Kemmelmeier says. “It is quite possible, but it takes a lot of courage.”

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK