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Showing posts with label Red poppy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Red poppy. Show all posts
Peter Anderson ✒ As I sat down to watch the Saturday night live game between Spurs and Man U, I couldn't help but notice that the silly season has returned. 

There was Roy Keane wearing a poppy lapel badge, then as the teams lined up Spurs' 2 Argentinians, Romero and Lo Celso, were wearing poppies on their shirts. I can't imagine that Keane or the 2 Argentinians are big fans of the British army, but for the sake of a quiet life they have decided to wear a poppy. Maybe they do respect the British army I am only surmising that they don't, given the British army's history in Ireland and the relatively recent war between the UK and Argentina.

In recent years poppy fascism tends to be on the rise with TV stations foisting poppies on all that appear on their shows. That's not how it should be. It should be a decision for each individual. The soldiers of the Second World War fought and died to preserve us from totalitarianism, which includes the right to dissent from the prevailing or government view. Yet now when people appear in public without a poppy they are slaughtered on social media, prompting many to wear one for a quiet life. 

To be clear, I am an ex-member of the British army and proud to be so. Sometimes I wear a poppy and sometimes I don't. It never used to matter, in the glorious days before Twitter! For me remembrance is a private matter not one to be foisted on footballers from other countries, cultures or beliefs.

FIFA tried to ban the poppy in 2017 as "a political symbol" but the UK government got the ban overturned after a furious appeal. FIFA should have dug in. Politics, or religion for that matter, and sport shouldn't mix. The essence of sport is to compete while respecting each other and the rules of the game. There is no need to honour one team or one competitor's political opinion or religious persuasion.

Take the GAA: there is a team in South Derry named after an ex-player who was in jail for taking part in a punishment shooting on behalf of a sectarian murder gang. He didn't get the club named after him for anything he did on the pitch or boardroom. Why is that even allowed? Is it designed to keep unionists away from the GAA? Well, it certainly worked on me. Could you imagine if Linfield renamed themselves "Top Gun McKeag FC"? Would you blame nationalists for wanting nothing to do with the Irish League? Yet the GAA allow their clubs to do just that, though it is clear that many members are uneasy or embarrassed by that decision.

If there is a political, cultural or religious undercurrent to a match then it certainly adds spice and the real fans know it, like when England faced Maradona's Argentina 4 years after the Falklands war, or when Rangers play Celtic, for example. It makes the games more enthralling, but they are still only games at the end of the day, and that is the all important thing. What we don't need is official sporting recognition of political, cultural or religious norms. 

If Spurs want to have a remembrance service, fine. Have it at another time when nobody is compelled to attend or shamed into taking part.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports.

Silly Season Game On

Republican revisionism is an insult to Ireland’s real Nationalist war heroes, maintains controversial political commentator, Dr John Coulter, in his Fearless Flying Column today which is Armistice Day.

On this day 101 years ago, the guns of the Great War fell silent at 11 o’clock - the Armistice was in place which brought to a conclusion one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts.

World War One effectively wiped out a generation of people. Tens of thousands of families in Ireland, or families with Irish roots, were affected by that conflict.

Today I will be especially remembering three relations - a grandfather and two uncles - who served in World War One - two with the Army, one with the Royal Flying Corps. Two survived; one was killed when he was hit by a German shell at the Battle of Cambria in 1917.

My great uncle, William Holmes, was a bachelor who was due home leave. However, he took the place of a married chum so that his friend could go home to visit his wife. My great uncle’s body has never been recovered, but his memory is kept alive in a memorial plaque in the family church near Ballyclare in County Antrim.

Across Ireland, many thousands will also be commemorating the Armistice. That Great War saw Nationalists and Unionists alike don the British uniforms to fight against Kaiser Bill’s tyranny.

In today’s society, there is an increasing mocking of the poppy, which has become the symbol of the slaughter of the Great War in particular. While Unionists have been to the fore in commemorating those who served or made the supreme sacrifice in World War One, for generations, those Nationalists who served and died were airbrushed out of Irish history.

German and Turkish machine guns did not differentiate between Unionists and Nationalists in bloodbaths such as the Somme and Gallipoli. They died side by side wearing the same uniforms and fighting the same cause.

Given the political climate at the time in Ireland in 1914 before the outbreak of the Great War, those same Nationalists and Unionists could have died fighting each other in a bloody Irish Civil War over which faction ran what counties on the island.

On one side was the Unionist Ulster Volunteers; on the other, the Nationalist Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizens Army. While the real Irish Civil War nearly a decade later pitched republican against republican, 1914 could have seen Nationalists pitched against Unionists.

Perhaps the Great War could have been avoided if the various Royal families - many of them inter-related - could have organised a conference in a neutral nation, such as America, and sorted out their differences thus preventing millions dying needlessly in the mud of Flanders.

An overwhelming majority of soldiers from Nationalist backgrounds found themselves shunned when they returned from the trenches in 1918. For decades, republicans shunned the poppy.

But did those republicans ever stop to realise that the reason they can make this decision in a democratic society is because of the sacrifice which many Nationalists made in the two world wars?

What sort of Ireland would we be living in today had the Kaiser won the Great War or Hitler and his Nazis triumphed in World War Two? Would republicans be able to openly express their opinions if the Kaiser’s or the Fuhrer’s Storm Troopers had roamed across Ireland in 1919 or 1949?

And it was not just the Nationalists and Irishmen who served in the two world wars who became the forgotten generation in Ireland for many years.

I recall my campaigns during my time at the Irish Daily Star to get Southern Ireland’s Victoria Cross heroes’ graves recognised, some of whom had served in conflicts in the 19th century.

Then there was the ‘Shot At Dawn’ campaign to get posthumous pardons for Irish soldiers executed during the Great War who had in reality been suffering from shell shock, not the desertion that they were branded for.

Like it or lump it, republicans have to recognise that Ireland has a rich military heritage and history with the various arms of the British forces, whether that be the Army, Navy or Air Force.

Perhaps Irish republicans should take a leaf out of the United States’ book on how to honour veterans. The USA does not distinguish between Unionists and Nationalists who served with the American forces - they are all American personnel.

There has been much historical debate as to what role, if any, the IRA played during the Second World War in assisting Nazi plans to invade the United Kingdom.

While it may be the subject of blockbuster movies, such as The Eagle Has Landed, did the IRA try to take advantage of the UK’s dilemma in fending off an invasion from Hitler in the same way as the Dublin Easter Rising of 1916 attempted to use the UK’s involvement in the Great War to stage a coup?

Suppose - with IRA help - Hitler had been able to invade and defeat the UK by using Ireland as a springboard, what would have been the fate of Ireland’s Jewish community? Would we have witnessed the genocide of Hitler’s death camps replicated on the Emerald Isle?

Perhaps those who wish to rewrite Irish history would do well to remember the old maxim - frontline revolutionaries are always expendable!

If Hitler had taken over Ireland as part of his defeat of the British Isles, would the Nazi dictator have ended partition, or would he have made sure the IRA - like Ernst Rohm’s SA during the Night of the Long Knives - did not become a political nuisance and condemned many republicans to the death camps?

While this can be dismissed as needless speculation because Kaiser Bill and Hitler lost the two world wars, republicans need to take account of ‘the big picture’ when talking about Ireland’s patriotic dead.

Instead of branding them as traitors for taking the half crown and serving in the British forces, republicans need to fully embrace the role which Nationalists have had in various British regiments, but also in other armies across the globe, such as the American and United Nations forces.

If republicans’ vision of their ‘new Ireland’ is all-embracing, it must embrace those Nationalists who fought and died against global tyranny.


 
Listen to religious commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online at www.thisissunshine.com

Ireland's Real Nationalist War Heroes

Pedram Moallemian on his refusal to countenance wearing a poppy.


I Will Not Wear A Poppy

Cait Trainor slams Irish people who wear the poppy given the numerous killings of Irish civilians by British troops.

All These Children

Caoimhin O’Muraile thinks there are significant differences between the First and Second World Wars that need factored into the poppy discussion.

Why The Poppy Could Be Construed As Insulting Those Who Died In WW1

Thomas Dixie Elliot contrasts the opportunism of Sinn Fein presidential candidate Líadh ní Ríada  with the principle of Cambridge University students, and anticipates the weasel words from party hacks to justify it. 

Poppy Goes The Weasel

Mick Hall @ Organized Rage writes:

Today Armistice Day and the Red Poppy have little to do with honouring the dead, it's about manipulating the living. 

Wear A Poppy To Manipulate The Living

Mick Hall with a piece from earlier this month which looks at the significance of Poppy Day. Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage.

In a sea red poppies the peace poppy
prospers

Once Again The Yearly Red Poppy Charade Of Concern Is Upon Us.

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