Black Country flag row: Should we try to rethink history?

Mr Vernon may have been brought up in the area but he had to go somewhere much more enlightened to make his name and win his OBE.

Wisely, he chose London. And sensibly he became a Labour councillor when it was the fashionable thing to do.

Luckily he was able to campaign about race relations in a way which – quite rightly – turns anyone unfortunate enough to have been born white into a guilty party.

Guilty by association – if you're not black the chances are that somewhere in your shameful past one of your ancestors made money, found employment or otherwise scraped a living supplying something to someone who might possibly have sold it on to a merchant who could perhaps in some way have had dealings with a man who had a friend whose great-aunt was a plantation-owner in the West Indies at the height of the slave trade.

That makes you guilty as if you'd captained the slave ship and presided over the auction of men and women yourself.

So of course Mr Vernon is right to stigmatise the non-BAME community. If you're non-BAME then you're to blame (BAME, by the way, stands for 'black, Asian and minority ethnic').

You're not only to blame for slavery, of course, but if you're a bloke you also have to make amends for the generations of sexism you are guilty of.

Especially, you are to blame for the oppression of the women chainmakers of the Black Country who were also martyrs and victims of white male oppression.

Admittedly these 'white slaves of England' didn't go on strike for more pay until more than 100 years after Britain abolished the slave trade throughout its empire and fought to end it around the world.

But they made chains – symbols of oppression; they were badly paid – more or less as bad as being slaves; and they were women – therefore, by definition, victims.

So when Patrick Vernon says the chains on the Black Country flag are offensive and insensitive, we must pay attention.

If he hadn't raised the issue in the first place, nobody would have made the connection between a Black Country industry which launched a thousand ships, and the slave trade. We should be grateful Mr Vernon has done it for us.

He finds the chains offensive and he has trawled the history books to encourage himself in his hurt feelings.

He can prove people in the Black Country made money selling chains to slavers. Not just rich merchants but workers scraping a living in the burning fiery furnaces.

How disgusting that in 1770 a Wolverhampton iron-maker pushed his wares as a supplier to the slave trade.

It may have happened more than 200 years ago but for people like Mr Vernon it's as if it took place yesterday. How can he justify his existence as a political campaigner if he doesn't keep reminding us of our wicked past?

I hope Mr Vernon won't stop at the Black Country flag. The Union Jack's certainly got to go.

Our evil empire is guilty of too many crimes to list them all here. But why are we celebrating the Battles of Agincourt and Waterloo this year when they are symbols of the way we have over the centuries oppressed the poor, innocent French?

And why are we being beastly to the Germans? This year alone we have marked the Battle of Britain and the end of World War Two?

Surely today's Germans don't deserve to be reminded of the oppression suffered at the hands of the English.

Wherever you look in history you find examples of this terrible nation enslaving or oppressing someone. The Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, China, the entire Asian sub-continent, the Aborigines and native Americans – blame the wicked English for everything that's ever gone wrong anywhere.

Mr Vernon should be pursing his campaign across in America as well.

After all, the USA was formed by rebels and terrorists who wouldn't even pay for a tax on tea.

The Confederate flag may commemorate slavery in the southern states but the Stars and Stripes represents international terrorism.

For the nation leading the 'war on terror', it is surely time to scrap it and design something far more inclusive and diverse.

All of history is pretty much a chronicle of man's inhumanity to man.

Obviously the English were the very worst of the whole lot but surely Mr Vernon should be widening his campaign to bring down the flags on oppressive Western history wherever it can be found.

I would be tempted to quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau who said: 'Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains.'

But as Mr Vernon would no doubt point out, the French philosopher was obviously a sexist.