All week long the flags on our public buildings have flown at half-mast All week long they have reminded us of the tragic death last weekend of Diana, Princess of Wales. With her funeral now over and her body laid to rest there will be a sense in which the nation now begins to pick up the threads of its daily life. This week the people of Scotland and Wales will decide how favourable they are to the idea of devolution. This week too the people of England and Northern Ireland may belatedly realise they are without a voice on this issue. It would seem that the Union flag, which was flown so widely last week, may soon be an irrelevance.

This nation has since 1603 been a united kingdom. That fact is acknowledged in the titles given today to the sovereign; he or she is monarch of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Is this union to be now undone? I hope it is not and it remains to be seen whether my opinion, voiced here, is shared by the many or the few.

The devolution debate has made me become conscious of how weak is our sense of national identity. On holiday this summer in Sweden and Norway I was particularly struck at the pride which these two nations took in themselves. Sweden may once in history have been a major power but no one could claim this of her now. The same is tine of her Norwegian neighbour amid yet in both countries the majority of homes were proudly flying their national flag and using the colours in it for a variety of national and domestic uses. In both cases they seemed to proclaim a nation proud of its identity. I couldn't help but think how rarely these days one sees the Union flag flying anywhere. Are we ashamed of it? Do we believe our nation has lost or surrendered its once proud identity?

Last week's outpouring of grief at the Princess of Wales' death seemed to suggest that we do retain a shy bot strong sense of nationhood. It was obvious that the majority of British people were proud of her and the work which she did around the world. Many would have agreed with President Mandela's tribute that in Diana's death Britain had lost one of its "finest ambassadors." We showed that pride in the flying from so many buildings of our national flag. Will though that pride continue when the flags have come down? DG