There is little point in protesting about Flags in the City.
Flags are controversial in Derry/Londonderry but hard facts have to be faced. With the Good Friday and St Andrew’s Agreement the Union Flag is now the official constitutional flag of Derry/Londonderry and is accepted as such by Sinn Fein for as long as they sit in Stormont in the pay of the British Exchequer propping up a right wing Union Flag Unionist State. The Union Flag has always been the flag of Constitutional Nationalism and hence of the S.D.L.P. The Tricolour in N. Ireland is now meaningless with the withdrawal of Articles 2 and3 of the Republics Constitution. Indeed to fly a Tricolour in N. Ireland is now silly.
What Derry/Londonderry now needs is a new flag for all— be it the Catholics of the Bogside or the Protestants of the Fountain and the Waterside. A suggested new flag is a redesign of the Irish Tricolour where the red Irish saltire is placed in the white central panel of the Tricolour along with Kingdom emblems of the Crown (newly designed) the Harp and Shamrock. This new flag should be defined in the National Government of Ireland Act as The Royal Flag of Ireland and is the National Flag of Ireland and the symbol of the Federal Kingdom of the Sovereign Nation of Ireland and Great Britain with a reformed Crown democratically elected as Head of State in Ireland. This Act should be ratified by Westminster first and then endorsed by the Irish in a referendum.
If this of interest further ideas are available at www.authorhouse.co.uk by typing my name into the search engine
Michael Gillespie Derry
