LETTER : The red flag will continue to fly

From Mr John Gorman

Sir: Steve Hitchens (letter, 19 May), in referring to the flying of the red flag over Islington town hall, argues that the red flag is a "symbol of oppression". Nonsense. It is an emblem of revolt, liberation and international working-class solidarity.

Its origins are uncertain, but Britain may lay claim. Professor Gwyn Williams, in writing of the Merthyr Tydfil rising of 1831, relates how the miners, after a bloody confrontation with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, "ritually sacrificed a calf, washed a flag in its blood and impaled a loaf of bread on the staff" and "marched to rouse the people to insurrection".

When Jim Connell, the grand old Irish socialist, wrote The Red Flag in 1889, he was, he said, inspired by the judicial murder of trade unionists in Chicago in 1887, and the great London dock strike of 1889. Both events arose from the struggle of working people against oppression.

The red flag may not fly in Islington next year, but it is worth recalling the fifth verse of The Red Flag:

It suits today the weak and base

Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place

To cringe before the rich man's frown

And haul the sacred emblem down

Haul it down, Mr Hitchens, but it will still flutter aloft in the hearts of all true socialists.

Yours sincerely,

JOHN GORMAN

Waltham Abbey, Essex

21 May