30 April, 2006

New nationalism

I'm not into caravanning*.  My parents had a touring caravan (I think it'd be more accurate to say it was my father's, in hindsight), and I have a fairly clear memory of sitting in it on Anglesey in 1978 whilst my father explained we'd have to cut the holiday short as he'd obtained work in Norway.  Again in hindsight, that was a life-changing event – nothing was the same from then on.
Throughout my teens, family holidays were taken in static caravans in the same location in North-west Wales, but I haven't been in a touring caravan since the age of about seven.

All of which is to make the point that I'm not necessarily abreast of recent developments in caravanning. I saw something whilst cycling today that was new to me, but may have been established years ago: flags. I don't mean little triangular pennants, but full-size rectangular flags, on (telescopic?) flagpoles.

I know that national flags are a prominent part of the culture in countries such as the USA and Norway, but one of the things I quite like about the UK is that we don't feel a need to visibly affirm or celebrate nationhood. It's just... not done. Not doing so is part of what makes the British British.
Flags fly from churches and town halls sometimes (not routinely), and people wave flags at royal occasions. The flag is prominent at sporting events, but I'd say garments in the appropriate colours tend to outnumber actual flags. Schools don't display the national flag, and it's rare to see one flying from a private house or garden.

So where have these caravan flags come from? What inspires someone to travel to a different part of the UK and visibly proclaim his/her Britishness (or, rather worse, Englishness), especially when he/she doesn't do so at home?
I wonder if it's that people feel less inhibited about making such a gesture amongst strangers than in front of their everyday neighbours. In which case, I suppose it's only a matter of time before the inhibition is defeated and flagpoles appear in gardens. Which I definitely wouldn't applaud.

That's not answering my question, though: never mind how this might develop, what inspired it in the first place?
I wonder whether it's significant that it's associated with caravanning – would those people who go camping, or those who visit hotels, have the same attitude to flags?

*: Yes, 'caravanning' is a word, though somehow one feels it shouldn't be....