Raised in Weoley Castle

All of 15 seconds elapse between Richard opening the door to his house in Weoley Castle – decorated with a vast England flag hanging from a second floor window – and me running out of questions. I rattle off three and he answers gamely: “Sure mate, as long as it’s quick…Richard…I put it up for the World Cup.” The door closes — not roughly, not rudely, but with a certain finality. What else is there to say? 

Get off the train at Selly Oak and walk 45 minutes towards the Weoley Castle pub and flags spring up right, left and centre. A year has now passed since their appearance, and reading about flags might hold the same limited appeal for you that, say, reading about Covid-19 might do. Yes, it’s a topic that once gripped the nation. Yes, it’s very much still around. But isn’t there something else we can read about?

Yes and no. Yes, there is — no, we’re staying put. The Dispatch covers flags frequently not least because the group claiming responsibility for most of them, Birmingham-founded Raise the Colours, have had such an action-packed 12 months.

Co-founder Ryan Bridge was arrested on suspicion of committing racially aggravated harassment on a flag-raising expedition in April, a Raise the Colours van was then linked to an incident where a pedestrian got a broken leg (following which Bridge was arrested again, on suspicion of wounding), then Raise the Colour’s member Billy Allison was charged with murder and grievous bodily harm with intent in relation to an incident at a bar in Lichfield, before Bridge was arrested again, this time at an anti-immigration protest in Brighton. He was subsequently charged with common assault. Most recently Ben Cullen, another member of the group, has appeared in court charged with making indecent images of children. The group was also banned from France at one point, for good measure.

But the flags remain. And in such quantities. And so as my train pulled reluctantly into the station, one year on, this time the point was not to simply find whoever had his prints on the cherry-picker (that is, the mechanical lift used to hang the flags). That’s too easy and we already have the answers. At Castle Square, a ring of small shops in Weoley, it looks a bit like trooping the colour would look if the royals were marched out of the palace and forced to set up shop in suburban Birmingham.

I get chatting to Andre, who lives on one of the flaggiest streets in the area and has done for quite some time. He tells me the maintenance efforts have been commendable — many of the flags on his street were replaced a few months ago after they’d become tatty. They’ve also been shifted up the flagpole by mutual agreement that the half-mast approach was poor optics. The street WhatsApp group has been deployed effectively to this end. He can’t remember who originally put them up, whether it was a street-led effort or the works of vigilantes like Bridge and co, but he’s happy they’re here now. 

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