Pat Kane: Exercise care if flying a flag - national colours can trigger sectarianism

But if one wanted to access some decent social science on the politics of community flag use, you’d turn to Northern Ireland, yes?

Correct. On Tuesday, The Queen’s University, Belfast and their Institute for Irish Studies launched a major study called Flags: Towards A New Understanding. I recommend that the Queen’s report should be read by everyone: councillors, police, Holyrood politicians and (err) “interested” citizens who want to make the right decision over the North Lanarkshire tricolours.

The primary concern, I suggest, would be to ensure that we don’t trigger off the same cultural and territorial wars here that are conducted via flags over there.

The report is fascinating and learned about the usage and power of flags in general. I wasn’t aware, for example, that the Scottish Government has specified that, above the Holyrood building “the Saltire must be flown in the superior position, with the Union Flag in the second superior position and the European flag in the third”.

Local councils across the land may tremble over the relative placing and fluttering duration of saltire and Union Jack but ScotGov has set them a clear lead. Though thankfully, so far, there’s been no community bonfires and burning effigies about the matter.

The Queen’s study is also compelling on the nuances of the disputed flags themselves. They note that the Union Flag is specifically “the symbolic expression of the Act of Union of 1800”, itself a response to the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798.

To get the Cross of St George, the Cross of St Andrew and the Cross of St Patrick yoked together, the designer had to “make the point of intersection slightly off-centre”, say the Queen’s academics. “This allows the three flags to sit in relation to each other in such a way that none of the three dominates the other two”. With piquant irony, it seems a single Ireland lurks in the design of the Loyalists’ treasured symbol.

The Irish tricolour also apparently thrums with a complex history. If the point at issue is the commemoration of the Easter Rising, then it’s worth reminding ourselves that three flags went up during the events of 1916.

Over the General Post Office in Dublin, the flying of the tricolour was actually secondary to Pearse’s raising of a gold harp on a green background, bearing the words “Irish republic”. (The Scottish revolutionary Republican James Connolly hoisted another symbol-of-the-nation contender, the Starry Plough, over the Imperial Hotel across the road).

The Irish tricolour was a 19th-century invention, consciously modelled on the flag of the French Republic, whose usage had become moribund in Ireland. But after it flew from the top of the GPO, the tricolour swept Irish communities as a symbol of rebellion, and was thereafter explicitly identified with the Easter Rising (and only officially adopted as the flag of the Irish state in 1937).

So to fly the tricolour means a wee bit more than associating your local council with a significant date in a neighbouring state’s history. To those with the relevant knowledge in their heads, fluttering the Irish flag over a municipal building resonates with an act of violent republicanism (no matter how you stand in relation to the long-term historical justice of that act).

Would that implication be enough to keep the flags off the poles in Coatbridge, Motherwell and elsewhere? It would be nice to think that we are relaxed enough in Scotland to be able to cope with this possibility: that some states and countries we might fraternally celebrate have their origins in acts of violence.

I’m unaware that the various mutual incursions and invasions across the history of Scandinavian nations generates much lingering resentment. And given the rapacity and gore that has spattered the British imperial record, requiring violent national liberation struggles of all kinds, the continuing good relations of the Commonwealth still seem like a miraculous exercise in forgiveness.

Let’s say we’re not entirely relaxed about our relation to Irish politics and history in Scotland. But first, let’s make sure we appreciate what we have. All hail the soft power of Scottish civic nationalism which, at its inclusive best, serves to dissolve many Scots’ prior identifications with either Ireland, or a tightly unitary Britain. In that sense, long may Nicola Sturgeon and her progressive, detailed, womanly calm, set the tone of our national conversations.

However, are there warning signs about the consequences of drawing contemporary, forward-moving Scotland into Irish historical disputes? Should we worry that the keyboard warriors of websites like Vanguard Bears or Regimental Blues are warning of “action” and “consequences” if the North Lanarkshire tricolours are raised? I’m not sure we should, too much.

The Queen’s report wants to stress that, at least for Northern Ireland, institutional provocations or hard legislation can generate insurgent responses. The trigger in recent times was obviously Belfast City Council’s decision, on December 3, 2012, to fly the Union Flag over its main building for only 18 days in a year (one more than the designated number set by a UK Act of Parliament), rather than all year round as before.

Ugly civil unrest ensued, alongside a proliferation in flag-making, predominantly on the Loyalist and Unionist side. This only built on years of angst among Northern Irish Protestants about their identity, post the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The Institute of Irish Studies measured public flag display in Northern Ireland in the five years from 2006 to 2010; unionist flags outweighed nationalist flags by 13 to 1.

But the Queen’s authors counsel an approach which consults and mediates with Northern Irish communities as much as possible, much more than a strict enforcement of existing laws over flags or even more ambitiously, a redefinition of “hate crime and speech” itself.

The effect of the latter measures, say the authors, “might simply be like moving the bump in the carpet... If a new legislative regime inhibits the erection of flags, then more kerbstones might be painted. If there is a crackdown on the painting of kerbstones, then more murals might be painted – and so on. In the end, the criminalisation of cultural expression is all too likely to fall victim to the law of unintended consequence.”

Now, for Scotland, we have to honestly ask ourselves: how big is the bump in our carpet? Last year, 80 per cent of Scots in a YouGov poll declared themselves satisfied with Holyrood’s Offensive Behaviour and Threatening Communications Act, birthed as a response to sectarian football culture. That doesn’t feel like a seething boil of frustrated identities, thwarted in its expression by punitive legislation.

One survey showed that as Scotland has gained more self-government, those exclusively identifying themselves as “Scottish” has decreased. As a Yesser, I’m a bit wobbly about what that means for my own dream project. Is a complex existence within a capacious Britain what most Scots really want?

As a citizen who wants to live in a peaceful society, I’m glad that both facts indicate that the bump of Scottish sectarianism and extremism, at least compared to Northern Ireland, may yet be smoothed out of our carpet, with steady and repeated hoovering. In these matters, we’re dull, boring and small-time.

It feels like hard enough work to build a majority for Scottish independence, confident enough to weather the next storm from elites and establishments. And however much I admire and respect the Irish Republic, I don’t want our national movement to get caught up in their historic and terrible beauty. For those reasons, and those already outlined, I hope the tricolours don’t fly over North Lanarkshire.