A Labour council has been accused of embracing “flag terror” after offering £500 grants to groups to erect union jack and St George’s flags in a town previously rocked by racial tension.
The leaders of Rotherham council, in South Yorkshire, said they wanted the flags to be a “symbol of unity” and did not want to “surrender them to extremist or far-right groups”.
However, it comes at a time of growing concern across Britain about rising ethno-nationalism and intimidation after thousands of national flags were erected by groups with links to rightwing figures.
Rotherham was the scene of one of the worst cases of civil disorder in recent history in 2024 when demonstrators tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers as race-fuelled riots spread across England.
The area has also been a magnet for far-right figures for years after it was one of the first places exposed in the grooming gangs scandal.
In a scheme announced quietly on its website last week, Rotherham council said it would offer £500 grants to community groups and parish councils to cover the cost of erecting a flagpole with either a union jack or St George’s flag.
Chris Read, the council’s Labour leader, on Wednesday defended the use of the “tiny” sum of “a few thousand pounds” by an authority whose debts rose to £677m last year.
He said it was being funded by an underspend on another council project and “won’t be coming out of people’s council tax bills”.
Read has previously acknowledged that some communities were “scared” by the hundreds of national flags erected from lamp-posts across the town and told councillors last month that he was “very concerned” by far-right influencers spreading division in Rotherham.
The council offered the grants in an attempt to demonstrate that national symbols must not be “surrendered” to extremists, he said, adding that the “scraggy” flags put up by across the town would be taken down as they were becoming “disrespectful to a proud nation”.
However, the council was accused of appeasing the far right by embracing “nationalism and anti-humanity rhetoric”.
Désirée Reynolds, the artist in residence at Sheffield City Archives, said the flag movement was “a part of a terror campaign and it continues to be so”.
She said: “Rotherham’s Labour council and Labour in general think moving towards the far right is the only way to keep power but has decided to ignore the flag terror and go full appeasement.”
Reynolds, who founded the racial justice movement Dig Where You Stand, questioned who had sanctioned the £500 offer for flags and whether all communities “were considered or even consulted”.
“It’s national and anti-humanity rhetoric,” she said, adding that the flags erected across the town in an apparently spontaneous show of patriotism were not removed, “no matter how much terror they sparked in racialised communities”.
Jawad Hussain of Stand Up To Racism Rotherham described the move as “concerning” and said it would “embolden the far right”.
He said: “When all those flags were put up it was quite a terrifying thing. The message behind that, for our communities, is that the flag is being used by the far right – the BNP, Ukip, EDL – to say the flag is for us, not you.”
Hussain, 24, whose local mosque was defaced with a St George’s flag after the asylum hotel riot, said the council grants would “give the far right confidence” and added: “The council has no idea what it’s doing.”
Taiba Yaseen, an independent councillor in Rotherham, raised concerns that only the St George’s and union flags were being funded: “If somebody wants to put up the Pride flag, or the Ukraine flag, for example, or the Palestinian flag, how will that be enforced?”
Read, who has led the Labour council for 11 years, said the national flags were “symbols of all our communities” and that “we must not allow that to divide us”.
He added: “What we want to see going forward is our national flags being flown in our communities but being treated with respect, so that means being flown from council buildings in a way they always have been.
“It is absolutely essential that these are national flags that represent all our communities and all the people who live here and we are not surrendering them to extremist or far-right groups.”
