Pensioner Herbie Stratton has been asked to stop flying the Confederate flag at night - because neighbours claim it's too noisy!

Herbie Stratton with the Confederate flag in the garden of his home

The former Royal Marine has long had an eight-metre flagpole outside his council home in Tennent Road, Acomb, and flies a range of flags including the Union, the Kuwaiti and the Lone Star of Texas.

Most are made of cotton material which barely rustles when the wind gets up.

But neighbours think the nylon Confederate flag, bought by the pensioner during a trip to Atlanta and run up the flagpole over the past week, is a very different matter.

They have complained to City of York Council that it makes too much noise when it flaps in the wind, and are losing sleep.

And now Herbie has received a letter from a housing official, asking him not to fly the flag during the night.

But the 76-year-old says it is nonsense that people are losing sleep because of his flags. "I don't lose sleep and I am closer to the flagpole than they are."

He is critical of "bourgeois" people who he claims have recently moved into the council estate, and "want to have things as they would like it and not as they are".

He said he planned to take legal advice. "Until then, the Confederate flag will still be flown."

But he claimed he was at a disadvantage because he was a council tenant and had to comply with certain rules.

"If I do not toe the line I can, under certain circumstances, be evicted."

Herbie said he had lived at the house for 51 years. He put the flagpole up about 15 years ago in honour of his brother, who was killed in action in North Africa in 1943.

"Since having the flagpole, I have had three different neighbours either side. Not one of them complained about the flags."

A council spokesman said: "Mr Stratton has clearly pinned his colours to the mast and, while we have no problem with him flying this particular flag, we have had several complaints from neighbours who have been disturbed at night, at times of high wind, with the sound of this flag rustling.

"Because of these complaints, we have ask Mr Stratton to consider making a gesture of goodwill towards his neighbours and remove the flag at night."

Mr Stratton's immediate neighbours on either side both said last night that although the flag did make some noise at night, neither had complained to the council.

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