Do we need a law against flag-burning?

Rob Knight — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:57:17 +0000

The BBC are reporting that police chiefs are 'urging' the government to make flag-burning a criminal offence. They claim that this will form a necessary part of a 'crack down on Islamic extremists and others preaching violence and religious hate'.

There are numerous problems with this suggestion. Firstly, is flag-burning such a problem? How many incidents of flag-burning have there been in the last five years? The BBC piece gives no figures and I can't recall the last time I saw pictures of flags burning on TV or in the newspapers. Whilst that's not a scientific study, it does rather suggest that the problem is being overblown.

Secondly, who does flag-burning actually harm? A flag is just another piece of property which an owner can do with as they please. Setting fire to things in a public place may be dangerous, but surely this is covered by existing laws? When this is considered, it becomes apparent that this is just another proposal designed to 'send a message' rather than actually achieve anything. It addresses a symptom, rather than the cause of the problem. Flag-burning is, in itself, an irrelevance; if a person has done nothing worse than burn a flag, then they really do not deserve punishment. If they have done worse than burn a flag, then we need to be asking why such people are at liberty to do so. Arresting people for flag-burning makes it look like the police are 'doing something' without any clear indication of how this is of benefit to anyone.

There is a further problem; flag-burning is a very public demonstration of hatred. Is suppressing such expressions really such a good idea? Visual images are very powerful, and as a person who believes in peaceful, reasonable discourse I would find it quite useful for flag-burning to be allowed; it would make it very easy for me to identify precisely who the hateful bigots are. Suppressing the expression of hatred simply forces the 'preachers of hate' to put their message forward in a different way, perhaps a way less easy to observe.

Thirdly, most people know that flag-burning is wrong. They know that people burning flags are people who are not interested in rational discourse. Why not trust people to deal with the sight of burning flags for themselves?

Finally, making flag-burning illegal provides a very simple means by which any protester can provoke the police into making a forced arrest in a dangerous situation. Once such a law is passed, the police will not be able to exercise restraint against a group of people burning a flag; they will have to wade in, in full riot gear, into a situation involving a group of people and burning objects. The risk of injury is high, and for what benefit? If we truly wished to treat flag-burning with the contempt it deserves, we would ignore it as the childish behaviour that it is.