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Tuesday 29 January 2013

South Shore on the Prom 2000

Tribal loyalties and their boundaries can be defined to the narrowness of the width of the street or a ginnel.

Blackpool, apart from hosting holidaymakers, students and Japanese ballroom dancers also was home to refugees from  the simmering civil war in Northern Ireland - in particular Unionists. There were a couple of  streets near me where the houses had the Red Hand of Ulster flag on permanent display.  In particular one house who had a Union flag on a pole in the garden. Walking past one evening when they had left their curtains open I could see through their window as they sat down to dinner - not only did they have a portrait of the Queen hanging next to one of Winston Churchill on the wall but there was also a Union flag tablecloth.

I have always thought that excessive patriotism was the refuge of the insecure and the insular. 

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