The private meetings - and very public rancour - that led to Birmingham’s flags injunction

Last October, at the Stirchley Triangle, just by the Aldi and the British Oak pub, a so-called ‘Community Day’ was hastily planned in response to a new and unfortunate presence in the local area. The day, its organisers said, would be an opportunity for the community to be reunited, write “messages of unity” and for parents to bring along the little ones to do some art.

But when Sarah Barton arrived to set up the art table, at 9:30am, she was met by a strange sight: a large group of men in high vis jackets, one with a rottweiler on a leash. They were using a cherry picker to hang flags from lampposts, and had brought Union Jack bunting. In their company was a film crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network, an American channel established in the 1960s by the televangelist and media mogul Pat Robertson. 

This was Raise the Colours, the now-notorious ‘flag-raising’ troupe founded last summer by Ryan Bridge alongside sex doll salesman Elliot Stanley. The community day had been organised in response to the group’s recent presence in the area, which had come to a head with an altercation between them and a local tattoo artist. But Raise the Colours had caught wind, and they wanted to show they weren’t going anywhere. In the end — after a series of altercations — the police moved Bridge and co on. But it was far from the last the Stirchley community would see of them.

In the course of a year, several Raise the Colours members have been arrested, an activist has been run over by a cherry picker, breaking his leg, and two groups have been engaged in a game of “cat and mouse” (as one de-flagger terms it) around Stirchley: one group putting the flags up, the other taking them down. The culmination, last week, was a decision by Birmingham City Council that has led Elon Musk to brand them “traitors” and the Daily Mail to run a headline all but claiming the British flag has been banned outright: the council applied for a High Court injunction to prevent the raising of flags on lampposts around the city. The council’s injunction specifically names Bridge and other members of his group.

But amidst the furious newspaper columns and radio phone-ins about Birmingham “banning the flag”, the answer to one important question appears to be missing: how exactly did this injunction come about? The Dispatch has spoken with members of an activist group formed last year, which has been meeting regularly with the council since March, and whose role appears to be pivotal. As one of the activists told us: “The injunction came about directly from a lobbying and advocacy group”.