By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 10, 2006; E12
LONDON -- Construction worker Tony Bentley flies an English flag on his truck and has a monstrous 10-by-18-foot one draped over the front of his house. With England playing its first World Cup game Saturday in Germany, Bentley is pledging allegiance with a flag: "I'm English and I want to show it."
While that is hardly unusual by American standards, flag-flying patriotism has been a rarity in England. But the country is now in the midst of a spasm of flag mania, spurred in large part by the World Cup but also with a growing comfort with public displays of patriotism.
Since May, flag-makers and retailers have been reporting record sales of flags as well as a wide assortment of flag-decorated items from bra straps to dog vests. Hairdressers are offering haircuts buzzed and dyed into the shape of the flag. So many drivers are hoisting flags on their taxis, trucks and cars that one academic, mindful of $7-a-gallon gas, has calculated the fuel cost of "flag drag."
The fluttering banners are the English flag, a red cross on a white background called the St. George's flag in honor of England's patron saint. More famous is the Union Flag, known colloquially as the Union Jack, the red, white and blue banner that represents all of Britain -- England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
By long tradition each of those four nations fields its own entry in the World Cup. Only England qualified this year and it is England's flag this week being painted on pubs, recreated in red-and-white flower beds and even spray-painted on sheep.
But all the flag-waving makes some people nervous. English travelers to the United States have long returned to recount with fascination how the Stars and Stripes flutters not just atop government buildings but on children's bikes and suburban front lawns. To English eyes, conspicuous flag displays seem a bit tacky, a bit showy, a bit . . . American.
"I don't think it's a bad thing," said Gerard Delanty, a sociologist at the University of Liverpool. "Though I personally find it rather banal."
In this class-conscious country, more than a few note that the flag-flyers tend to be working class -- certainly not the well bred taught to abhor displays of emotion.
"I know some snobs say all the flags lower property values. That is rubbish!" said Mark Stoddard, a shop owner in the Forest Gate neighborhood of east London who proudly displayed his St. George's on his store window.
"This is something that has really taken off," said Richard Dodd, spokesman for the British Retail Consortium. By his account, the St. George's flag was rarely seen until the late 1990s but is now a massive driver of sales.
Dodd estimated that the month-long World Cup would generate about $2 billion in retail sales -- and a considerable portion of that would be fueled by flag imagery. And beer. That's a formula that led one retailer to come up with the "living room mini-fridge" with the St. George's flag on the front, which will allow the patriotic fan to grab a cold brew without taking his eyes off the television.
Many English also see all the St. George's flag-waving as a delightful poke at the Scottish, who did not qualify for the World Cup and tend to be more exuberant about their identity than the English. Chancellor Gordon Brown, a Scot who is jockeying to be Britain's next prime minister, has been a vocal supporter of England's World Cup team. That has required some delicate diplomacy among his Scottish constituents, many of whom react to the St. George's flag the way a bull reacts to a matador's cape.
"My car would be pelted with eggs if I drove around Glasgow with the St. George's flag fluttering from my car," said Maggie Shiels, a radio personality from the Scottish city. "You'd be hung, drawn and quartered."
Roger Eatwell, a professor of European politics at the University of Bath, said there are several reasons why people were for so long uncomfortable with the flag.
Since the 1970s, the Union Flag and the St. George's flag have become closely associated with extreme nationalist parties, he said. Those political parties have long festooned their podiums, vehicles and brochures with flag imagery and many people feared that displaying the flag would associate them with racist views. Some businesses banned the flags from company cars and offices, lest they offend.
But recently there has been a move "to recapture the flag" and bring it back into the mainstream, Eatwell said.
"We are taking it back from the far right," said Joe Darroll, 37, who has two St. George's flags flying from his delivery van in east London. "Common sense has finally taken over."
Darren Moore, whose Supporter Flags and Promotions Ltd. company has enjoyed a quadrupling in business in recent weeks, said the surge in flag sales signals an end to English people being "brow-beaten into not flying the flag by the politically correct brigade."
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Blair sent reporters scurrying to file articles when he announced he'll fly the English flag over 10 Downing Street on days when England plays in the World Cup. Normally Downing Street and other government buildings fly no flag; on 18 days a year, mainly royal family birthdays, they hoist the Union Flag.
Perhaps the terrorist attacks last summer have also played into rising patriotism. After suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on the London public transit system, someone hung a St. George's flag outside a blown-up subway station and wrote in the white space around the red cross: "Bombed But Not Beaten."
But mostly, the flag wavers are just diehard English soccer fans. They dismiss as killjoys those upset about their ascendancy, including the horse owners in bucolic Hampshire who recently complained to police that the flapping banners on cars are startling their animals.