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Flag-waver for lonely cause
Stevenson's Country, July 22, 2004
By Philippa Stevenson
If a line formed of all the people who have wanted to change the New Zealand flag, Frank Bailey would be near the front.
One of Bailey's first thoughts when he arrived in the country from Britain 40 years ago was "what a bloody awful flag."
He says he's "ploughed a lone furrow" to get it changed ever since.
Now, the NZflag.com Trust has formed to, essentially, say the same thing and try to galvanise us into ditching the old and hoisting something - pretty much anything - new.
To some of us a flag is a flag but clearly, to others, a flag by any design does not fly as sweet. I went to Bailey's Hamilton home to find out why.
It is no stretch to believe one of the first things he noticed about his new homeland was its flag. Bailey's a vexillologist - a student of flags - and has been collecting them, books about them, stamps and cigarette cards with flags on them, and flag-crazy friends and correspondents worldwide for around 60 years.
He was once thought to be our only member of the International Federation of Vexillology Association but in retirement the subscription became too much and he withdrew. He competed in television's Mastermind where his specialist subject was, of course, world flags.
An inveterate and prolific writer of letters to the editor, Bailey started that career almost the day he began his first job in New Zealand as a Ministry of Works' draughtsman in 1964. He later moved to Waikato University from where, even after years of retirement, he still gets calls to work.
Many of his letters - to a range of newspapers and magazines - urge New Zealanders to change their flag but it's certainly not his only topic. Whatever the subject, it's presented with a delightful flourish of English and a dose of cheeky humour that has won him editors' rewards.
Irrepressible seems to be a word invented for Frank Bailey. When I first spoke to him on the phone it took seconds to learn he's 72 and had just beaten his 15-year-old grandson at tennis. And the last time he appeared in the Herald was August 13, 1986 - a story about the flag ceremony at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
In his company, words bubble out of him only marginally faster than the number of times he jumps out of his seat to show me this, point out that, grab a book to illustrate something else, and proffer a cup of tea in the best china.
A fair bit of cheek is tossed at his wife, Eileen, an Anglican priest, who's soldiering away on a pile of ironing in another room. He jokes that he's taken over the cooking so he can eat meals more to his liking but is banned from ironing after scorching a shirt at one of his few attempts. He grins like a schoolboy when I suggest the best way out of a detested chore is to be hopeless at it.
But back to the flag. He's jotted down his well-rehearsed arguments for change in advance.
They are that our flag is too similar to the Australian flag; the Southern Cross is seen by all Southern Hemisphere countries, so is not "ethnic"; increasing multi-culturalism means the Union Jack (more accurately the Union Flag) has less significance; Canada had the same problem and solved it 40 years ago.
Anticipating the kind of feedback he's had to his many letters, he adds for those who've served and fought under the present flag that "nobody could accuse the Canadians of being less patriotic than us when one considers the thousands who lost their lives on the Normandy beaches."
Bailey's taste in design for our flag has changed over the years. He now favours a silver fern bisecting a background that is green above and blue below. He's not keen on a koru because he doubts it would be acceptable to many Kiwis of European descent.
Internationally, his favourite flag is that of Nepal, which is unusually in the shape of two triangles and is predominantly red and white.
After 40 years of tapping the national conscience on the issue, Bailey believes a change in flag is close. He was unaware of NZflag.com but had already sensed a new "energy" which would bring the change in his lifetime.
The septuagenarian doesn't mind being asked how long he expects to live. His father, "a packet a day man", lived well into his 80s so non-smoking Bailey thinks that's a good clue to his own longevity.
Mind you, if he achieves his longheld dream he may not hoist a new flag with his wife. The Reverend Bailey likes the current flag. It gives her goose bumps and while both of them are royalists, she alone wants to see the British connection retained on the flag.
"If he gets it changed I'm leaving," she threatens.
He counters that she said the same thing if he added another book to his overflowing collection. "I brought three home last week and she's still here."
I can see a battle looming. And not just in the Bailey household.
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