Brits outraged as councils tear down British flags after flying Palestinian ones
The councils of several British towns have sparked outrage by tearing down British flags after refusing to do the same to Palestinian flags.
An online movement called Operation Raise the Colours has encouraged patriotic Brits to fly the Union Jack and the St. George's Flag. In recent days, several of the movement’s activists affixed the national flags to lamp posts and buildings in London and Birmingham. The actions come as the UK government is accused of prioritizing migrants and Islamism while persecuting British citizens who speak out.
Town councils have responded negatively. Tower of Hamlets, a district in East London, quickly sent workers to tear down the flags. One such worker, identified as Tyrone, told the Daily Mail that he was met with anger from residents.
“They get annoyed because they say the Palestinian flags were left up for weeks and months, but the English flags have been removed straight away,” he said.
When Palestinian flags were erected after the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, Tower of Hamlets kept them up for months. The flags were only taken down last year after complaints from the Jewish community. Notably, the mayor of Tower of Hamlets is Lufthar Rahman, an Islamist from Bangladesh. The town also has the largest Muslim population of all council boroughs in the country, at just under 40%.
Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Secretary, told The Telegraph: "Tower Hamlets council have allowed Palestinian flags to be publicly displayed on lampposts but not the flag of our country. This absurd national self-loathing must end. This is yet more two-tier bias against the British people. We must be one country united under the Union flag."
Birmingham City Council has also announced plans to tear down British flags from lamp posts, claiming that the flags could “weaken” the structural integrity of the poles, “potentially leading to collapse.” The announcement comes after Palestinian flags were allowed to fly for months in towns like Sparkhill without any concerns about damage to lamp posts.
Brits say they have ‘had enough’
The group behind Operation Raise the Colours calls itself the Weoley Warriors, a band of largely anonymous residents of Weoley, Birmingham. On Facebook, the group said the campaign’s purpose is to “show Birmingham and the rest of the country of how proud we are of our history, freedoms and achievements” while “giving hope to local communities that all isn't lost and they are not alone.”
One group member said they had put up the flags because they had “had enough.”
“This country is a disgrace and has no backbone,” the activist said. “This isn't racism, it's frustration at being pushed into a corner and silenced.”
In late 2023, when pro-Hamas protests swept Britain after October 7th, police protected the terror supporters. During one demonstration, police asked counterprotesters to keep their British flags held back. When asked why they were allowing PLO flags to be flown but not British ones, an officer replied: “There's way more of them than there is of us.” Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary at the time, was terminated after speaking out against this double standard in policing.
Brits have also been arrested and imprisoned for criticizing migrant violence and Islam. Britain’s Home Office recently assembled a National Internet Intelligence Investigations team, a law enforcement unit tasked with monitoring anti-immigration posts online. Last year, Starmer responded to anti-immigration protests by announcing a crackdown on “criminal speech.”
Last year, 37-year-old Shaun Tuck was jailed for 15 weeks for a social media post that police considered racist. Thirty-four-year-old Sam Melia was sentenced to two years in prison for selling anti-immigration stickers. But twenty-one-year-old Hamoud Al Soaimi, a Syrian Muslim migrant who participated in the repeated gangrape of a 13-year-old girl while in his teens, was sentenced to just 180 hours of community service. Similarly, in 2023, a 20-year-old woman named Husina Hussain, who drunkenly assaulted a bowling alley employee and shouted racial slurs in public, avoided having to wear a sobriety ankle monitor because she was Muslim.
Meanwhile, British officials are preparing to codify a definition for the word “Islamophobia,” one that critics say will amount to a “blasphemy law” and may protect Islam from criticism. A recent report found that the government suppressed evidence of the systemic rape of young British girls by Pakistani pedophile gangs to avoid accusations of racism.
