Today is the protest against the Reform motion to bad the flying of all non-national flags.

I booked the afternoon off work and wrapped things up before getting ready to go.

The first problem: what does one wear to a pretest?

No idea.

Since this is primarily about reducing the signalling in support of the LGBTQ community, I figured I’d wear something that I might wear to Pride.

My Pride kilt was out of the question. It’s very fitted and I’m no longer the size I was (or wanted to be) when I bought it.

Everything else didn’t quite send a clear enough message of why I was there, so I went for a black T shirt with relevant wording and a sparkly had. And I put on as many rainbow bracelets and bangles as I could.

There was a small group of people who looked suspiciously Proud – all in various rainbows and looking cheerful. They were mostly older, students, or disabled.

It occurred to me that this vote affects many more people, but us younger and able-bodied people actually need these people because must of us are tied into the salary machine.

Somebody started a chat:

Raise the flags!
Raise them Proud!
In every city,
And every town!

Then there was a free Palestine chant, which felt a little uncomfortable. Not because I am not appalled by what is happening in Gaza and other parts of the Israeli occupied territories, but because I felt that it somewhat confused the flags issue that I was here to support. In addition, potential supporters

Various people spokew using a microphone that was passed around. Again, I felt that things got a bit muddley because somebody started ranting about trades unions, and Tory and Labour austerity. I agree that austerity has caused massive problems in the country, but was it relevant to the matter at hand? Besides, attacking other political parties might turn some potential supporters away from our campaign.

There was a separate protest against fly tipping at the same time. That cound’t be helped, and one of the people involved in that spoke against against encouraging discord and conflict, which was lovely to hear. However, I still felt that might be confusing people.

There were a few police stood away from the protest, and a couple of reporters took photos and listened to the speaches. Southampton’s first trans councillor spoke up, and then one of the other speakers suggested going inside to watch the proceedings. I decided to go in. I used to work for a software house that produced applications for use by local authorities, however whilst I had been plenty of council chambers before, I had never actually attended a meeting.

When I got in there, I saw fifty or sixty members. There was a mix of male and female, but I could only see two people of colour. I knew that one was openly trans, but if there were other members of the LGBT community they wedren’t obvious. II noticed that most of the main offices were held by women, including the lord mayor and the council leader.

Across one side of the lower chamber there was a group of men with light blue ties. Everyone else in the chamber looked more relaxed … and looked like they belonged there. One if them was a man of colour. But I coulnd’t help wondering “Are they the enemy?” In that group were two of the youngest members in the room. The rest were much older. This was indeed the Reform party members.

Looking at them, I found myself thinking of the facists – they had a thing about dressing up and uniforms. During the initial half of the meeting (which lasted several hours), they didn’t participate at all. They didn’t support any motions, not even the ones that were unanimous by all of the other councillors.

The first part of the session was dominated by deputations. Members of the public come in and present requests to the council.

The first was about a busy road in front of a primary school. I did feel that the councillor who responded did so curtly. I felt disappointed for the ldy who had stood up and presented her case .

The next person to present talked about fly tipping. He was one of the protestors outside the civic centre. He kindly mentioned the pointless waste of time and money being spent in campaings against the LGBT community by some councillors which would be better spent on dealing with his problems.

Afterwards, a lad of late school age spoke about free transport for kids and teaching kids about voting. I was impressed – and I tyhink everybody in the hall was too. I thought maybe the council could easily tackle at least part of his conerns about understanding voting and its importance by a trip to the council chamber. Or maybe not.

Finally, there was a deputation about the Harbourlights Cinema down on the seafront. Apparently the landowners want to demolish it and build a block of luxury flats. She said that Southampton was a multicultural city.

While the deputations wedre going on I looked around the council chamber at the councillors themselves. I noticed that a lot of them were using their mobile mobile phones while the deputations were made and while members were debating. Of course, I don’t know what ythey were doing on their phones – it might have been urgent council matters for all I knew. However, a few councillors had laptops and I could see some of their screens. The fellow immediately below me was shopping for mobile homes! Not a good use of taxpayer’s money! He did stop eventually, only to start reading the BBC news page.

After the deputations, the real debate began about budgets. It seemed to be held between the current officers and a group day across the room from them, who I gathered were the previous majority party in the council. One chap from that group spoke most – turns out they were the Lib Dems. The guys in the light blue ties didn’t get involved.

At one point, the Lord Mayor, in her big black regalia, complained that she was too hot and called a recess. When she reappeared, so was in a white blouse but still wearing her chain of office.

I was surprised when one of the Reform guys did ask a question about the sale of public assets and the closure of support success. The Greens asked a similar question. I think that the Reform guys were always surprised when there was a cross party agreement on an issue – the other parties would (from time to time) support a motion or a comment that a different party had made.

When the time came for the motion to stop flying non-national flags on public buildings and to require the flying of the England and Union flags on all public buildings the Reform guy who had proposed it withdrew the motion.

There was applause and cheers from both the floor and the public gallery!

However, he was determined to piss on our parade: “it will be retabled” he said. THe public gallery booed. I had to restrain myself from saying “he’s behind you!” because it felt a bit like a pantomime.

The battle, it seems, is not yet won.

One of the last motions of the day was also from one of the younger Reform guys. He proposed a motion on escooters and ebikes that would better resource and empower the police to stop the menance of unlicensed vehicles from riding around the neighbourhoods. I agreed with him – which felt uncomfortable: why couldn’t he have said something ridiculous!?

It is so difficult when one ends up agreeing with the enemy!

In part of his speech he said “residents have the right to feel safe in their neighborhoods and on their streets” … to which I thought “that is rather the point of our flags”.

He got an applause by a lot of members. And a Green MP openly supported the motion. It seems that in local government they do work together and are not always ideologically driven.

It was unanimously supported and a Labour member proposed an amendment to make it a city-wide objective.

At the end of the meeting I was hot and headacxhy, but also very grateful that I had attended – I had learnt something about how local democracy works – and how confusing it is!

I was also confused about the Reform fellow’s motion regarding escooters and ebikes. It was a good idea and it did deserve to be adopted.

I left wondering whether this is how rights are gradually eroded. Not through every proposal being unreasonable, but through people building trust by solving genuine problems, until the compromises they ask for no longer seem quite so significant to everyone else.