UNION JACK: THE STORY BEHIND THE FLAG
01 March 2018
Capable of arousing conflicting passions at home and known the world over as a symbol of the United Kingdom, the Union Jack is an intricate construction based on the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick. In this briefing, Professor Nick Groom traces its long and fascinating past.
There are two popular assumptions made about the Union Jack flag: first, that its correct name is the ‘Union Flag’; secondly, that it combines the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick and therefore represents the countries England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The first point can be swiftly dealt with. The flag has been called the ‘Union Jack’ in official documents since 1674, and so there is nothing wrong with this more familiar, less formal usage – in fact, it can be seen as encompassing the whole culture of the red, white, and blue. The second point, however, is more complicated, and raises questions about the status of the flag today.
The red cross is one of the oldest Christian symbols, depicted in early iconography being borne by St Michael or even Christ Himself. Its most powerful association today is of course with St George, warrior saint and ‘megalomartyr’, the patron of England as well as some two dozen other countries and provinces. By the eleventh century St George was identified by his ‘white armour marked with the red cross’ in visions appearing to Crusaders, and his identification with England started to be cemented during Third Crusade when Richard I Coeur de Lion adopted St George as his personal patron. St George gradually replaced native English saints such as Edmund, Edward, and Alban, and by the end of the Middle Ages almost two hundred parish churches in England were dedicated to him. Edward I marched under the banner of St George in 1277, and his grandson Edward III flew the standard from his ships. Edward III’s own grandson, Richard II, ordered his soldiers to wear the cross of St George emblazoned on their surcoats, which Henry V wrote into his ordinances of war in 1419.
In Scotland, it was possibly as early as the eighth century that Angus, King of the Picts adopted St Andrew as the patron saint of his people. Angus dreamt that the saint appeared to him on the eve of battle, and the next day a silver saltire (diagonal cross) shone in the bright blue sky. Following Angus’s victory the Picts adopted the emblem as their banner, and in 843 it was taken by Kenneth MacAlpin as the flag of the emergent kingdom of the Scots. There were already holy relics of the apostle St Andrew in Scotland, and the tradition that St Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross may actually have developed after the Scottish identification with the saint. The colour of the background was not fixed until the sixteenth century, and before then the silver saltire appeared against other fields, such as black. The cross of St Andrew was declared the national emblem by the Scottish Parliament on 1 July 1385, to be worn by Scottish and French soldiers on the front and back of their ‘jacques’ (surcoats) when on campaign against the English.
The Irish cross of St Patrick is the third original element in the Union Jack. It is, like the cross of St Andrew, a diagonal cross: a red saltire on a white or silver field. The link with St Patrick is at best tenuous and certainly has no hagiographical authority, as strictly speaking only crucified martyrs are entitled to be represented by crosses, and Patrick died peacefully. The design seems to have been adopted from the badge of the FitzGeralds, one of the ancient royal dynasties of Ireland. By the fifteenth century, the arms of the FitzGeralds of Kildare were a red diagonal cross on a silver field, and indeed Gerald FitzGerald VIII, the Great Earl of Kildare and an early advocate of Irish self-determination, was fined for flying this standard from his castle in 1467; it was also flown at sea, appeared in the arms of Trinity College, Dublin in 1591, and ten years later a painting of the Battle of Kinsale showed Irish troops rallying under the same flag.
As for the Union Jack, the first ‘Flag of the Great Union’ came after James VI of Scotland succeeded Queen Elizabeth to become James I of England and King of Ireland in 1603, on account of being descended from the Tudor monarch Henry VII on both his mother’s and his father’s side. Although a formal Act of Union was not ratified until 1707, James nevertheless proclaimed the name Great Britain on coins and on 12 April 1606 flew the first Union Flag. Since James’s accession, British ships had been obliged to fly two flags: the crosses of both St George and St Andrew. But two flags flying from one mast indicated that a military engagement had taken place, with the victor’s flag hung at the top, which created problems. The king accordingly commissioned the Earl of Nottingham to design a combined flag, and after various attempts he proposed interlacing or ‘compounding’ the two crosses. It was an ingenious solution that as far as possible avoided giving one cross precedence over the other. While the cross of St George was indeed imposed over that of St Andrew, the most honourable situation of a flag, the canton or upper quarter nearest the hoist, was occupied by the colours of St Andrew. The design was first ordered in an Admiralty letter of 1 April 1606, which stipulated that the new Union Flag was to be flown by all royal and merchant vessels, and this was proclaimed on 12 April 1606. The design was slightly adjusted following the Act of Union in 1707 by increasing the white borders to make the flag easier to recognise at a distance, especially at sea.
The flag we fly today was the result of the Act of Union with Ireland, passed in January 1800, becoming law on the first day of the new century: New Year’s Day 1801. The cross of St Patrick, which, for example, the Knights of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick had incorporated into their regalia in 1783, was interlaced with the two other crosses, but offset or ‘counter-changed’. This means that the red cross of St Patrick is necessarily narrower than the white saltire and placed below it in the canton, a subtlety that confirms the status of St Andrew’s cross.
The accounts of the Union Jack in these Acts are, however, only heraldic and described in only a very few words. In fact, there are no regulations for the exact colours or precise dimensions, although the military has standardised the design of the flag for its own uses. This means that the flag can – and does – appear in different colours and styles. Of course, this relaxed attitude is one reason the Union Jack has become an international brand and a global icon, particularly in popular culture, but it also creates anomalies. At the 2016 Rio Games, for instance, a distorted version of the Union Jack appeared at the opening and closing ceremonies and on the podium. There has likewise been a generally laissez-faire position on the rights of private citizens to fly the flag – except, importantly, at sea. In fact, no single government department or public body has overall jurisdiction over the Union Jack or for any policy concerning it.
In his first statement to the House of Commons as Prime Minister on 3 July 2007, Gordon Brown ordered that all Government buildings should fly the flag every day to help engender a sense of British identity – the first significant parliamentary intervention since 1933, when it was confirmed that any private citizen could fly the flag on land. Moreover, Brown’s initiative also permitted the national flags of England, Scotland, and Wales (Northern Ireland remains governed by its own Flags Regulations of 2000). This in turn raised the question of Welsh representation in the Union Jack.
This issue is twofold. It is important to remember that the retrospective legislation confirming the Act of Union between England and Wales was passed by Henry VIII, a Tudor monarch, whose Welsh father had fifty years previously defeated and slain Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. For Henry VIII, the adoption of the cross of St George by the Tudors was effectively representing both the kingdom of England and its principality Wales. Henry VII had in fact gone into battle against Richard with a dragon standard that incorporated the cross of St George.
The Union Jack is, then, both a map and a history of the union, in which each element has been adapted in relation to the others. It is in a sense a flag of compromise, combining diversity with inclusivity. However, in the two-hundred-plus years since the current Union Jack was first devised, the flag has clearly become an autonomous symbol. In other words, it is no longer appropriate to see it as representing England (and Wales), Scotland, and Northern Ireland – not least as it was not reworked following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. Rather, the Union Jack should now be understood as an emblem in its own right that symbolises the United Kingdom.
The joint context of Brexit and threats of Scottish independence present, perhaps, an opportune moment to confirm a ‘basic standard’ or central definition for the design and protocols of the flag when it is flown at official occasions. Having an officially sanctioned UK flag would not only sidestep any question of Scottish independence altering the flag, but in the pressing context of Brexit would be a wise move. The Union Jack symbolises a global UK. In the Overseas Territories, for example, it is seen not as a colonial flag but as ‘part of us’, as a ‘purposeful connection’ with the UK. The North-East Atlantic Archipelago in fact encompasses Bermuda and the Pitcairn Islands, St Helena and the Cayman Islands, as well as the Realms and Territories of Tuvalu and Norfolk Island, and of course Australia and Canada and many other places. In the context of an increasingly plural world, the Union Jack is a reminder that those over whom it flies have at least a dual nationality, a diverse and manifold identity.
If this briefing has whetted your appetite for vexillology (the study of flags) then Nick Groom’s book ‘Union Jack’ has much more on the history of Britain’s flag.
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