 | |
| Proportion | 3:5 |
|---|---|
| Adopted | 14 July 2012 |
| Design | Per pall reversed Sable, Gules and Argent a pall reversed Argent over all an inverted chevron of chain counterchanged Argent, Sable, Argent |
| Designed by | Gracie Sheppard |
The Black Country flag is the flag of the Black Country region of England. It was registered with the Flag Institute as a regional flag in 2012. [1]
The design was the winner of a competition run by the Black Country Living Museum [1] in response to a campaign by the Parliamentary Flags & Heraldry Committee encouraging communities and regions to develop their own flags to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II and the 2012 Summer Olympics. [2]
2012 competition finalists
After 1,500 votes were cast by members of the public, a design by 11-year old Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School, Stourbridge was announced as the winning entry at the museum's Festival of Steam, celebrating 300 years of the Newcomen atmospheric engine. [5]
The flag was flown at Eland House, the headquarters of the Department for Communities and Local Government on 14 July 2013 to celebrate 'Black Country Day' and also Britain's role in leading the Industrial Revolution. [6]
The flag features a chain to represent the manufacturing heritage of the area whilst the upright triangular shape (heraldic gusset or graft) in the background recalls the iconic glass cones and iron furnaces that featured in the architectural landscape of the area. The red and black colours recall the famous description of the Black Country by Elihu Burritt that it was "black by day and red by night" owing to the smoke and fires of industry. [2]
The Pantone colours for the flag are:
The flag is one of very few regional, non-historic county flags that may be flown without consent of a local planning authority, providing the flag is "maintained in a condition that does not impair the overall visual appearance of the site" and does not block official signs (such as road signs). [8]
In July 2015, Wolverhampton-born historian and anti-racism campaigner Patrick Vernon OBE called for the design of the flag to be replaced, saying that "the Black Country factories and foundries made chains, shackles and manacles during slavery that were used in colonial Africa to enslave black people. The same factories employed people from the Caribbean and Asia during the 1950s and 60s on lower wages and poorer working conditions compared to their white counterparts. And of course the chain industry oppressed the white working classes too, so I feel the use of the chain logo is inappropriate in today's world where we know the effects of this history". [9] Vernon later said that the reaction to his comments on the Express & Star website and harassment on his Twitter account reflected "a degree of scepticism and criticism of 'political correctness gone mad' in suggesting that the Black Country ever had some involvement in the slave trade. Again this highlights that we have not matured or reflected as a nation on our colonial past which has an impact both on black and white people". [10]
Shortly after her election to the House of Commons, Wolverhampton South West Member of Parliament Eleanor Smith was reported to have criticised the design of the flag because of the association of locally-made chains with the slave trade and to have suggested that the design of the flag be changed. [11] [12] On Twitter, she denied calling the flag racist or calling for it to be banned, [13] and in her Commons maiden speech, said that her comments "had been taken out of proportion", and that she had received "many abusive messages" over the issue. [14] The controversy was the subject of a question in Prime Minister's Questions, in which Theresa May defended the flag, saying "The Black Country remains a great place to do business, and I'd like to congratulate Gracie on designing that flag at the age of only 12 years. And I have to say that I am sure that she and others, including the Express & Star, have been surprised at the attitude from the benches opposite on this particular issue". [15] In 2018, a man from Castlecroft, an area within Smith's constituency, was given a nine-week suspended prison sentence for sending racist and threatening emails to several MPs, including Smith, in which he told her to be put on "the first banana boat" to "the jungle clearing you came from". [16] Both the prosecution and defence cited Smith's reported comments about the flag as having motivated the abusive emails. [16]
Writing in The Guardian in July 2017, activist Matthew Stallard, a former University of Manchester student, claimed that it was "a historical fact that the Black Country was a key provider of metalworked goods to the slave trade and plantation economies of the Americas and throughout the British Empire. Scholars have consistently demonstrated the inherently interlinked nature of industrial development in all areas of the UK and imperial expansion, whether directly by trading British goods for people, using slave-produced raw materials, or the sale and use of British-made goods in slave or colonial economies". He added, "An effort to create a truly inclusive local identity requires a less defensive stance than the one demonstrated by the local press in recent days – one that is at the very least open to listening to and trying to understand the experiences and historical viewpoints of others". [17]
In July 2020, against the backdrop of the George Floyd protests, West Midlands Fire Service pre-emptively denied permission to local fire stations to fly the Black Country flag on Black Country Day "until we have a clear understanding of the meaning of the chains [on the flag]" due to the potential link to slavery. [18] The decision was criticised by Wolverhampton South West MP Stuart Anderson, Dudley South MP Mike Wood, and Dudley North MP Marco Longhi, who called on West Midlands Fire Service to apologise. [19] The fire service later reversed its position. [20]
The Black Country is an area of England's West Midlands. It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley and Sandwell metropolitan boroughs, with the Metropolitan Borough of Walsall and the City of Wolverhampton sometimes included. The towns of Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre.
Dudley is a market town in the West Midlands, England, 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of Wolverhampton and 8 miles (13 km) northwest of Birmingham. Historically part of Worcestershire, the town is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. In the 2011 census, it had a population of 79,379. The Metropolitan Borough, which includes the towns of Stourbridge and Halesowen, had a population of 312,900. In 2014, the borough council adopted a slogan describing Dudley as the capital of the Black Country, a title by which it had long been informally known.
Smethwick is an industrial town in Sandwell, West Midlands, England. It lies 4 miles (6 km) west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire and then Worcestershire before being placed into then West Midlands county.
The Black Country Living Museum is an open-air museum of rebuilt historic buildings in Dudley, West Midlands, England. It is located in the centre of the Black Country, 10 miles west of Birmingham. The museum occupies 10.5 hectares of former industrial land partly reclaimed from a former railway goods yard, disused lime kilns, canal arm and former coal pits.
The Metropolitan Borough of Dudley is a metropolitan borough of West Midlands, England. It was created in 1974 following the Local Government Act 1972, through a merger of the existing Dudley County Borough with the municipal boroughs of Stourbridge and Halesowen.
The flag of Mauritania is a green field containing a gold star and crescent, with two red stripes at the top and bottom of the field. The original national flag was introduced under the instructions of President Moktar Ould Daddah and the constitution of 22 March 1959 and was officially adopted on 1 April 1959.
The national flag of Zimbabwe consists of seven even horizontal stripes of green, gold, red and black with a white triangle containing a red five-pointed star with a Zimbabwe Bird. The present design was adopted on 18 April 1980.
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Patrick Bosco McFadden is a British politician who has served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster since July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South East since 2005. McFadden has previously held various junior ministerial positions and shadow portfolios in his parliamentary career between 2005 and 2024.
Ian Christopher Austin, Baron Austin of Dudley is a British politician who sits as a life peer in the House of Lords. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dudley North from the 2005 general election until the 2019 general election when he stood down. Formerly a member of the Labour Party, he resigned from the party on 22 February 2019 to sit as an independent, and was ennobled in the 2019 Dissolution Honours. He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government from 2009 to 2010.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for housing, communities, and local government in England. It was established in May 2006 and is the successor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, established in 2001. The department shares its headquarters building, at 2 Marsham Street in London, with the Home Office.
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William Milroy Etheridge is an English politician who was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands region. He was elected in 2014 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, but left the party in October 2018 and joined the Libertarian Party. He joined the Brexit Party in 2019 but rejoined UKIP in September 2020. He unsuccessfully stood for UKIP leader in 2016, and 2024.
Bilston Town Hall is a municipal facility in Church Street, Bilston, West Midlands, United Kingdom. It is a Grade II listed building.
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The flag of the Black Country, East Anglia, Wessex, any Part of Lincolnshire, any Riding of Yorkshire or any historic county within the United Kingdom
