I never, ever remember having to salute a British flag as a kid. Nor ever hearing the National Anthem played anywhere I was (only for posh people's events!). They'd stopped playing the anthem in cinemas by the time I was going. Witness kids went to the library at assembly (never understood why, since it only avoided saying the Lord's prayer at the end spoken by a teacher - no denominational overtones). I tried to skip out, too, but my Dad wouldn't allow me.
I do vaguely remember being made to wave a flag when the Queen came to our town as a very small child (4??).
I also remember those silver Jubilee commemorative coins. My father kept ours, but they were lost (together with commemorative stamps for various things that Dad bought us) when our mum sold my alcoholic dad's home. We had the best ever silver Jubilee street party outside Dad's AND my best JW friends were there with their pioneer mum. I think some sensible JW mum's felt bad as the parties were literally outside their kids front doors, so they went .š¤·āāļø
The only thing I really missed out on due to neutrality was the ceremony our (Royal) University Hospital had for its graduates. This included standing for the anthem and curtseying to royal family member presenting the silver medal every graduate is givenāļø. It's a shame because not attending meant i missed out on individual and group photos in our new uniform - complete with antiquated frilly hats lol. These were dispensed with later that year, so photos of them are a nice piece of social history.
Our boys attended the Golden Jubilee street party we held but there was nothing around here for the recent jubileešI think white British people in London are so sensitive to anything remotely connected with empire, after the BLM protests, they didn't organise parties. That's all I can think of....???
