from modernity.news

A Nottinghamshire welder has delivered the ultimate response to the people who treat Britain’s national symbols as hate speech. 

Simon Brocklehurst, a 41-year-old father of three from Sutton-in-Ashfield, watched someone rip down the flag flying outside his home and run off shouting “racist.” His answer was direct and sinple: he spent days covering the entire front of his four-bedroom house in a giant Union Flag.

They cannot rip this one down.

Brocklehurst has lived in the house since he was five. He has always flown the flag as a sign of respect and hope, the same flag his grandfather fought under in the Second World War. 

When locals tore down his St George’s Cross and labelled him a racist, he went bigger. First he painted a massive England flag across the façade. Then he turned the whole thing into the Union Jack.

“Somebody decided to rip it down and run down the street with it, shouting ‘racist’, so I thought, I’m going to paint my house. They can’t rip that one down!” he told GB News.

He has described the online reaction as vicious keyboard warriors threatening to smash his windows, while in real life most neighbours have been supportive. “I’m public enemy number one online,” he said. “But without this flag you wouldn’t have freedom of speech, so I respect their right to say what they want about it.” 

He has no plans to paint over it and says if the council ever ordered him to, he would “drag my feet all the way and keep it on as long as possible.”

The move sits squarely inside the wider Raise the Colours movement that exploded across England from summer 2025. What began with a handful of men in South Birmingham tying St George’s and Union flags to lampposts quickly spread suburb by suburb, city by city. 

Ordinary people, many of them working-class and tired of watching their country change without consent, started covering streets, roundabouts and bridges in the colours of the nation. The stated aim was simple: visible patriotism and a reminder of shared identity.

The response from local authorities has been pure institutional hostility. Councils have spent tens of thousands of pounds of public money hiring contractors to tear the flags down. Medway alone blew nearly £11,600 removing more than 700 of them. 

Some Labour councillors openly called the expenditure “money well spent” against what they branded “far-right” agitators.

Another way they could protest — paint their cars in UK flags: