very insightful and nicely written
deserves more that a green thumb

Sean O’Casey’s Silver Tassie captured the wasted promise…I think the Abbey refused it.
I think its his best play.
Never saw a production, only read it.

“Offer me a green poppy if you must to honour those fallen in two horrendous world wars but do not ask me to put a crimson emblem in my lapel for the murderers who hid behind a khaki uniform and talked of ‘doing their duty’.”
Taken from the Derry Journal: http://www.derryjournal.com/community/columnists/maybe-it-s-time-for-a-green-poppy-instead-1-2117641

Exile,

I meant to write anniversary many thanks for pointing out the correction.

David

I dont normally comment on my pieces but that is an excellent piece by Fisk. Really good to get that different perspective.

thanks for the link

Excellent article Jim.
Lest we forget what? That at least 200 million of this planets inhabitants lost their lives in the 20th century courtesy of state sponsored violence.
That the twentieth century was by far the most violent century in human history courtesy of the same misguided patriotism that now trumpets remembrance for the ‘fallen hero’ and treats the horrors of war as a romantised hallmark event.
Britains anti-war movement promotes the wearing of a White poppy on remembrance day. Lest we forget the senselessness of war.
” The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
Ernest Hemingway

Ta Jim, that Blunden book just went on the end of reading list.

It should also be noted that we are being appealed to as Irishwo/men to commemorate the Irish dead…precisely the cause of the carnage…rampant divisive nationalism elevated to imperial insanity for the agendas of parasitic arms industrialists and their financiers selling weapons and usurious loans to both.

These are the same global financial ‘players’ whose knuckle-duster is today gloved in the Troika, IMF, World Bank and WTO. When the Mitt comes off the duster sparkles as Nato in hot pursuit of its forecast resource wars of the 21st century of PNAC neo-con fame. The Great Game and the Great Wars run in tandem.
Wear your corn poppy(papaver rhoeas) if you must, but remember its a metaphor for a bullet hole in a young lad who seldom knew what lies he was dying for. I’d be more inclined to wear papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, for the victims of the ongoing imperial adventures in Afghanistan that sees the crop expanding exponentially under the Karzai puppet and resurgent warlords installed by the usual suspects.
Is it coincidental that as Burma is accepted into the western fold this raw material of the heroin trade is expanding its cultivation there also?
But then, Britannia learned in its 19th century Opium Wars against China how useful that commodity is for extracting revenues and debilitating target populations.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori?

Thanks of link – very interesting

Great article, thanks Jim.

Well done,great link,explains it very well

But that’s not what the poppy symbolises. The British legions poppy campaign uses the money raised from the selling of the Poppy to aid the veterans fund. Don’t want to contribute? Then don’t buy one from the British legion it’s as simple as that

I think we should honour those brave enough to refuse to fight and who were shot for their courage by firing-squads of conforming cowards without the backbone to think for themselves.

A link to yesterday’s article might be fitting for the day that’s in it. Letters and wills from Irish Soldiers in WWI are now available online.

A snapshot of the Irish in World War I http://jrnl.ie/666341

Hypocrite. You’re not American but you watch their TV shows. You’re not Indonesian but you wear their clothes. You’re not Ethiopian but you drink their coffee. You’re not from anywhere else but most of what you own/eat/use comes from somewhere else, you are linked to the rest of the world like it or not, why single the poppy as being your objection to wearing something associated with another country?
Your objection on the grounds of sovereignty is cannibalism by your own hypocrisy.

What a ridiculous post. You are equating watching television shows and food from other countries with wearing an overtly British POLITICAL symbol. The sharp rise in Poppy fascism in the UK coincided with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the resulting British military casualties.

It is merely an attempt by the British state to get the British nation behind ‘the boys’ in the armed forces. That’s their business, of course. It’s not Ireland’s business and neither is the promotion of their Poppy. Being a sovereign nation means we decide whether to wear it or not, and quite clearly most Irish people have little or no interest in it.

Get over it.

What should I get over? My observations of your hypocritical comments or the big chip on your shoulder about the British. If you read the fisk article posted in an earlier comment by someone else you’ll read that his father wore the poppy after he fought in the war. It’s not a new thing, and it’s not British because I’m Irish and I wear one. Is the shamrock Irish? It’s a symbol.

I have no chip on any shoulder about the British, Alan. I regard them as our greatest friends along with America. But that does not make us either British or American nor compelled to follow their national remembrances about the great war or any other conflict. We are a sovereign nation and entitled to choose our own method of remembering our war dead.

To say the red Poppy isn’t a British symbol is just patent nonsense. Everyone knows that it is. Watching the US elections last week showed only British people in America wearing poppies. So my suggestion is that Ireland find its own way to commemorate our war dead.

And before we find our own way what do you suggest?

That would be a personal choice. But wearing a white poppy for peace would be my suggestion.

And if the personal choice is the red poppy, what’s the problem with that?

Then that’s your choice. But denying it’s a British symbol to yourself or anyone else is pointless.

Taxi for Alan Hayes

Taxi to the nearest Cenotaph to acknowledge the almost 40,000 Irish men who died in the first world war.

I agree with Alan in that post.
It is also important to note the reason the poopy is used in the first place.
Put political symbols aside, and ask ‘Why the red Poppy?’ the red poppy plant eventually gets suffocated by weeds but it’s seeds remain dormant for years and years until such time as there is a violent upheaval of the earth, then the seeds get the daylight and can sprout again . There was so many such events in the fields of France that the poppies were all vn

The one that had the ‘cajones’ were the ones that questioned their induction and went to firing squads rather than conform out of cowardice.

It is only in recent years that their smearing as traitors has started to be rolled back. Try and find a copy of Dalton Trumbo’s ‘Johnny Got His Gun’, an account from the hospital bed of a survivor who envied the dead, or view the Tom Courtney movie King and Country, an account of a shell-shocked private’s courts martial for desertion after he wandered away from his unit.
Search ‘Shot at Dawn’ if you want more detail.

I’m a Quaker, so obviously I totally disprove of war and would consider it my moral as well as religious duty to resist it in all of its forms. We’re one of the major reasons that conscientious objector status is so widely recognised.

But one of the bravest things you can do in life is follow your conscience, Damien. Not all who fought “conformed out of cowardice”, just like not all conscientious objectors are afraid of battle. Generalisations like that are incredibly unhelpful.

Nick

I am against imperial wars out of considered conviction..not some religious program(the god concept has too much blood on its lilywhites).
I am not some ideological pacifist. I can envisage a necessity to kill.
This war resulted from a set of controlled imperial agendas oiled by multimillion propaganda, of which I witness the insinuation of this poppy campaign along with the use of our air facilities for resource wars on innocent civilians as a continuation into the 21st century. We are reincorporated into their Great Game.
I find your hair-splitting particularisation and whataboutery serves the war party propagandists more than those of us who are waging a war on war against considerable resource odds.

Most who fought conformed out of whipped up conviction, manufactured by cynical industrial parasites and blessed by religious humbuggery in collusion with a warrior culture which is an atavistic vestige of our animal savagery masquerading as bravery.
My purpose is to counter that culture of blinkered fratricide, which the forces behind this poppy front are again cynically utilising to justify recruitment for imperial adventure. I am quite capable of discriminating between the duper and the duped.
Get past your religious piety and apply a little more analysis.
It is a little clear thinking, not sentimental sympathy I would like to be ‘helpful’ towards. These wars are premeditated, not accidental, and their mentalities are embedded in the prevalent culture.

@Alan..to some it is.

But to the British army it is a propaganda symbol to glorify conformist youthful camaraderie and machismo as heroism and a recruiting lever for more useful idiocy in the service of cynical warmongers whose children will profit from their crippledom and death.

Be aware. Beware sentimental sybolisations, they can be means of hypnosis. From flags to religious emblems they are the tools of wizardry down the ages, from Pharaoh to Madison Ave via the Vatican and Orange Lodges.

Alan you’ve hit the nail on the head. Case in point to this is that of John Condon a 14 boy from Wexford who is the youngest soldier to die in WW1. He lied about his age and enlisted owing to the fact that his mother, a widow, could t afford to feed or clothe him. He is said to have only wanted a pair of boots. He died in a chlorine gas explosion in paschendale. The irony of it is that the only thing they found of him was a dog tag from his boot.

Damo, to some it is… also a chance to show their Anti British sentiment. Also a chance of Romanticising the 1916 rebels because they weren’t there at the time to feel the disgust that was predominant in relation to the timing of the rebellion. The Irish who fought in WW1 did their piece to advocate independence. Revisionists have forgotten them and their role in gaining independence.

@Alo

You are a little confused. To be anti-imperial militarism is not to be ani-British(not for us all anyway).

The men of 1916 were attempting to break a stranglehold of parasitic resource-extraction, vivisected logically since at least Swift(who would have identified as both British and Irish), running through plantation, ethnic cleansings, racist/sectarian/cultural/legal warfare, repeated famines and repression of development, treachery, bribery and assassination and the cultivation of a fascistic Ku Klux Klan Orange bigotry allied to Tory reactionary subversion.
I have British and American family members, I am neither anti British nor anti-American, though often accused of both by simplistic historical illiterates.
To elevate the unfortunate cannon fodder fed into this imperial carnage, and deprecate the men of 1916 into some ‘romanticised’ distortion(whatever the immediate reaction of the dumbfounded Dubs of the day) is a piece of revisionism worthy of a Goebbels.
You are deluded. I would suggest you have read your history(if indeed you have even bothered to) to confirm a preconceived ideological opinion.

..quite apart from your asserting(sans foundation) their ‘piece to advocate independence’, after already explaining they were merely tryiing to feed the families impoverished by the same imperial economic vampire.

Your agenda is a bit transparent. Revise your revision.

You do realise that the article was about Ireland forgetting about our dead of the great war while remembering only the men that fought and died here in 1916? 30 comments later and we’re already back to talking about the rebellion and forgetting the many thousands that died during world war 1.

And until we have ‘Our own way’ I’ll wear a poppy to commemorate the Irish who died.

Alan while it’s admirable that you wish to commemorate the Irish that have died the poppy is a British symbol. To wear it says you’re remembering British soldiers and unless you plan on stopping to explain that to everyone, Honoring the British military is the message you’re putting out there.

Mark, I disagree with you. And I’m more than happy to discuss with anyone who wants to stop me on the street.
Tom, Are you one of the people who sings “Green fields of France” (AKA Willie MacBride) and thinks their commemorating an Irish rebel? Just curious, many if them out there.

correct me if I’m wrong but the whole point of any symbol is to display your support of something without needing to stop and discuss it with anyone.

sad part is that the bullet holes are still in the GPO and still visible for anyone who cares to look at the columns
these bullet holes where cause by the very British army swelled with Irish men fighting and killing their own bothers who made a brave attempt for freedom.

I’m not going to celebrate British army putting down our true hero’s struggle for freedom. I do sympathies with Irish men joining the British army because of misguided belives and sent to be slathered at the front in the war of great empires that proclaimed to be the great war to end all wars.

let’s not forget that Irish fought on both sides although that won’t be popular with poppy lovers.

Good lad Tom, near 40, 000 Irish people die in a war and you point out your distaste with the bullet holes they left on the GPO.

the man that wrote that song lives here in Australia. It ridicules those who fought in WWI and I’d guess that’s why people would view it as a republican song but I’m sure people think the song’s reference to 1916 is perceived as our Easter Rising.

Regardless I think Bogle was on the money with the lyrics, he could so easily have written similar lyrics about the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alan
selective memory isn’t history. nor is celebrating a British army occupation and forceful suppression of its people by firing squad. this is also all part of the great war. to remember the Irish men who jointed the British army to fight their own country men and those in the field of France with a symbol of British solidarity and support for their armed forces in past and present wars is ridiculous. let’s not forget NI and the bully boy behaviour of sectors of that community and it’s UK state run terrorism against those it considered foe..

@alan as was pointed out by wearing a poppy you are offering support to the foundation set up to provide for all retired members of their forces etc probably some of the same guys who were in Derry on Bloody Sunday so tell me why it’s appropriate for any Irish person to wear this totally British symbol? I agree they should be remembered but not by wearing a poppy stained with the blood of Irish people murdered by crown forces

You couldn’t be more wrong. The red remberence poppy was inspired by the poem “in Flanders fields” and it was an American woman called Moina Michael who created the first poppy badge. It was then taken on by the American army as a away of remembering American war dead of WW1 before being adopted by various veterans groups and eventually the British legion. The idea that the poppy commemorated all war dead is inaccurate. It merely represents those who fought and died in WW1. The political issue here is that they are sold by the royal British legion. I wear a poppy but I bought it in Ypres at the Menin Gate. I wouldn’t by one from the RBL because their ” poppy campaign” supports current engagement of the BA in Afghanistan ect. It is however wrong to suggest that the poppy is British. It’s nothing short of a display of ignorance. The poppy is an International symbol and was around long before the RBL started selling them

I wear one every year and nobody passes a remark.
I see quite a few people wearing the poppy as well.

Irish people by and large are tolarant it’s not the same as acceptance and encouragement.

My Great Gran Uncle died at the time of that battle in June 1917 Shane, but I’m not sure if that’s exactly where he died. He’s commemorated on the Menin Gate. Was your Great Uncle serving with the Post Office Rifles by any chance?

Hi Emma, no he was in the Canadian Army having emigrated there in I911. He died at the very end of that battle, in November 1917. If your relative in Flanders in June then it was probably at Messines Ridge. There are ways you can find out. S

Personally couldn’t care less about the lily.
Just saying.

Well said !!!

A pity the Lily was hijacked by the Shinners. It is poisoned by its association with terrorism.

If there’s a white lilly (all white) remembering those who died in the crossfire, as well as those actively involved, I’ll wear it.

james connoly muppet

james connolly muppet

Hear hear! Irishmen in British Solder uniform are British Solders. Britain’s wars were never ours to fight!

There are dates are remembered within the Irish Military, the Organisation of National Ex-Servicemen and Women http://www.oneconnect.ie/ use a purple flower called the FUCHSIA to request that people remember, and there is the white Lilly at Easter.

Would it not make more sense to have it on the 11 of November? After all, that was when the Great War ended. The harp wouldn’t be an appropriate symbol as it is too political, after all it is the national emblem. The poppy makes sense, as it commemorates the poppy fields of France in which many Irishmen and other countrymen alike were killed fighting for freedom, but perhaps a different shape, or colour poppy would be more acceptable to those who don’t want to conform to British symbols. I would just like to be able to show my respect to all people who fought for our freedom no matter what country they came from, and I believe that wearing a simple flower is a great way of doing so.

I agree Ireland should have a day to remember the fallen in the Great War but I feel that the poppy is now political. It is used as a symbol of Britishness by many and whether you like it or not that is the way most see it here. Im sure an appropriate symbol can be found for the Irish that died and I hope that happens. Just not a poppy.

Join the British army and fight tyranny….that has a ring to it.

And in the red trench, joining the wehrmacht to fight for Liberty against tyranny…

I think its time we found a flower for the buttonhole that commemorates the innocent civilian ‘collateral-damage’; increasing with each further iteration of the industrialising crank on the wheels of modern technologised, remotely delivered, obscenity.
Maybe we could rebrand the shamrock, or wear a cannabis leaf(we had a theory in the Viet Nam days that the reason it was illegal was because it tended to be conducive to reflection, not a quality propaganda-indoctrinaters are overly mad about: alcohol is a far superior stupefacient).

So many big words to say so little, it is so sad that you chose to dishonour the dead in this regard but it is your right sir, I however feel that these brave heros deserve our respect.

I think the biggest word I used was ‘industrialisation’.

Most of the Tommies in the trenches would have known all about it, Irish, African or Anzac(or are the Tommies strictly the English?).

It means the mechanisation and consequent amplifying of the power of fratricidal killing through scientific application of systematic concentrated rationality that accelerated with the American civil war and has now gone to remote capability to vaporise a mega-city from the far side of the planet at speeds that mean you won’t hear the delivery vehicle approachin(they do travel faster than sound).

I hope that helps..let me know if any of the shorter words are a problem. I’m into explaining my stance. Its considered and I’ve done a little homework on the topic.
I reserve my honour for the living. And consider the moral bravery to resist warmongering stupidity trumps blind physical courage directed by organised criminals.

It was actually republicans who first stood up to fascism when they fought Franco in Spain against the wishes of the catholic church

Irish men fought in ww1 with the British army in the hopes of garnering favour with the Brits that would lead to Irish independence. 30000 Irish men died in British uniforms. Doesn’t make them less Irish. Nor does the men of 1916 make them more Irish. Wear a poppy. Don’t wear a poppy. Point is we are free to choose either way.

Ur rite j. It doesn’t mean they were less Irish, just easily led

See I would wear one if I didn’t have to buy it off SF. I will never contribute to SF coffers. I’ll buy a lily from a florist. I won’t contribute to a political party that had highjacked the symbol, much like my feelings towards the poppy. I’ll wear one but I bought it in Belgium,

and the swastika was originally a symbol used in Hinduism and Buddhism. I think it literally translates as ‘to be good’

sadly the origin and true meaning of things gets lost as they get adopted by the west

the pass week been filled with programs of British remembering their empire past to prestent wars all adorned with poppies. If I was English I would proudly ware one however I’m lucky enough to be Irish so it’s not for me.

@Damocles

You miss the point that it is being used as a cynical recruiting tool by the British army to glorify the imperial resource wars of the 21st century.

Excellent Jay.

sure we cant now as kenny has made us a full member of the united states of europe

the red poppy is percieved as partisan and militarist. it only honours the military dead of the allies not civilians or other combatants. this is the reason for the white poppy that remembers all those that died in all wars. like it or not the red poppy is a political emblem that we could do without. if you want to remember the dead wear a white poppy.

@Ogie
I thought it was Cowen that did that?

There was me thinking it was the referenda

Maybe if they spend a few years(or even hours) reading up on the background to this imperial collision of Teutonic warriors(King and Kaiser being cousins in military glorification and the Angles and Saxons being fellow Teutons of the emerging German search for its ‘liebensraum’ against the sunsetless empire)we might yet stop the next round of this increasingly devestating Great Game for global hegemony that brought us yet another Great War; each side funded and armed by the same multinational financial and industrial paragonic ‘pillars’ of polite society.

They haven’t gone away you know. Haliburton and BAe are just two of their diabolic offspring.
The are, literally, legion. And their symbolic eagle goes back from the currently dominant bald through several reichs to the Roman eagle.
Leave the dead to bury the dead. Protect the living by educating them against this fratricidal idiocy’s cyclic escalations. Sentimentalising the horror is a recipe for repetitions, and the poppy is cynically used to glorify this falsified definition of ‘courage’ and masculinity, fastened like a leech on a warrior cultism.
Have the courage to reject regimentation.

why do you talk like that Damien? i mean using eloquent works is fine fair enough but in every post in every sentence ?? kinda gives you the aura of slight bit eccentric nutter disconnected from reality. May mean lower your intelligence but can you try to connect with people on roughly the same level. no need to unnecessarily use words that just sound over the top

@Stewie

I’m not talking, I’m typing.
Like that?Its English, my Gaeilge is not fluent enough to express what I’m trying to communicate.

I use words that represent what I think, as accurately and comprehensively and economicaly as possible.
Time and space are valuable. I have other things to do. I have no idea how broad your vocabulary is, I’m presuming anyone reading is bright enough to open a dictionary if they have mastered the keyboard(which I’m actually not very fast on). When I am talking I get feedback clues as to the extent of understanding of my listener, or whether I have lost them. I don’t do telepathy, so I have to make preumptions as to literacy levels on line.

Maybe I am an eccentric nutter(hardly for me to say).
Finally, if you have followed ‘every post in every sentence’, ta for your perseverence and patience.
I hope that helps.

But it is used to symbolise Britishness.

And as a fundraiser for injured cannon-fodder the state abdicates caring for while using their sacrifice to propagandise for more imperial adventures for fat-cat old Etonians like Cameron&Co.

It was actually a King on the throne when WW1 started Mark. Such ignorance weakens any point you’re attempting to make!

Mark – many irish men fought in WW1 which broke out 2 years before 1916. Those who fought in 1916 were initially despised by the general irish population because, in part there was patriotic support for those Irish men fighting in the trenches. What has remembering those Irish men who fought in that war got to do with flying the British flag? The Irish state did not exist when these men signed up to the great war. Do you suggest we just whitewash any history of the state prior to our independence that may inconveniently point to a close relationship between Ireland and britian?

Mark, your comment sums up a lot of the misunderstanding around the role of Irishmen in WWI. There was no Irish State when it started, many aspired to independence and yet remained loyal to the Empire, I think the British over reaction to a small group of brave Irishmen who conspired with the Germans to overthrow British rule in the name of genuine Irish freedom was the catalyst for the start of the Irish nation. Irishmen in the trenches fighting the Germans and Turks must have had very mixed feelings when they heard of the 1916 rebellion and the German support for it,they had spent nearly two years in the slaughterhouse at that stage fighting the same Germans. Had the British dealt more humanely with the Irishmen of 1916 and not executed them as traitors to the Empire I wonder what would have happened- certainly the righteous anger of the Irish people would have been less and the foundation of our country would not have begun then. Remember too the Union Jack flag is a composite flag and includes the Irish St Patricks cross. 1916 in Ireland changed everything. The men who were literally fighting for their lives in France Belgium Turkey came home to a changed public attitude to the war because of the executions in particular they are to be held in the highest regard for their sacrifice just as the men of 1916 in Ireland. Btw I think it was King George V was the man on the throne then.

Mark, your ignorance on the topic knows no bounds if this comment is anything to go by. In 1914 we were all bound to king and country whether we liked it or not. Fact of the matter is, those men were sold a lie. After years of lobbying for home rule they were assured of its coming to pass after the war which everyone believed would be over by Christmas. They weren’t to know any better.

Also I feel it’s important to remind you that the notion of a 32 county sovereign state was only cemented in the mindset of the Irish people following the execution of the rising leaders. The week before they were vowed as mindless things who had blown up half of Dublin.

I personally think that we should remember these men who we have written out of our history for their service to each and every one of us as they didn’t go out there for the British empire they went out there so that in years to come each and every one of us might live free from oppression of a foreign nation and many of them died believing that. They were lied to and used as cannon fodder and I for one will remember their sacrifice.

My great grand father fought & died in trenchs to save People!!! not any particular county at the time we were under British rule so he did fight for king and country but some of his family fought for Irish freedom. He was a farmers son and he just wanted to help protect people and ha died with British and Irish lads so we could be free.

@Orela, you are justly proud and we all should be proud of your great grandfather, I am all for remembering the fallen of just causes, the problem is that the poppy is not represting just causes as the “Empire” it stands for raped and murdered women and children and oppressed the people of many nations over many hundreds of years.