This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
The battle for Glasgow’s lampposts made it to the telly over the weekend, with GB News vox-popping locals about the appearance of the new Palestine–Saltire combo flag.
Over the last couple of weeks, street lights across the city — mainly in the Southside and the West End — have been adorned with this new hybrid pennant, thanks to activists in a group called United in Resistance.
While the channel’s headline claimed “Scots outraged after activist group unfurls Palestine–Saltire flags on city centre”, the locals featured in the package were, to my ear at least, more meh than livid.
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There are people unhappy about these new flags. Tom Harris, the former Labour minister, took to X to say he’d written to the council asking them to “get a cherry picker out to remove them".
Reform UK councillor Thomas Kerr told me he thought they were “deliberately being flown to stir up division in our city".
“These represent a foreign country and cause fear for many, including Glasgow’s small but resilient Jewish community,” he added.
The new flags were a response to Operation Raise the Colours — a campaign co-founded by Andrew Currien, otherwise known as Andy Saxon, who’s allegedly had links with the English Defence League and Britain First, though the group denies it’s a far-right organisation.
They initially called for streets, lampposts and roundabouts in England to be adorned with the Union Flag and the St George’s Cross.
That triggered a similar push in Scotland, with Saltires and Union Flags appearing in towns and cities across the country.
It has been associated with the anti-immigration protests seen outside hotels housing asylum seekers, including in Falkirk.
Speaking to the Bell, United in Resistance said the Saltire being “used as a symbol of division and fear” was “not a true representation of Scotland’s legacy of fairness and equality".
The new flag was their bid to combat that.
They’ve been selective about where they go. United in Resistance told the Bell they were “not out to antagonise”, so decided to avoid the areas mainly in the north and east where Saltires have already been raised.
What will happen to them?
Glasgow City Council says it’s always been its intention to “remove all such flags as part of our ongoing operational activity” — and that applies as much to what United in Resistance call their solidarity flag as it does to those Saltires and Union Jacks that still fly.
A spokesperson said they’ll prioritise those that present “a risk to the public or the city’s infrastructure” and those “where a flag has deteriorated to such an extent it should obviously be removed".
That is, as Council Leader Susan Aitken told STV News, when they become “tatty.”
“It will be dealt with as part of normal operational activities by the teams who work on this,” she said. “It’s not something we’ll divert resources to deal with. We’d take flags down before they start to look tatty and deteriorate, which usually happens quite quickly.”
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What are other cities doing?
My colleague Donald Turvill recently saw internal communications from the City of Edinburgh Council about arrangements to have Saltires put up by activists along Calder Road “removed as a priority".
However, more than a month on, they remain tied to lampposts along the dual carriageway that runs west out of the city.
In his report, Donald said he’d been told by sources there were safety concerns for council staff or contractors tasked with removing the flags, following several incidents — including one where a worker was verbally abused and had his cherry picker damaged while attempting to take down Saltire flags from lampposts in Stenhousemuir.
Councils in Aberdeenshire and Falkirk have said similar.
The battle for the lampposts might just be the one fight Scotland’s councils are happy to lose.
The flags are, for now, it seems, here to stay.
It’s important not to get too distracted by the flags. They’re a symptom of something bigger — a shorthand for the anxious political climate we find ourselves in.
You can take the flags down, sure, but the tensions that put them there in the first place — and saw them answered with more flags — aren’t going to be fixed with a cherry picker or the impact of a Scottish winter on material that’s 55% linen and 45% rayon.
