Replace the corporate logo flying at our heritage sites with the flag of St. George

(petition at Change.org) Flying a flag is a political act. It means something, even if we cannot always explain quite what it is or why it is important. It is more blood and guts than bloodless theorems, and it can imbue a place with an identity and dignity woven from the diverse and sometimes imperceptible threads of a shared heritage.

So, what does it say that flying above the buildings of some our greatest historical treasures is the banal logo of a government agency?

The flag of English heritage flies over the town of Deal, England. Or is this the flag of the UK? Deal is the town where St. Augustine supposedly first visited England, apparently the first African immigrant. Now Deal is caught up in Brexit because no deal may mean no economy for the tourist mecca.

We need once again to weave together the principal symbol of our national identity with those buildings and monuments that cut across social, racial and class boundaries and point toward a history and identity in which we all share.

The English Heritage flag cleanses some of our most important sites of any emotional ties, erecting a sterile symbol of state bureaucracy more suited to road traffic signs and office stationery than marking the landscape of our shared history. Where an expression of our communal identity and possession ought to be, there is the logo of a government agency.

We ought to dismay at this riding roughshod over our collective heritage. We ought to reclaim our heritage for the flag of England, and have our heritage shared and secured for all by flying under this same flag. We ought, quite simply, to put the flag of England back into English Heritage.