Flags + Angus = Trouble
Standard.
Alongside death and taxes, add Angus elected members in a flap over flags to the certainties of life.
A decade ago one would have thought, or feared, we had reached peak Angus when the newly-formed rainbow Alliance flew a plan to create a county crest heralding their ascension to power after decades of Nationalist hegemony.
Of all the ambitious proposals a new administration could have devised to lay a new era marker, producing a county crest to replace “that bloody thing” – as I believe the Saltire was unceremoniously referred to in the early light of that new dawn – attained high priority status.
At pretty much the same speed as the behaviour of bickering councillors brought an unwelcome national spotlight onto the county, involving everyone from political grandees to a blonde beauty queen draped in a Saltire dress.
It was hoisted on a winter’s day in a ceremony boycotted by opposition councillors and the damaging row still sends a shiver down the spine of some who hoped flag furore might be consigned to the annals of Angus democracy.
But it seems not after a bust up over the Red Duster.
Merchant Navy Day is a fortnight away and on September 3 the Red Ensign will be proudly and poignantly raised above the whitewashed walls of Arbroath Signal Tower by Second World War hero Sandy Davidson.
It will be hoisted too, in bustling Montrose port, which for 525 years has welcomed merchant vessels to Angus.
But not above the Montrose town chamber where local veterans had hoped it could also be raised on that special, and important, day.
Because it would have involved the Saltire having to come down and that does not sit well with town SNP councillor William Duff.
As a colleague succinctly put it, the idea was like a red rag to a Bill.
Apparently a deal was done that the Red Ensign would fly on alternate years in Arbroath and Montrose on Merchant Navy Day, but no one seems to know when, or by whom, the arrangement was put in place.
What’s certain is that Angus’s reputation, and the memory of the men who sailed under the Red Duster, have suffered the collateral damage of this latest salvo in the fight of the flags.
