Flags With the Union Jack in the Corner (and Why)

The Union Jack in the upper hoist canton (the top-left quarter, next to the pole) signals a historic constitutional link to the United Kingdom. It comes from the British blue, red and white ensigns, which colonies and dominions adapted by adding their own emblem to the fly. Among the 194 UN member states, only a handful kept the canton after independence.

Sovereign countries that still use it

• Australia — a blue field with the Union Jack canton, the large seven-pointed Commonwealth Star beneath it, and the five stars of the Southern Cross in the fly. Adopted 1901, standardised 1954.
• New Zealand — a blue field with the Union Jack canton and four red stars with white borders representing the Southern Cross. A 2015–16 referendum on changing it failed, with about 57% voting to keep the current design.
• Fiji — a light (sky) blue field with the Union Jack and the shield from Fiji's coat of arms. Retained at independence in 1970; a 2015 government proposal to remove the Union Jack was announced and then shelved.
• Tuvalu — a light blue field with the Union Jack and nine yellow stars arranged to mirror the geographic layout of the country's nine islands. The Union Jack was briefly removed in 1995–97 and then restored.

So four flags, and the way to separate them is the field colour and the stars: Australia and New Zealand use a dark navy blue and the Southern Cross (six white stars versus four red-and-bordered ones); Fiji and Tuvalu use a pale sky blue, with Fiji carrying a shield and Tuvalu carrying nine yellow stars in an island-map pattern.

Widely seen but not sovereign

Many subnational and territorial flags also use the canton, and they appear constantly in image quizzes even though they are not national flags:

• The US state of Hawaii — the only US state flag with a Union Jack, a legacy of the Kingdom of Hawaii's ties to Britain.
• Canadian provinces — Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia all use British ensign designs.
• British Overseas Territories — Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the Falkland Islands, Montserrat, Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Gibraltar's government ensign, and others, almost all blue or red ensigns with a territorial badge.
• Australian states — New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania all use British ensigns with a state badge.
• The Cook Islands and Niue — self-governing states in free association with New Zealand.

Countries that removed it

The trend since the mid-20th century has been to drop the canton:

• Canada replaced its Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf flag in 1965 after a long and bitter national debate.
• South Africa's 1928–1994 flag contained a small Union Jack (alongside the flags of the two former Boer republics); the 1994 flag removed all of it.
• Most Caribbean and African nations designed entirely new flags at independence rather than keep any British element — Jamaica (1962), Kenya (1963), Barbados (1966) and dozens more.
• Hong Kong's colonial flag used a blue ensign; the 1997 handover flag is a bauhinia flower on red.

The Union Jack itself

The Union Jack is a superimposition of three crosses: the red cross of St George (England) on white, the white diagonal saltire of St Andrew (Scotland) on blue, and the red diagonal saltire of St Patrick (Ireland). Wales is not represented, because Wales was already legally joined to England when the flag was designed. The design is asymmetric — the white fimbriation of the St Patrick saltire is wider on one side — so it can be, and often is, flown upside down by mistake.