Nigel Farndale in the Telegraph
Reader, if you seek Margaret Thatcher’s monument, look around you next time you are in Terminal 5 - not at the terminal itself, but the planes outside.
Most are British Airways, and the sight of all those tailfins, row upon row decorated with Union flags, will lift your spirits to an altitude of 35,000ft.
It was Lady Thatcher, you will recall, who shamed BA into reverting to the Union flag tailfins after it experimented with having “world art” on them instead - ethnic designs from third world countries.
The Union flag, BA argued, looked “arrogant and detached”. But then Lady Thatcher saw a model of a BA 747, reached into her handbag for her handkerchief and tied it around the offending tailfin. A crushing gesture.
Virgin Atlantic took advantage of the controversy by painting Union flags on the vertical winglets of its aircraft, and it still tickles me whenever I see this.
I was in Terminal 5 for the first time last week, on my way to Miami. I had never been to Miami airport before either, and was struck by how similar in one respect it is to America’s other major airports - JFK, LAX, Washington, Chicago, Houston.
As you enter the passport control area you are confronted with a dazzling display of large, silky Stars and Stripes hanging from flag poles, sometimes as many as 20 or 30 in a long row. It never fails to quicken the pulse and remind you exactly which superduperpower you are visiting.
This is the home of the brave, the flags say. Take us on our terms. I know the Americans are funny about their flag in a way that other countries are not. They drape it unapologetically outside their houses and it is a federal crime to damage one, but still, haven’t we gone too far the other way?
Whenever I fly back from America into Gatwick or Heathrow my heart sinks. There isn’t a Union flag in sight. Not one. You could be entering Belgium or the Isle of Man. The only indication you have entered Great Britain at all is a large white sign saying “UK Border”.
I don’t get it. Is it that we don’t have national pride in a way that Americans do? Is it that, unlike them, we feel like a nation of failures? Or are we are ashamed of who we are and what we stand for?
Curiously, another of Margaret Thatcher’s legacies is an embarrassment about the British flag felt by those on the Left.
They associate it with jingoism and bigotry. On Mock the Week on Thursday night a young comedian was asked to improvise a comedy riff on a picture of a Union Jack mug. He said he had been on the Tube and heard some “prick” ranting at “someone of a foreign persuasion”: “Why don’t you go home?” To which the someone said: “I am going home, mate, that’s what I’m doing on this Tube.”
Not funny, but revealing. To that comedian the Union flag meant racism, nothing more.
Well that’s a shame. It’s also silly. The Union flag is one of the most beautiful and potent symbols in the world, an evocation of freedom, democracy and tolerance.
Those who think it ugly must be in agony at the moment, having to watch British Olympians on the news every night draped in it. But perhaps they won’t have to for much longer.
It seems to be a matter not of if but when Scotland leaves the Union. If there is still a UK by the next Olympics it would be nice to think that visitors arriving at Gatwick and Heathrow could enjoy contemplating its flag as they got their passports checked. They would find it a thrilling and uplifting sight.
And now would be the moment to address this. The break up of BAA, the owner of Gatwick and Heathrow, means that those airports may soon be in competition, with each trying to become more eye-catching than the other.
If one introduced flags, the other would surely follow.
