All Right Jack

14 April 2006



The Union Flag Turns 400

The Union Flag, or Union Jack as it is often mislabeled, turned 400 years old earlier this week. A recent poll by the UK version of Reader’s Digest had it as the most popular symbol of Britain at 16% support, followed by the Queen at 15% and fish and chips at 13%. Oddly, it started out as a compromise for shipping under James VI of Scotland who had just landed the gig in London as James I of England.

For those who care, it is described in terms of heraldry as “Azure, the saltires of Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew quarterly per saltire, counterchanged argent and gules; the latter fimbriated of the second; surmounted by the cross of Saint George of the third, fimbriated as the last.” In other words, it’s the crosses of the English, Scottish and Irish patron saints all mixed together. As usual in the UK, the Irish bit was an after thought (union there happened in 1801), and the Welsh got left out of things entirely.

Nonetheless, “It is a single design made from three very distinctive separate designs,” Sebastian Conran, founding trustee of the Design Museum and Conran's director of product and branding, told the Daily Telegraph. “It is unique. The red, white and blue of the three countries fused together brilliantly symbolize British compromise. And yet unlike the French red, white and blue tricolor, it works in black and white. It was unusually foresighted of its inventor to make it fully faxable.” Rather a wit is Mr. Conran.

Germany in the 1930s did challenge the Union design for a spot in national logo brilliance. The bold swastika in black sat highlighted by the circle of white, with the eye drawn initially to the blood red of the rest of the banner. This may also explain why communism really didn’t work out -- a hammer and sickle? Please. As William Gibson noted, the Nazis really had a great graphics department. Communism only created socialist realism, and that's a bit dull. In branding, no one wants to be associated with losers, and so, the hammer and sickle as well as the crooked cross aren’t in the running anymore despite the efforts of a misguided few to revive them.

Of course, what really makes the design is how the Brits respond to it. There are a few who hate it, like musician Billy Bragg who sees it as a logo for imperial murder (he does have a point, and his song "Take Down the Union Jack" does rock). By and large, though, it is accepted, but not revered the way the Americans view the Stars and Stripes (a design that didn’t settle down until 1959 when the 50th star was added for Hawaii’s admission into the US as a state). David Cameron, the new Conservative leader, observed that the British “don’t do flags on the front lawn.” No, but it still seems to get around an awful lot.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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