STEVENAGE, England -- A tide of red and white is rising across England -- hoisted on lampposts, daubed on crosswalks, stuck on apartment windows.
Those behind it insist this campaign to raise the English flag, known as St. George's Cross, is an expression of patriotism; others see the sudden prevalence of the banner, sometimes associated with soccer hooliganism and racism, as a hostile statement of surging far-right sentiment.
The febrile debate went global this week when Elon Musk, the former adviser to President Donald Trump and backer of far-right movements globally, posted a picture of the flag on X. Vice President JD Vance also staged his latest intervention into British life, urging people to "push back against the crazies" who criticize flying the flag.
In a country where the national flag is rare outside of sporting events, the banners now fluttering above a highway here in Stevenage are typical of those popping up nationwide in recent weeks as part of the grassroots "Operation Raise the Colours."
The flags were put up here last week by a five-strong group including Louis Turvey, who read about the national movement on Facebook, where he said he gets most of his news.
Turvey, 33, who has Roma-Gypsy heritage and was raised in London, 30 minutes away by train, says he was in no way motivated by far-right or hostile feelings. Rather he wanted to do something positive and fly his national flag "like you see on holiday in Greece or Spain," he said.
"I saw all the flags going up around the country and thought, 'How lovely is that?' But I went for a little drive round Stevenage and didn't see any," Turvey, a former demolition worker with auburn curls, hipster moustache, low-buttoned shirt and a single earing, told NBC News over coffee at a nearby Starbucks. "I kept thinking: Who's going to do it" around here? "Well you know what, I'm going to do it."
He met his fellow flaggers through his online handle "Stevenage Patriots" and had never met them before, he said. "I'm gay and a lot of my friends are girls, so I was quite nervous hanging around with four straight lads," he added. "But it was such a lovely evening; quite spiritual actually; quite calming."
However he soon experienced just how charged this debate has become when, just as his group was packing up, someone threw two Molotov cocktails at them, the second cutting Turvey's head and covering his face with blood. "I thought I was going to die," he said, visibly shaken by an incident he says has put a pause on his flag-hoisting activities for the time being at least.
Critics see darker forces undergirding the broader flag campaign.
They view this groundswell as little more than an aggressive, provocative message to people with an immigrant background and nonwhite residents.
The anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate reported that the founders of Operation Raise the Colours include "well-known far-right extremists" and allies of Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record who has become a leading nationalist voice in Britain. Indeed, Musk himself has used his X audience of 223 million to voice support for Robinson, as well as other far-right figures in Britain and across Europe.
NBC News messaged the three administrators of the Operation Raise the Colours Facebook page asking for comment and interviews with these founders but did not receive a response.
These fears are widespread. When a St. George's Cross was painted on the wall of St. John the Baptist church in the town of Lincoln, the vicar Rachel Heskins saw it as a clear "attempt to intimidate" the diverse local community.
"The St. George's Cross has become a symbol of nationalism which has become confused with patriotism -- the two are very different,"
she told the BBC.
All this comes as immigration is now the top issue for voters in England, having just overtaken the cost-of-living crisis throttling millions, polls show. The most popular political party is Reform U.K., led by Trump ally and friend Nigel Farage, who recently said he would carry out a mass deportation of 600,000 people if he wins the next election in 2029.
National identity in Britain is doubly complicated because the United Kingdom includes the nations of England, Wales and Scotland, and the province of Northern Ireland. During the soccer World Cup and on some public holidays, England's banner is widely used by people of all political and demographic stripes; but outside of those events it has been co-opted by nationalists, the far-right and even fascists.
All the data shows that most people in Britain are becoming more tolerant and less racist
,said Sunder Katwala
,the director of British Future
,a think tank focused on identity
.That's certainly the experience of Moj
,44
,a Briton with Bangladeshi heritage
,sitting with his 11-year-old daughter in Stevenage's faded postwar town square
."I remember being a kid and getting called all sorts of racist names. I don't get that anymore,"
said Moj
,who like many in this town of 80,000 declined to give his second name for fear of local backlash
.Despite the improvement
,the flag still holds negative connotations for him
."In certain areas, if I see an English flag, there is always a part of me that thinks, OK, I've got to be a bit careful here,"
he said.
Stevenage was dreamed up in 1946 as an example of "new town" modernism, an integrated residential-commercial space in which to house families scattered by war. Today -- despite a much needed £1 billion ($1.35 billion) regeneration scheme on the way -- its faded pebbledash and dated glass shopfronts feel like a cipher for modern Britain.
As is the case across the West, many Britons are increasingly concerned and angry about rising prices, decrepit public services, a lack of housing -- and the perception that immigration has been mismanaged.
All this leaves "the U.K. sitting on a tinderbox of disconnection and division," according to a lengthy report last month by British Future. Compounded by the cost-of-living crisis and supercharged by social media, this is "turning the chronic crisis of social disconnection into an acute threat of social division."
Turvey hanging flags in his community then being struck by a Molotov cocktail saw those divisions flare into life. He was bandaged up, received stitches and gave a statement to the police though he did not see his attackers and has not heard from officers since
,he said
.At first
,he thought the blood running down his face was acid (acid attacks are on the rise in the U.K.)
,and he said the incident has only added to the chronic anxiety stemming from a homophobic attack in 2018.
Though he decries any form of racism or negativity associated with the flag movement
,he says that part of his motivation stemmed from the perception that the current Labour government "is not siding with English people" and "that's probably why people are so upset at the moment."
Indeed
,polls show Labour at its lowest support since 2019
,sinking to just 20% of the vote in a poll by YouGov this week.
Farage's Reform party
,meanwhile
,has soared to 28%
,according to the same top pollster
,the highest of any party but not enough to govern without a coalition were a national vote held today.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken an increasingly hard rhetorical line on immigration.
He is under pressure to deal with the "small boats" crisis, in which more than 50,000 people have arrived in small, unsafe vessels across the English Channel from France since he won a landslide election last year. Meanwhile, the government won a Supreme Court battle Friday so that asylum seekers could continue being housed at a hotel in Epping northeast of London—a site that has sparked numerous protests and counterprotests.
Rumbling underneath all of this is the so-called grooming gangs scandal: the sexual exploitation of young women and girls by men in British towns and cities. A review in June found that although most alleged perpetrators were white; in some areas there were higher rates among men of Asian/Pakistani heritage than their equivalent share within population . At same time , review warned many claiming outrage merely trying "spread division hate across communities."
And so , amid all this , up goes English flag .
"There are probably one or two locations where it's organic and it started from below," Katawala , director British Future , said . "Then there's another group -- again , quite small -- which politically radicalized , knows what it's doing why it's doing it."