Charlie Gilmour Cleans the Cenotaph

If it's any testimony, the state of Charlie Gilmour's mind on the day in question can hardly have been helped by the scenes he saw in front of Parliament a short time before his infamous cenotaph stunt. He would have seen the blows of the riot police raining down on unprotected heads. And been crushed as a result of the same idiotic police tactics like everyone else. His response was not violence, but to bare his chest and invite the TSG to do their worst. Which is, in my experience, one classic response to the traumas of demonstrations when they involve violence.
The loss remembered by the Cenotaph is a spiritual loss, not a national one. The memorial carries a spiritual message, not a national anthem, glorifying a country or its head of state or its name or its flag. The Cenotaph is not a rallying call for another generation of dead young people, it is a warning against wars between nations - each defined by its own flag. Let's face it, the Cenotaph and flags don't mix.
And so by removing the Union Jack from this memorial to the dead, the exhibitionist Charlie Gilmour was in fact de-vandalising it.  The real desecrators are those insisting on draping a badge of so much war on it, and on prosecuting anyone attempting to purify it.