The recent death of “Operation Raise the Colours” activist and “ex-football hooligan” Paul Lumber in Bristol, falling to his death while fixing a St George’s flag to a lamp post, received nationwide coverage, some of which painted him as a patriotic family man who had undergone a profound redemption.
The truth is rather different: Lumber was not a “simple patriot” putting flags on lamp posts to signal his pride in being British. This is to misrepresent not only Lumber the man but also “Operation Raise the Colours” itself.
Distortion
Painting this so-called “operation” as simple patriotism akin to hanging flags up when England does well in the Euros or the World Cup is a clear distortion.
From the start, the “operation” has been designed to intimidate, to designate territory, and to intimidate asylum seekers and people of colour more broadly.
It has resulted in violent attacks on council workers tasked with taking the flags down, and even on local people who have merely objected to flags being hung outside their homes.
Fascist backing
It received early backing from far-right figures like Paul Golding of Britain First and Tommy Robinson. Indeed, Golding boasted that Britain First had donated hundreds of flags to the campaign.
So why would Paul Lumber be attracted to such a movement?
Lumber was a notorious Bristol City football hooligan in the 1980s, a member of the City Service Firm, and he wrote two books chronicling his antics which earned his jail time.
The claim now is that, after this, he turned his life around, and from then on was merely a proud patriot, great father, and pillar of his local community.
Exploited
An article in The Dorset Eye, for instance, claims that his life after his 1980s hooliganism phase was characterized by “care, community and commitment” and that he was, in life and in death, exploited by the far right.
This is not borne out by material posted much more recently on his Facebook page.
Lumber appears to have stopped posting on FB in 2015, but until then he had regularly posted far-right and racist material.
In 2014, he changed his FB profile picture to the logo of Britain First. He also reposted posts from UKIP.
Coupled with this are various racist memes, including the “BNP song”, and a meme that advertised “bacon rinds” with a stereotypical picture of a Muslim man in a desert.
He was known to attend far right rallies in Bristol before his death, and had posted on Youtube that Bristol was “overrun with antifa”.
He also called for Bristol City and Rovers hooligan elements to team up to tackle ‘antifa’ antifascists.
Lumber was not some misguided family man, and it is highly misleading to portray him as such. Lumber was immersed in far right and racist politics long after he quit being a football hooligan. This should not be glossed over.
