Report From The Hamlets: January
ben | 13 Jan 2024, 2:47 p.m.
It's a muggy Saturday morning. I have already been out and about, getting fresh(ish) air in Poplar and Limehouse. My cuticles have been firmly scratched, and I'm questioning my life choices. A very successful morning of political leafleting, all in all.
One of the advantages of taking part in local politics is that you end up actually walking around the areas near where you live. This isn't to be taken for granted, especially in London. It may sound mundane, but really knowing your area is something which I think more people could do with, and only takes getting out your front door and walking through the neighbourhood without having your face buried in Google Maps.
You then start to take notice of features of the local area. It may be that you realise that you and whoever built some of the local neighbourhoods do not share many aesthetic opinions. For me, today, a surprising takeaway was my observations of the Palestinian flags in the neighbourhood.
I have known for a while that Palestinian flags were being erected around the borough.[1] This isn't surprising; there is a large Muslim community here. A large number are also recent immigrants, who are statistically more likely to both take their religious concerns more seriously, and to have a more global outlook. So there are people who care deeply about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, obviously.
In my mind, however, these flags were being put up in a similar way that Ukrainian flags had been put up in the past. Random, disconnected, groups of politically motivated individuals would go out and put a flag somewhere convenient and easy to reach, or perhaps even just hang a flag off their flat or out their window. This is not what you see around Tower Hamlets though, and it really takes getting out and patrolling the streets to take in the pattern. The flags are hung in an incredibly regular fashion: the vast majority of flags are hung high up on lamp-posts, tied on with zip-ties. There are the casually hung flags on the balconies of estates, sure, but there is definitely some organisation behind these vast numbers of very regular flags that span what is quite a large borough.
The hanging of these flags are surprisingly professionally done.
So, what should be made of this? Well, I would like to start by making some potentially positive comments. I'm a communitarian at heart, so the fact that a local group has gotten together to undertake this, to express collectively their support for a cause that is meaningful for them, does say something good about the community spirit. There are people living here that give a shit about each other, and about their wider community.
A little bit of thought should go into considering who this organised group is, however.
One suggestion - which I doubt is true, and also really hope is not true - is that it could be an effort supported by the council itself. This would be very concerning. Obviously the council should be representative, and if locals care about this issue then it's not ridiculous that the council should officially care too. However there are clearly connotations that come with picking a side in an armed conflict, especially when the way this is manifested is the pervasive presence of national flags. This is an emotive move, and I would hope the council would realise that it could be seen at best as insensitive towards Israeli residents, and at worst an active endorsement of violence that has been committed on the Gaza border. The council is already in legal trouble for at the very least failing to take down the flags[2], but I do really doubt that the council was involved in putting them up.
So who else? Quite plausibly this is done through organised religious groups, through the imams. Once again, I think the initial reaction here should be approval of a strong community, and people who care about each other. However there are certainly potentially concerning elements of all this.
First, the flags are being put up not only to represent a nation that happens to be in violent conflict, strongly associated with (if not actively committing) atrocities, but are being put up directly because of the conflict. If we would expect people to be considerate around associating themselves with violent English nationalists, with the way that some people use the English flag to represent a tacit endorsement of unacceptable behaviour, and to create an oppressive atmosphere, it seems incredibly reasonable to also expect people to be very careful around what they are doing by hanging Palestinian flags. Especially when there certainly are some incidents of law-breaking at pro-Palestinian rallies in the UK.[3]
Another reason to be concerned is that this is organised at such a scale that it has the capacity to cross over into something worse. The Borough is a large place, and these flags are quite pervasive, and - as I have already said - organised very precisely. This clearly makes it of a different nature than a large number of individuals who happen to be doing the same thing at the same time. We shouldn't assume that all organised action is nefarious. But at the same time, the idea of organised illegal action through the imams in Tower Hamlets does, sadly, have precedent.[4]
This isn't something to be up in arms about, either. I certainly do not think stoking the hatred and fear in this political situation is a good thing, and I think if individuals or organised groups were to go around taking down the flags, or putting up Israeli flags in opposition, this would be of a similar kind of bad as organising putting up the Palestinian flags in the first place. I wish the council would be a voice of reason here, reassuring people that their concerns are taken seriously, and getting ahead of any potential issues. But I somehow doubt that is going to happen.
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67330509
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlam_v_Rahman#Undue_influence
About Me
This is a new-ish blog, created in October 2022. I plan on using it.
A plan does not consistute a promise.
Contact email: blog@noot.lol