25 April 2008
Flying the colours
Posted by Greg under: Jingo .
I’d forgotten the poor, sad story of Australia’s first national flag. The blue ensign, what we call the Australian flag now, was only intended for government use. The red ensign was for everyone else. It was ours.
The flag above was given to the first troops to leave Australia in 1914. By Billy Hughes, then Attorney-General. It was pretty clear that this was the real national, people’s flag.
And here’s one from World War II.
I really like the idea of one flag for the country – the chief flag, the national symbol – and one for the government. If nothing else, it keeps them in their place – they’re a government, not a country. Which is probably one of the reasons they got rid of it’s (non-maritime) in 1953, and have pretty much pretended it never existed. Though mostly I think it was Menzies characteristically being a dick.
More here.