Definitely, and eventually it would have ended as industrialisation took over. However, the key point is that a flag is a symbol, and represents the presentation of a series of concepts associated with it society.

The Confederate Battle Flag cannot be separated from what it represents historically: its a flag that's associated with the Confederacy, slavery, the anti-desegregation movements and of course the KKK.

Its possible to reclaim symbols, such as the St Union flag from the NF etc but the Confederate Battle Flag has never really represented anything much beyond 'Southern US Politics' which has been stepped in racialism and racial prejudice since its inception.

Its only other association is with 'Rebellion', but again its the rebellion in which the South claimed independency from the North, and one of the key issues in the right of independency was retention of slave labour and racialism - That's why the Klan adopted it because it represented their beliefs.

Its a shame, because for Palace it could be a great symbolic flag, it being red and blue, with an association to the 'Rise of the South' / 'The South will Rise Again' only needing the word London added to give it a Selhurst poignancy.

All the talk about honouring the confederate dead seems a bit bizarre, as they represented a US that never was (and radically departed from the current US that the same people tend to talk about patriotically).

Its interesting that its reappearance in US culture was only really in the 1950s, when Georgia adopted the flag as its state flag whilst presenting a defence of segregation. I think a lot of people who claim the defence of honouring the dead great-great grandfather have essentially picking up on a discourse of 'defence of the indefensible' presented by certain factions in US Southern Politics that represent 'them good old days'. Kind of how politicians talk about 'supporting the troops' rather than discussing the war.

Certainly before the 1950s, hardly anyone down south was using the Confederate Battle Flag.

Although in fairness I've never really understood why people feel the need to fly flags all the time in the first place to show 'pride'. Whilst some of those I've met turn out to be decent people, most of them have tended to be fairly lowly educated stupid people, who use phrases 'I'm not a racist but...'.

Bloke over the road from my parents flies a Union Jack, as he calls it, I didn't have the heart to tell him that its only the Union Jack if flown from a Ship, or that its upside down.

It's a shame you have to ruin your articulate and reasoned argument with such distasteful comments. I think most people are aware that the British flag is in fact called the Union Flag. However it is still commonly known as the Union Jack whether flown from a ship or not, even by intelligent well educated people.

If you don't understand why people fly flags as a symbol of pride, let me ask you this. Do you have children? If so, do you not have any symbols of your pride in them? Photographs, sports medals, school certificates etc?

There are no restrictions on what people have pride in and if flying or displaying the "Union Jack" or the Confederate Southern Cross is a way of expressing pride in their homelands I'm not sure how that makes them lowly educated, stupid people.

I agree with a lot of that.

I don't feel you're being all that fair to people in the south who honour the past southern dead. Sure they were on the wrong side but a lot of them were bought up within a system that meant that being anything other than what they were was unrealistic.

Many in the south fought because they knew war was inevitable and they knew what was going to happen to their farms if they didn't repel the north.

The confederate flag has already been reclaimed by many in the modern sense as a symbol of the south.

I obviously don't support it being flown as a symbol of slavery or the KKK myself...And some people should recognise that many people don't object to the flag and want to fly it for other reasons.

Edited by Stirlingsays (16 Jul 2014 1.18pm)

Nothing wrong with honouring your war dead etc, although its worth noting that this was done without flying confederate flags for about 70 years.

You don't know how popular the flag was outside of official circles Jamie. Besides whether it's done with the flag they fought under or not makes little difference if the flag's modern intent is meant to represents the South.