Red flag (politics)

Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it was first used as the flag of a new authority by the Paris Commune of 1871. The flags of former Soviet Union introduced after the Russian Revolution and many other subsequent communist states are explicitly inspired by the plain red flag. Many socialist and socialist-adjacent political parties, including those of democratic socialists and social democrats, have adapted and adopted a red flag as their symbol. The plain red flag was an official symbol of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom until the late 1980s. It was the inspiration for the socialist songs The Red Flag and Bandiera Rossa.


Prior to the French Revolution and in some contexts even today, red flags or banners were seen as a symbol of defiance and battle.^[2]

Red color as a combat or revolt symbol in Europe goes back to the turn of the millennia and before. In the Middle Ages, ships in combat flew a long red streamer called the baucans to signify a fight with no quarter.^[3]


The red cap was a symbol of popular revolt in France going back to the Jacquerie of 1358. The color red became associated with patriotism early in the French Revolution due to the popularity of the tricolour cockade, introduced in July 1789, and the Phrygian cap, introduced in May 1790. A red flag was raised over the Champ-de-Mars in Paris on July 17, 1791, by Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, commander of the National Guard, as a symbol of martial law, warning rioters to disperse.^[4] As many as fifty anti-royalist protesters were killed in the fighting that followed.


Inverting the original symbolism, the Jacobins protested this action by flying a red flag to honor the "martyrs' blood" of those who had been killed.^[5] They created their own red flags to declare "the martial law of the people against the revolt of the court."^[6]


British sailors mutinied near the mouth of the River Thames in 1797 and hoisted a red flag on several ships.


Two red flags soaked in calf's blood were flown by marchers in South Wales during the Merthyr Rising of 1831. It is claimed to be the first time that the red flag was waved as a banner of workers' power. The red flags of Merthyr became a potent relic following the execution of early trade unionist Dic Penderyn (Richard Lewis) in August 1831, despite a public campaign to pardon him.


During the Battle of the Alamo in March 1836, General Antonio López de Santa Anna of Mexico displayed a plain red flag (approx. 10 feet square) from the highest church tower in Béjar. The meaning of this display – directed to the Alamo defenders – meant "no surrender; no clemency."


At much the same time, the Liberal "Colorados" in the Uruguayan Civil War used red flags. This prolonged struggle at the time got considerable attention and sympathy from liberals and revolutionaries in Europe, and it was in this war that Giuseppe Garibaldi first made a name for himself and that he was inspired to have his troops wear the famous Red Shirts.


The Ottoman Empire used a variety of flags, especially as naval ensigns, during its history. The star and crescent came into use in the second half of the 18th century. A buyruldu (decree) from 1793 required that the ships of the Ottoman Navy were to use a red flag with the star and crescent in white. In 1844, a version of this flag, with a five-pointed star, was officially adopted as the Ottoman national flag.


In 1870, following the stunning defeat of the French Army by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, French workers and socialist revolutionaries seized Paris and created the Paris Commune. The Commune lasted for two months before it was crushed by the French Army, with much bloodshed. The original red banners of the Commune became icons of the socialist revolution; in 1921, members of the French Communist Party came to Moscow and presented the new Soviet government with one of the original Commune banners; it was placed (and is still in place) in the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, next to his open coffin.^[7]


With the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, the red flag, with a star symbolizing the party, hammer to symbolize the workers and sickle to symbolize peasants, became the official flag of Russia, and, in 1923, of the Soviet Union. It remained so until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.


After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, the flag of China became a red flag with a large star symbolizing the CCP, and smaller stars symbolizing workers, peasants, the urban middle class and rural middle class. The flag of the CCP became a red banner with a hammer and sickle. In the 1950s and 1960s, other Communist governments such as Vietnam and Laos also adopted red flags. Some Communist countries, such as Cuba, chose to keep their old flags; and other countries used red flags which had nothing to do with Communism or socialism; the red flag of Nepal, for instance, represents the national flower.


Eastern Arabian tribal federations used a red standard as their flag. These federations later developed into sheikhdoms and emirates. The red standard is adopted as one of the early Islamic flags, which included a red standard such as the prominent Arab military commander Amr ibn al-As, who used a red banner.^[8] Examples of Arabian red standards include the flag of the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, the individual flags of the emirates of the United Arab Emirates, the original flag of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

Media related to Red flags at Wikimedia Commons