Union recognition 

By Jonathan Duffy

BBC News Magazine 

Four-hundred years old this week, the union jack is one of the world's oldest national flags... if you overlook the fact it's only meant to be flown at sea, the proportions are wrong and no one can agree on its name.

Its striking red, white and blue design harks back to a time when Britannia ruled the waves, but the history of the union jack is as tangled as all the mothballed bunting it decorates.

 It is a story about custom over clarity, assumption over assertion, anomaly instead of consistency.

In the words of union jack historian Malcolm Farrow, "a mish-mash - but what do you expect from the British constitution?"

 Even its real name has been known to pitch grown men into heated argument, 400 years after the flag's creation.

 For the record, the BBC website disregards the term "union flag" because of its "great potential for confusion", preferring union jack (in lower case).

 What the union jack might have looked like - six designs

The union jack as we know it today dates back to 1801, when Ireland joined Great Britain in a single kingdom. But the original flag, which was set out by royal proclamation on 12 April 1606, was subtly different, lacking the diagonal red lines - the so-called St Patrick's cross.

 The flag was the result of the union of the English and Scottish monarchies in 1603, under James the Ist. (as he was in England) or James VI (as he was in Scotland).

 Several designs for a new flag were drawn up in the wake of this union (see panel, above), juxtaposing the St George's cross and the St Andrew's saltire, but none quite hit the mark for James.

 Instead he plumped for a simple merging effect - with the English emblem overlaying the Scottish one - mistake number one in the eyes of many Scotsmen, who couldn't understand why their flag should sit beneath not on top.

 Aggrieved Scottish sailors re-drew the nascent flag their way, and stuck with it for some years.

 From the outset, the union jack had been a maritime flag - to be flown by naval and civilian vessels.

Its use on land had never been considered.

"The concept of a national flag as we know it today, to be flown from a building or a back garden, just didn't exist then, just as nations didn't really exist. It was kingdoms," says Graham Bartram, chief vexillologist, or flag expert, at the Flag Institute.

 By VE Day the union jack had become a flag of celebration

Which touches on another ambiguity, says Mr Bartram - "since England and Scotland were still separate countries at the time, James had created a flag for a country that didn't yet exist".

 The union jack was a royal flag, says Mr Bartram, and, in theory at least, remains so today.

Back in the 17th Century, wily seamen were using the flag to avoid paying harbour duties - a privilege restricted to naval ships at the time. So James' successor, Charles I, ordered it be restricted to His Majesty's ships "upon pain of Our high displeasure".

Those restrictions remain, and today it is a criminal offence to fly the union jack from a boat.

The origins of the "jack" in union jack could derive from its maritime associations - a jack is a national flag flown by warships - but other theories are that it comes from the "jack-et" worn by soldiers or from the Latin or French form of James: Jacobus or Jacques.

Whatever the real explanation, the debate about what to call the flag when it is flown on land - union jack or union flag - rumbles on.

Abolished & restored

 Being a royal flag, the union jack was abolished by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, before being restored along with the monarchy, 11 years later. And so it stayed.

 OUT OF PROPORTION

 Original proportions set down by Samuel Pepys (secretary to the Admiralty), in 1687

Roughly translated as 1:1.6

But changes in thread size have effectively made it 1:2

The sky blue of St Andrew has mutated into navy blue 

In 1801 a red diagonal cross was added to represent union with Ireland and after a bit of design adjustment by the Navy it gradually, says Mr Farrow, came to be used as a land flag.

"By the 1800s, Britain was building an Empire and so it needed a flag to plant to say 'this country's ours, it belongs to the UK'."

 A further boost to the union jack's fortunes came with growing need for national celebration - Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, parties for troops returning from World War I and such like.

But even by 1918, the union jack had some way to go to being THE national flag, says Mr Farrow.

All sorts of flags were being used at the time - red ensigns and white ensigns [both naval flags] and even the royal standard."

 And while today, there's no question that the union jack is the national flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it's got there by default rather than political will.

Sort of enshrined

 No act of Parliament enshrines it as such - most countries have flag acts that set out, to the last detail, rules about their national flags. The best authority is cited in two spoken answers in Parliament - one from 1908, the other in 1933.

 "There's nothing straightforward about the history. It has been adopted as our national flag without any national authority," says Mr Farrow. "Neither you or I can fly it from a boat, whereas every other country in the world, the first thing a citizen can do is fly their national flag at sea.

 "And while there are many rules that govern its use at sea, there's nothing, not a jot, to say how the flag should be used on land - its proportions, its colours, when it can be flown, where it can be flown."

In theory it's a free for all. But, says Mr Farrow, the lack of explicit information has stymied the flying of the union jack rather than helped it.

 "It's one of the oldest national flags in the world but a lot of people don't really feel comfortable about being able to fly it."

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More British than fish and chips

By Adam Edwards

(Daily Mirror)

(Filed: 12/04/2006)

 There is a royal celebration this month that will give a surge of pride to every Briton. It is an event that should be toasted by the Commonwealth, given a nod by all corners of our former empire and be universally acknowledged as a milestone by anybody with affection for the United Kingdom - the Union flag is 400 years old.

 The quatercentenary of our flag should jostle with the Queen's 80th birthday for global attention, for the red, white and blue duster is as iconic as the monarchy itself.

It embraces empire and Swinging London, Cool Britannia and football hooliganism. It belongs to the Right-wing politician and the Left-wing union. It is the proud symbol of both the patriot and the expat and is displayed with equal pride on our government buildings and our citizens' bodies.

 The tri-coloured diagonal, whether we like it or not, is a design that has long since transcended its brief as a naval flag of convenience. It has become the global badge of the modern Brit.

"It is a single design made from three very distinctive separate designs," said Sebastian Conran, founding trustee of the Design Museum and Conran's director of product and branding. "It is unique. The red, white and blue of the three countries fused together brilliantly symbolise British compromise. And yet unlike the French red, white and blue tricolour, it works in black and white. It was unusually foresighted of its inventor to make it fully faxable."

Four centuries ago, when James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne to become James I of England, there was confusion over what flag the Navy should fly. On land, the red cross of St George and the white cross of St Andrew were still, respectively, the flags of England and Scotland. But at sea there was a need for a single flag.

 On April 12, 1606, a proclamation was issued to the Navy that stated that all ships "shall bear in their main top the red cross commonly called St George's Cross and the white cross commonly called St Andrew's Cross, joined together according to a form made by our heralds".

A white border around the red cross was added to this Union flag because the rules of heraldry demanded that the two colours must not be placed on top of each other. It was called "The British Flag" and it was not universally popular. The Scots were upset that the red cross was laid over the white cross and the Welsh weren't allowed to contribute because their principality had already been annexed by the English.

By the end of the 17th century, it was known colloquially as the Union Jack. (The origin of the word "Jack" in the title is uncertain, but probably stems from another royal proclamation, this one by Charles II, that the flag should be flown only by ships of the Royal Navy as a jack, a small flag at the bowsprit.)

Four years after the Act of Union with Ireland in January 1801, when the red diagonal cross of St Patrick was added, Nelson ordered the Union Jack to be flown by the British fleet at Trafalgar as a battle flag. It has been flown on all ships of war and naval bases ever since.

 Victoria used the Royal Standard rather than the Union flag as her official flag. The result of that decision was that the Standard became the personal banner of the sovereign, while the red, white and blue colours emerged, by the time of her death, as "the people's flag". It was carried at the Olympic Games' first opening ceremony, in London, in 1908. And it was the flag that covered the bodies of the four unknown soldiers buried in Westminster Abbey in 1920 to symbolise the casualties of war.

 By 1926, the flag had been commercialised. The Empire Marketing Board used it in a poster campaign to promote trade with the colonies. The slogan on the posters was "follow the flag in all your purchases". Huntley and Palmers used its image to sell Empire Assorted Biscuits, while Fry's sold chocolate and Hovis advertised bread with its help.

After VE-Day and the coronation of Elizabeth II, it became ubiquitous for every national celebration, while the lowering of it in India, Aden and Hong Kong, among other places, came to symbolise our colonial decline. (It still flies above Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and Rockall to remind us of our imperial past.)

Since the 1960s, it has been hijacked by modern culture. Carnaby Street loved it and Pete Townshend of the Who wore a Union flag jacket on the cover of the band's first album, My Generation. The Sex Pistols defined their image by bastardising the flag, while Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls wore it to the 1997 Brit Awards as a dress that was recently auctioned for £41,320. Even Prince William had a Union flag prefect's waistcoat at Eton.

Nowadays it decorates everything from Smeg fridges to dog tags to Rimmell beauty products advertised by Kate Moss.

And nobody cares any more if it is upside-down.

 "It is so subtly asymmetric that, unless you know your onions, you don't know which way is the right way up," said Conran. (The correct way to fly it is with the thick white band above the red band on both diagonals.)

 And yet despite its postwar status as a logo, it can still cause upset as a rallying banner. London's Southwark council outlawed it from council buildings during the last World Cup because it feared "a display of Britishness" would alienate ethnic minorities. That same year Billy Bragg sang the anti-Jubilee song Take Down the Union Jack.

 Today it is part of the citizenship ceremony, when immigrants take an oath of allegiance to the Queen and sing the national anthem standing by the Union flag. And it is still officially flown above Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Sandringham when the Queen is not in residence and on thousands of public buildings.

 It is flown on the birthdays of members of the Royal Family and on state days and at half-mast on the death of a royal (and for Diana, Princess of Wales). It was lowered for 9/11, the Bali bombing, the Boxing Day tsunami and 7/7.

 The results of a recent Reader's Digest survey from a wide range of age groups found that the favourite symbol of the country was the Union flag (16 per cent) followed by the monarchy (15 per cent) and fish and chips (13 per cent).

Earlier this year, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, called on the British people to celebrate their patriotism and embrace the flag. He wanted a flag in every garden. "The Union flag is a flag for tolerance and inclusion," he said. David Cameron, the ecologically minded Conservative leader, replied that the British "don't do flags on the front lawn".

 However, there may be a way to appease both men and celebrate the birthday of this extraordinarily evocative piece of design, which 400 years after its creation still represents the best of Britain.

 "A home vertical access windmill could be installed in every home,'' said Sebastian Conran. "An LED could be fitted in the leading edge of the blades, which would then serve as a flagpole and display a lit-up version of the flag. Then you would be flying the Union Jack all day and producing 1.5 ecologically sound kilowatts of electricity."

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