Should Birmingham have its own flag?
According to Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, the answer is yes.
He dreams of a day when cities, towns and counties across the country fly their own flags in a display of civic pride.
To that end, Mr Pickles has issued guidance on how communities can design a flag, which he hopes councils and community groups will take up.
And to add an extra incentive, he’s even proposing that local flags are flown in Whitehall, the heart of government, where a number of departments have their offices.
There’s no official register of flags in the 海角视频 so Mr Pickles has teamed up with The Flag Institute, a charity which keeps its own records. The institute has chosen to compile a registry of the nation’s flags, which Mr Pickles seems happy to treat as authoritative.
And it turns out that surprisingly few places have their own flag. Exceptions include the Black Country, which boasts a wonderful flag featuring a chain – to represent the industrial heritage of the area – and a striking black, white and red design.
This recalls the a quote made in 1862 by Elihu Burritt, the American Consul in Birmingham, who described the region as “black by day and red by night” — a result of local furnaces giving out smoke and grime during the day and glowing by night.
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It was designed by Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School, Stourbridge, as part of competition run by the Black Country Living Museum to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympics.
Worcestershire also has its own marvellous flag, chosen earlier this year by BBC Hereford & Worcester listeners, which shows the black pear of Worcestershire in a shield over a stylised representation of the county, with its notable rivers and hills represented by the wavy green and blue lines.
But there is no flag for the West Midlands as a whole, nor for Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull or the individual Black Country towns and cities.
Does it matter? Well, according to a statement issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government, having a flag enables communities “to express their pride in local identities, heritage and traditions”.
And Mr Pickles, a Yorkshireman, says he is delighted that the North Riding and East Riding – two of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire – recently registered their own flags.
He said: “As a proud Yorkshireman, I’m delighted to see my compatriots in the Ridings are renewing their sense of local pride with these newly designed flags. These new designs are absolutely great.
“This proves that your sense of belonging can’t be wiped out by a bureaucrat’s pen stroke on a map.
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"The new guide from the Flag Institute, the 海角视频’s national flag charity, will lead to many more local flags being designed and registered and I look forward to flying them on the streets of Whitehall.”
And he goes further in his introduction to the guidance, proclaiming: “Flags deserve our respect. Not only do they convey power and status but they can create deep pride and bring unbridled joy... the power of flags to move people is written deep in our culture – everywhere from the Old Testament to Shakespeare.”
You don’t need anyone’s permission to design a flag. The department suggests that community groups and sports clubs give it a go, as well as local councils.
So what’s involved?
The guidance, prepared by the Flag Institute, suggests making use of powerful local symbols.
This is accompanied by a photograph of one of the most powerful local symbols of them all, the Angel of the North, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which I suppose might be seen as a bit of a hint.
Other ideas include taking inspiration from the meanings of local place names; local legends and folklore; traditional emblems and colours; achievements of local people; local industries past and present, and accepted nicknames for local people, such as “Jacks, Baggies, Cockneys, etc”.
Now, I imagine that trying to decide which local heroes should be celebrated, or which local legends sum up the area, or how a name like “Brummie” could be illustrated symbolically, would provoke quite a bit of debate. But that’s half the fun of designing the thing, surely?
However, there’s a bit more to all this than meets the eye. While I don’t doubt that Mr Pickles means everything he says, he may also have an ulterior motive.
For one thing, he wants to highlight his decision in 2011 to relax the rules on flying flags without official permission.
Believe it or not, before then you were only allowed to fly a select few flags without official permission from the local council. You were fine if it was a national flag (of any nation), the EU flag, the United Nations flag, the Commonwealth flag, a county flag or the flag of St George (in England only – other parts of the 海角视频 had to fly their own patron saint’s colours).
But now, you can fly pretty much what you like, as long as it’s not offensive.
So Mr Pickles had cut back on bureaucracy, but he also wants to make another point.
The Government wants us all to take pride in our traditional local identities, even if they don’t coincide with local authority boundaries any more, and to forget all about those awful “regions” that Labour were so keen on.
It was in September 2012 that he gleefully announced, in a statement to Parliament: “The Coalition Government has abolished regional government.
"The unelected Regional Assemblies/Regional Chambers, the Government Offices for the Regions, the Regional FiReControl programme, the Regional Development Agencies have been terminated.”
Labour’s experiment in regional government, complete with regional development agencies such as Advantage West Midlands has been comprehensively ended. And Mr Pickles wants us all to embrace a different, older, identity.
He writes: “Historic counties like Middlesex, the Ridings of Yorkshire, or Cumberland – and people’s sense of belonging to them – cannot be abolished by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.
“They retain a place in people’s memories and affections, despite attempts to wipe it off the map. That is hardly surprising, when the historic English counties are one of the oldest forms of local government in Western Europe.”
So design a new flag for your town, city, county or Local Enterprise Partnership by all means. Just don’t make one for the region if you hope to see it flying in Whitehall.