Veteran Tory MP Iain Duncan-Smith has said many councils are ‘embarrassed by the idea of being British’ and said schools should teach children to be proud of our history.
Speaking on GB News Iain Duncan Smith said:
“It’s significant in one regard, if, of course, these councils prepared to leave other flags up, such as the pro-Palestinian flags, and not doing anything about that. Then suddenly, when somebody wants to put up essentially a British flag, part of the Union Jack, to celebrate their sense of Britishness, then they want to take that down.
“And it does seem to me a bizarre and peculiar situation. We’ve seen it in Birmingham, where they couldn’t find anybody to empty the bins, but have managed to find a load of people to go and take the flags down. You couldn’t make this up if you tried.
“The fact is, too many of the Councils seem to be embarrassed by the idea of being British, or even being English, and the reality there is that that doesn’t represent then the majority of the British population.
“So I simply say, people should get permission to put flags up, but that would account for every flag. But at the same time, putting them up like that doesn’t mean that you take one down you dislike and the other one, which you’re quite happy with, and leave it up.
“There has to be a policy. And these people are making it up as they go along.
“I think, like everything else, there needs to be a rule for everybody. So if you are a council that does not believe in putting flags up except at special occasions, you should make that clear.
“In which case, then people should apply for permission and put them up. They shouldn’t discriminate against different national flags.
“You can’t say the Palestinian flag, which for a state that doesn’t exist, somehow is okay because of the ramifications of that, and putting up the English Cross of St George is wrong.
“The reality is, it looks to me more that they’re aggravated by the idea of it being a cross of St George, which many people on the left absolutely hate, but at the same time happy to go with something which is a protest flag which has nothing to do with the UK.
“If you have a rule, it has to be applied equally to all, and not just to those you rather like and those you dislike.
“I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was to allow communities to develop separately; to develop a separate identity, to not inculcate a concept of being British.
“In France they’re proud to be French, and that is a great thing. But in the UK, what we’ve done, and this has been reported by a number of different commissions, we’ve allowed, therefore, communities, people that have come from abroad, etc, now settled in the UK, to carry on developing their own communities, and not to have that sense of link to the to their country where they now live.
“And I think that’s a sad problem, and it needs, therefore, to be taught in schools that there is an enormous amount to be proud of the UK’s history.
“I can’t remember who it was who once said, you only have to ask, ‘what would the world look like if the UK hadn’t existed?’ Freedom, the concept of justice, the nature of common law, the rights of the individual, habeas corpus: [these are] all things that the UK has given to the world and which are inherent here.
“We’ve so much to be proud of this remarkable country that I just wish others would learn it much more sufficiently in schools and understand that they happen to have drawn first in the lottery of life by being here in the UK.”
