Dear Editor,

ON the 29th of September I asked the two guys putting up flags around the Gilden Way roundabout to tell me who they were. You would’ve thought that was the least they could do if they were proud of the act?

Eventually one of them showed me his face and gave me a pseudonym.

Two months later the flags around town are bedraggled, many at half mast. They are gradually becoming more of an eye sore than a pretended source of national pride.

Can anyone tell me what will happen next? Perhaps the Council can apply to the Proceeds of Crime fund in order to pay somebody to take them down? After all, they look like an act of vandalism two months on.

Nobody in their right mind can pretend that these were spontaneous acts of patriotism. They went up at the same time as protest against migrants in the hotel at Epping.

Those of us who work in the community sector know how intimidated many minority communities have felt because of them, and their time is up.

Andy Thornton – Harlow resident.