Resist the Ubiquitous Union Jack
18 May 2012 9 Comments
in Propaganda, British Nationalism Tags: propaganda, British nationalism, Union Jacks, unnecessaryunionjacks, Saltire, flags, Union Flag, Scottish flag, nationalism, Scottish nationalism, independence campaign, semiotics
See original Village Aunties post from April 9 2012 which kicked off the #unnecessaryunionjacks meme.
See the Village Aunties Pinterest Board (hashtag #unnecessaryunionjacks) for our ever-growing collection of #unnecessaryunionjacks in Scotland, including a mankini, babies’ nappies, and Scottish shortbread.
Source: normsonline.wordpress.com via Morag on Pinterest
Join in by Tweeting, Facebook-linking, emailing, commenting here, with pictures of Union Jacks in Scotland.
Read on to see some ideas for resisting the scourge of Union Jacks in Scotland.
What we’ve been doing
Village Aunties have been collecting Union Jacks from around Scotland for nearly six weeks now, mostly on Twitter (using the hashtag #unnecessaryunionjacks) and Facebook, with some folk texting and emailing examples. Thanks everyone who has sent them. With ca. 150 collected already, it is starting to feel like one is never more than five feet from a Union Jack (in Glasgow anyway; thanks to Auntie @CSbungo for this observation and for many of the ideas in this post).
Let’s keep collecting them between now and the Scottish independence referendum: the Pinterest Board will remain live. I can confirm that snapping these pics and collecting them on the Web is pretty good therapy for the range of feelings they evoke. Village Aunties would also like to spark a note of resistance: I’ll come to that further down this post, with ideas from me and from Auntie Mhairi.
Source: bravissimo.com via Morag on Pinterest
Bella Caledonia Jack*** Collection
Note that the independence blog Bella Caledonia has also now started its own collection of Union Jacks, with a witty title, and a competition for the best submission. Let many flowers bloom and all that: I’d be happy if every pro-indy site in Scotland starts their own collection. Then it would be great to use some kind of aggregation system to pull them all together. By the way Bella, I see your man in a Union Jack suit and raise you a man in a Union Jack mankini – linked rather than embedded because it’s neither safe for work, nor safe for your very eyes: brace yourself before clicking.
Union Jacks & Saltires on Pinterest
All relevant #unnecessaryunionjacks are being collected on my Pinterest Village Aunties Board - click the link to see them, and feel free to comment on individual entries. I’ve also had some help from Emma Nicol and Sheila MacNeill, intrepid Aunties both, who have been out and about snapping Union Jacks and pinning them straight to the board. If you are a Pinterest user and would like to contribute directly, let me know.
I’ve also been collecting a very paltry number of Saltires, which seem to have all but disappeared from shelves of tat and shop windows, and had a contribution from a Village Auntie in Newcastle of some St. George’s Cross knickers in John Lewis, which apparently didn’t sell very well (but at least they had the choice of their own national flag, dammit!).
Source: twitter.com via Morag on Pinterest
Criteria for submitting photos
The general criteria for #unnecessaryunionjacks are: they should be found in Scotland, and they should be in the public eye-line (i.e. not the Union Jack inside your shoe indicating it was made in the UK). This includes advertisements (e.g. catalogues that come through your letter-box) and actual products that appear in Scotland. Just appearing on the Internet with no specific Scottish presence or connection doesn’t count.
The Jubilympics and why that’s no excuse
Any Union Jacks specifically appearing as part of either London Olympics or Royal Jubilee promotions should also be tagged #jubilympics. A few people have suggested that the imminence of these two events somehow negates what we are doing here, or skews the sample, or something, but for me it is more than pertinent that this is happening at this exact juncture in Scottish history. See this picture from Berlin in the run-up to the 1936 Olympics compared to a recent picture of Oxford Road in London. Just sayin’, don’t Godwinate me.
Source: twitter.com via Morag on Pinterest
A Counter-Propaganda Campaign
Some ideas for a counter-Union Jack campaign:
More
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Unnecessary Union Jacks in Scotland: Uncovering Subliminal Advertising
09 Apr 2012 3 Comments
in British Nationalism, Capitalism, Popular Culture, Propaganda Tags: advertising, anti-independence, British nationalism, media, popular culture, propaganda, subliminal imagery, Union Jacks
Big thanks to @CSbungo for the idea for this blog post and for alerting me to many unnecessary Union Jacks in Scotland!
Just as a starter for 10: the actual development of this post was sparked by the latest Pepperberry women’s clothing catalogue which arrived on my mat a couple of weeks ago. I’ve started off the collection of #unnecessaryunionjacks images on the Village Aunties Pinterest board with pictures from that catalogue. For example (and yes, every model in the entire catalogue is white and thin, surprise surprise), see the picture below. I’d like your help to gather more examples; read on!
Source: bravissimo.com via Morag on Pinterest
So. The ramping up of British nationalism over the past few years has been palpable across the UK, and a flood of Union Jacks and related imagery has been evident. Clearly it serves a number of conservative, capitalist and reactionary purposes, not just that of trying to convince Scottish people not to vote for independence. However, the ubiquity of Union Jacks in Scotland feels extra intrusive now that we have an independence referendum coming.
Auntie embarrassed at hideous colonialism alive and well in the Highlands
04 Apr 2012 6 Comments
in Racism Tags: capitalism, colonialism, cultural appropriation, racism, Scottish history, spirituality, tourism
I walked the West Highland Way last August with my sister and brother-in-law, who came all the way from Aotearoa (New Zealand). It was an experience that was both profound and delightful.
I fell in love with Scotland all over again, and was proud as punch of this country, which is both an adopted and ancestral homeland for me. My connection to this patch of earth and its people runs deep in my blood and bones, and it teaches me about how to approach other places and peoples with appropriate respect and openness.
So, yeah. Proud as punch. Except for one moment of embarrassment. Deep embarrassment.
My sister Elaine and I at the Bridge of Orchy.
First They Came for the Travellers: Solidarity with Govanhill’s Roma
20 Mar 2012 10 Comments
in Racism Tags: anti-fascism, anti-racism, community, fascism, Glasgow, Govanhill, racism, Roma, Scotland, Traveller Solidarity Network, Travellers
It is International Romani Day AKA Roma Nation Day on April 8th 2012. Join us in Govanhill to celebrate: see our Facebook page. Read about day of action in London here.
The Romani flag proposed by the 1971 World Romani Congress.
I’m worried. I’m worried about the drift to the right in Govanhill, in Glasgow, in Scotland, in the UK, in the World. I’m worried about encroaching fascism. I think the time for saying “You’ve just Godwin’d yourself on your own blog” is over. It’s not funny any more: ask Trayvon Martin’s family. Ask the ethnic minorities and Jewish families of Toulouse. Ask the families of 77 dead teenagers in Norway. Actually, ask me. I live in Govanhill. They haven’t stared coming for me and mine yet, but my neighbours may be at risk. You think that’s hyperbole? At what point will you start worrying?
I was in a taxi last week, and was treated to a diatribe on how dreadful things are these days in Govanhill, where I live, as the taxi driver knew, because he picked me up there.
This is not the taxi. But it is a Glasgow Taxi advertising a lapdancing club. Another reason to stop using Glasgow Taxis. Photo by lenivor on Flickr
Specifically, how awful the Roma in Govanhill are. This speech culminated with a self-satisfied description of how the driver’s sister had thrown a bucket of water out her back window onto an older Roma woman who was using the garden below as an outdoor toilet. ‘What kind of people go to the toilet outside?’, he asked indignantly, without pausing to consider that maybe one answer is ‘The kind of people whose bladders aren’t that reliable after years of childbearing, who live in grossly overcrowded conditions with no working toilet or no running water or too many other people using the toilet’. That’s without even considering, ‘The kind of drunken idiots who pee in public on their way home from the pub’, many of whom I have seen in Glasgow over the years, mostly male and white. More
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Spreading the Village Aunties’ Homemade Honey: Women’s Workshops on Social Media
09 Mar 2012 3 Comments
in News Media, Technology, Village Aunties Workshops Tags: blogging, community, learning, online learning, social media, social web, twitter, village aunties, workshops, writing
For International Women’s Day I thought I’d start making concrete plans around extending the scope of village aunties in Scotland.
When I had the idea for this blog, it was all about a collaborative media venue for pro-independence feminists of the left to contribute to Scotland’s conversations, arguments and plans for the independence campaign, and for Scottish independence itself.
Part of the dream was to get loads of women blogging and tweeting and otherwise using social media to contribute and to discuss and to refine theories and to organise. I hoped then and still do that 1,000 feminist flowers might bloom all over the social Web; it’s never been about this blog being the only place for pro-independence feminist writing.
So the next stage after getting the blog going was always going to be starting up workshops or collaborative learning groups for women who want to write, comment, discuss, contribute to Scotland’s cybernat revolution, but who would like a bit of support to get going.
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Of those who are forced to choose: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
19 Nov 2011 6 Comments
in Auntie Role Models, Films Tags: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, civil rights movements, documentary, feminism, film, Glasgow Film Theatre, Leila Doolan, Northern Ireland, politicians, radical icons, republicanism, socialism, The Troubles, violence, women in politics
Only the very safe can talk about wrong and right
Of those who are forced to choose, some will choose to fight
- lyrics from Natives, song famously sung by Christy Moore, by Paul Doran.
The revolutionary heroes of the left who become icons on t-shirts and posters tend to have two characteristics. They are usually men, and they are usually dead. I’m thinking Che Guevara, Malcolm X, Bobby Sands, Steve Biko. Actually, I can only think of one who continued his mystique while still alive: Nelson Mandela.
Iconic poster Free Angela Davis, by F. Beltran, 1971, from IISG on Flickr.
Off the top of my head it’s very hard to think of any women. Angela Davis, of course; she is still alive and still appears as an iconic poster image. And she’s been getting involved with the Occupy movement in the U.S. too.
Well, there’s someone who should appear in this pantheon, and she is still alive and has never sold out her socialist, republican, feminist credentials. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey. I’m quite shocked at how unfamiliar this name seems to be to a lot of people here in Glasgow; growing up in New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s, I had heard of her. But between then and now, I’d not heard much.
Where did she go? Why has a woman who was elected to the UK Parliament at 21, who smacked the Home Secretary in the head the day after Bloody Sunday, and who was nearly assassinated in front of her children with seven bullets, dropped from view?
An Alternative History of Ass-someone
04 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Sexual Violence Tags: fiction, sexism in radical movements, sexual violence
Once upon a time* there was a young man who was both idealistic and egotistical in the way of many young men. He was blessed with an overblown sense of efficacy and entitlement, and curly golden locks; he was the epitome of white boy privilege.
He joined up with some similar passionately anti-establishment types to try and do something serious about changing the world. He hoped, at the back of his mind, that if it worked, it would probably make him a bit famous in alternative circles, and if he was lucky, gain him the positive attention of lots of the women there. It would be his version of joining a band: make some cool music, maybe create a small space for yourself in history, and get laid. A lot.
So he and his friends started this really excellent movement using technology to expose corruption and evil doings by the powerful. It was so successful that their fame spread like wildfire, and the powerful quickly cracked down on them. It was successful in making these guys into rock stars of the new anti-establishment movements burgeoning around the world.
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On the Jury and Sectarian and Sexual Violence: A Response to Lallands Peat Worrier
02 Sep 2011 9 Comments
in Anarchism, Intersectionality, Legal Issues, Sectarianism Tags: Derrick Jensen, hegemony, hierarchy, Lallands Peat Worrier, Neil Lennon, rape, Scots law, sectarianism, sexual, violence
I’m a big fan of Lallands Peat Worrier, his blog, his Tweets and his person; he’s on the side of angels and he has a lovely brain the size of a planet. His latest post disturbed me a little though, so here is me writing out my understanding of why I’m disturbed. I also ramble into more of a response to the content of his post and the case it discusses: the implications of the Neil Lennon sectarian / assault case for Scotland’s anti-sectarianism law.
Weegies, teuchters, neds and chavs: microaggressions and pejorative language in Scotland
14 Jul 2011 9 Comments
in About the Blog, Language Tags: class, discrimination, exclusion, gender, gendered language, language, manifesto, microaggressions, oppression, pejorative language, race, representation, rules, Scotland, Scottish languages, slurs, transgender
You won’t read the slurs in this post again on the Village Aunties, unless it’s under very particular circumstances. The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted the following clause in the Village Aunties guidelines page, Take Heed:
Village aunties challenge language and actions that reinforce oppression.
Use of language on this blog that reinforces sexism, heterosexism, racism, transphobia, and class oppression (to give but a few examples) will not be tolerated. Not taking heed will get commenters summarily banned according to the sole discretion of the village aunties.
This includes such terminology as “ned”, “chav”, “pikey”, “white trash” and other insults regarding people’s position in the class structure. It also includes “teuchter”, “weegie”, “Gaelic mafia” and other terms (including sectarian slurs) used to insult people according to where they belong in Scotland’s cultural landscape. Exceptions will be made only for individual village aunties who rightfully claim a label for themselves, and for the use of words from Scots or other languages in the context of that language, as long as they are used non-pejoratively. For instance, self-identified ned feminists are more than welcome; as are posts written in Scots that use the word “teuchter” in its original sense.
Many readers may be shocked, puzzled or annoyed to read the second paragraph. The white people among us (which includes me) know we can’t use “the ‘N’ word” or “the ‘P’ word”. Most of us understand why. There are a range of words in between these almost universally acknowledged slurs, and general insults like the lovely Kiwi insult “ya egg”, where the degree of taboo, offense or potential hurt or exclusion are debated.
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