In the heat of a sunny afternoon in late June, Flo Finch unfurled a 5-foot by 3-foot English flag outside her home with the help of a friend.
A customized message stretched across the width of the red cross at its center: “Football not Farage.”
Ms. Finch, a huge soccer fan, wanted to show support for England’s team in the World Cup. But she felt strongly about differentiating her display of the flag from the stance of Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party and other factions on the right that have embraced the flag as a symbol of their anti-immigrant, nationalist ideology.
England’s national flag, known as the St. George’s flag — white with a bright red cross — is a pervasive presence at violent marches and riots that have increased in frequency and scale in recent years. That’s a message people like Ms. Finch want to avoid when they hang the flag in support of England’s soccer team, which advanced to the round of 16 with a 2-1 victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday.
“I’m not allowing people to take my England, my Britain, and turn it into something that it’s not,” she said. “I love football. I’ve always loved football, and so I’m not allowing them to take that from me.”
It was the fourth time she was hanging the banner with the anti-Farage message on the side of her home in Essex after it was ripped down three previous times, she said.
As the World Cup got underway this month, the St. George’s flag has been draped in homes, pubs and shops across the country by enthusiastic soccer fans.
But for some England fans, the flag is now at the center of a contentious battle over what, and whom, it is supposed to represent. The tension is being felt more acutely now as the right-wing nationalist political movement, led by Reform U.K., grows in popularity in Britain.
Ms. Finch lives in Essex, northeast of London, where Reform U.K. won control of the county council for the first time after local elections in May. She said that St. George’s flags had increasingly gone up in the surrounding towns and villages, which she attributes to the rise of Reform U.K. and the anti-immigrant movement.
After ordering the flag online, Ms. Finch posted about it on TikTok and quickly attracted more than a million views. Others have similarly customized their St. George’s flags to signify not just their football allegiance but to make clear their stance on immigration, race and English identity.
“It’s almost like the flag debate is a symptom of a wider struggle at the moment about the national identity and who fits into it,” said Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, a British antiracism advocacy group.
The St. George’s flag began appearing on lampposts across the country last summer alongside the British Union Jack as part of campaign called “Operation Raise the Colours.” (Since the United Kingdom is made up of four nations — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — the Union Jack represents the collective. Each nation also has its own flag, or in the case of Northern Ireland, more than one flag that represents local residents).
In its initial stages, Raise the Colours was organized by known far-right activists, according to an analysis from Hope Not Hate. It soon spread online and was taken up by disparate groups of people across the country.
Matt Goodwin, an author, television news presenter and a former Reform U.K. party candidate, told the BBC that many of the people involved in Raise the Colours put up the England flag because they “felt that the establishment were now saying they no longer exist.” He also said he saw Englishness as a distinct identity “with a sort of defined ethnic group and ancestry.”
Critics said those grievances are code for a nationalist viewpoint on race and ethnicity. Raise the Colours has now lost some momentum, but in some areas, people are putting up flags on public lamp posts without permission, leading to battles with local councils.
That kind of tension places “institutions and councils in a really difficult situation,” Mr. Mulhall said, because “there’s nothing ostensibly wrong with putting up a flag of that country.”
He said in some cases the flags are being displayed “as territorial markers, they are being used as signifiers of an in-group and an out-group.”
Mr. Farage himself has waded into the debate, saying that local authorities that tried to stop people from putting the flag on lampposts were unpatriotic and “ashamed of the English flag,” he said in a statement.
“If people have moved to this country and they don’t like our flag, I’ve got a really simple idea. Go back to where you came from,” he added.
A November poll from YouGov showed that after the height of the Raise the Colours campaign, the majority of the British public thought the English flags were being flown primarily as a way of expressing anti-migrant or anti-minority sentiment. And more than half of adults surveyed from ethnic minority groups felt the St. George’s flag was now a racist symbol.
There is now a widely held position within the far right, but also within the center right, Mr. Mulhall said, that Englishness is defined by ancestry, or blood, with “whiteness” an essential element.
The debate is playing out against the backdrop of the World Cup, the global sporting extravaganza. Flags have long been brandished by fans as a display of patriotism and support. Chris Dowse, 47, a resident of the Kirby Estate, an affordable housing block built by local authorities in south London, said the sporting aspect is the only thing that should matter.
“It’s all about the football, that’s all we’re worried about,” he said. The apartment complex is festooned with the white and red of the England flag to mark major soccer tournaments.
Mr. Dowse, who works in recycling, has been one of the main organizers of the flag display, a tradition that began here in 2012 during the European Championship and has grown from there. The residents drape hundreds of flags during major soccer tournaments, with football fans and even England players making pilgrimages to the estate.
On a late June evening, residents lounged outside on their balconies, attempting to beat the oppressive heat, as hundreds of England flags flapped from railings and flag bunting crisscrossed from one balcony to another.
“Football’s friendly, it’s a bit of banter,” Mr. Dowse said, saying that hanging the English flag here was a way to celebrate an inclusive and community-oriented sense of national pride.
“We don’t do politics,” he said.
