THE GUARDIAN: The Black Country flag row shows Britain is still blind to its colonial past

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The recently designed flag of the Black Country achieved its most prominent national coverage yet on Wednesday at prime minister’s questions when Theresa May came to its defence following the newly elected MP for Wolverhampton South West’s expression of “serious concerns” about its “racist connotations”. That a row ostensibly about local heritage had reached the attention of the highest office in the land says a great deal about the way in which our collective memory is coloured by the social impacts of deindustrialisation and our amnesia over the legacies of slavery and imperialism.