Saturday 24 March 2018

Another collection of flags for VBCW


This is the flag of the Saviours of Britain, AKA the Black Shorts, from the Fry & Laurie version of Jeeves and Wooster. A link to the original (on wiki) is here.


Their leader of course is Roderick Spode, sometimes the 7th Earl of Sidcup, and sometimes proprietor of ladies' undergarment sellers Eulalie Souers. Spode and the Black Shorts are first mentioned in 1938, in The Code of the Woosters. Incidentally, I heard a few days ago reading a thread on Lead Adventurer Forum (link) that he's referenced in the Inspector Morse prequel TV show, Endeavour, set in the 1960s.

In my version of the VBCW (it will happen, honestly) the real-world BUF is mostly replaced by the BLF (British League of Fascists). Spode perhaps can stand in for Mosely but either the Saviours of Britain are a constituent of the League, or perhaps a fore-runner or offshoot. Other fascist organisations exist or at least have existed. I'm not wasting all those fascist flags when there's so many to chose from (as detailed here and perhaps also here, where the fourth flag could easily be of some Yorkshire fascists).

One organisation I've just found out about (never read the book) is in Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point, published in 1928Here, charismatic Everard Webley is leader of the paramilitary group the 'Brotherhood of British Freemen' or perhaps the 'British Free Fascists' (I will try to sort out which... I have some very contradictory info about this book, so I'm going to track down a copy). Perhaps these are also a fore-runner or constituent group in the BLF.

Potentially, and included because the lightning-strike on these can be taken as referring at least to the Black Shorts' emblem, these could be personal flags of SoB commanders, divisional ensigns or some such:


General Skar from Evil con Carne (link)


That hasn't come out very well but it's Transsexual Transylvania from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Other flags, three of parties or organisations at least - one fascistic, one ambivalent, one ostensibly on the other side - and a city/region:


Norsefire (V for Vendetta) - there are several more variations on the Norsefire page at the Fictional Flags site.


This is a reconstruction of the flag of Viroconium (from Viroconium by M John Harrison) which also looks somewhat fascistic. I'd probably use it as the flag of a fascist group from Shropshire, as 'Viroconium' is derived from Uroconium which is the latin name for Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury.


This is the flag of the Northmen, also from Viroconium. In the novella The Pastel City, Canna Moidart's Northmen (under a banner something like this one) fight against Lord Waterbeck's Viroconium troops. They might be a militia, or they might be merely a rival fascist group (they don't look very friendly at least).

The only other flag I can come up with at the moment... IngSoc, 1984 (link)


I assume 'The Party' from 1984 would fight on the socialist side. But it's probably preparing the GULAG in the Essex Marshes even before the VBCW is won.

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