What exactly are we remembering in November ?
Nothing is simple in Northern Ireland. Football, education, newspapers, remembrance. Particularly when you bring in that little family of plants, the Papaveraceae. And particularly, when you involve people from Northern Ireland.
Our society progresses like it is doing a Cha-Cha-Cha with the rest of modern society. Forward a bit, regression to the past, modernise a bit, fall back in hardened bigoted ways of yore. In an ecumenical and all-together quite moving service of remembrance on Armistice day at Stormont in Belfast, the first Republican speaker of the NI assembly recited Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’ which has become as integral a part of November remembrance as the Flanders poppy itself. And then this happened.
Ironically the singing came from the Voice, The Traditional Unionist Voice’s Press Officer, and an unelected self-important dweeb, decided to do a cha-cha-cha with social progress and miss the whole bloody point. The camera is right in front of the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and you can see him think about sitting on, but then decides to take the higher road.
Secretary of State (Seriously, what do politicians think when their Prime Minister hands them the Northern Portfolio?) Teresa De Villiers trying desperately to wipe the smile off her scalene angled face and David Ford’s aborted recital, because he wants to keep friends with Marty. A skilled politician long before he left Ulster Television, Mike Nesbitt was right over to apologise for the ‘childish prank’; recognition of the participation of Nationalists in an event well outside the emotional postcode of their party base.
Align that alongside a Unionist refusal to participate in the recent National Famine Commemoration held for the first time ever in Northern Ireland in September. More recently an invitation for Unionists to participate in the 1916 centenary events programme launched at Belfast City Hall last month, was declined.
And what a shame that is. November carries within its mood and airs and dry leaves, an innate sense of renewal, a perfect time to fondly remember those who have gone. Forever Ireland has had in its DNA a respect, almost awe for the dead contained in the Celtic ceremony of passage tombs and cairns. Wakes, funerals, and burials are a continuance of this tradition. I think of Father Patrick Keenan, a full Military Captain and my Great-Uncle who served on WW1 hospital ships tending to the spiritual needs of young soldiers suffering from horrific wounds and injuries. Each time his assignment ended, he requested to be sent back, eventually becoming an honorary Army chaplain. The month offers a moment to reflect on those gone, and the importance of truly appreciating those still with us. All die equal, so why are some more worthy of remembrance than others?
While any dead relative is of course a cherished loved one, and their memory is of great and personal value to their families, each November I am left without hearing what I feel is an important truth; that war is a last resort, a brutal resolution, and that these deaths are not glorious, but tragic. It is not good and glorious to die for one’s country in the act of trying to kill and murder other human beings. It is a tragic and unnecessary consequence of the failure of diplomacy and very often the confluence of agendas either public or hidden and convoluted foreign policies.
November strikes directly at Northern Ireland’s Achilles heel in that it shows our inability to acknowledge the co-existence of two traditions. November and the Poppy is used as a tool to prove how different one side is from the other, and when it seems like there might actually be a bit of common ground, panic sets in, and a voice cries from the deep to push the sides away again. Just as the Irish language can be brandished as a big Green Paint Brush to tar everyone in Irishness, the poppy is politicised and its meaning convoluted to the lowest common denominator. It is reduced to a tool of identification, of simply showing what side you are on. And perhaps more importantly, to identify who is not on your side.
McClean and PoppyGate
In a sporting sense the lightning rod for this poppy debate in recent years has been a controversial stance by James McClean, Derry born footballer who decided to exercise choice and request a shirt be made for him without the now mandatory poppy. It’s curious that the Premiership would be the employer to enforce mandatory display of the poppy even though The BBC, an organisation as British and loyal to the cause of remembering the troops as any, has a policy of free choice on poppy wearing.
James McClean “If the poppy was simply about World War One and Two victims alone, I would wear it without a problem. I’d wear it every day of the year if that was the thing, but it doesn’t — it stands for all the conflicts that Britain has been involved in. Because of the history of where I come from in Derry, I cannot wear something that represents that.”
McClean has steadfastly stuck to this stance for three seasons. He has been open, transparent and articulate on the matter. Last year, while playing for Wigan he wrote a letter to chairman Dave Whelan explaining his views.
“Please understand, Mr Whelan, that when you come from Creggan like myself or the Bogside, Brandywell or the majority of places in Derry, every person still lives in the shadow of one of the darkest days in Ireland’s history — even if like me you were born nearly 20 years after the event. It is just a part of who we are, ingrained into us from birth.”
This article was published on the club’s website, McClean claiming ;
I believe I owe both you and the club’s supporters this explanation.
The letter has little evidence of a PR executive’s spit and polish, instead it expresses McClean’s simple and reasoned views. It encapsulates a majority view in Northern Ireland where people find it so difficult to let go of the past. Perhaps if justice had been provided to the victims of Bloody Sunday, perhaps if the incident had elicited an apology before David Cameron’s statement in 2010 before the Commons, this would be different. The first arrest in the case coming just weeks ago, opened up old sores, and proved that this is still a live issue for a nationalist population; particularly in Derry which insists their campaign will only end when Bloody Sunday’s perpetrators are brought to account.
Like the South African prison amnesty, the Good Friday Agreement controversially released prisoners early in an attempt to expunge the atrocities of the past. It framed the crimes as acts that occurred in a civil war that made ordinary people do horrific things. It did not erase those acts in the hearts and minds of the people who were left behind.
This summer, McClean’s case again was again brought centre field, when in a pre-season friendly he refused to face the flag for the playing of ‘God Save the Queen’. His fellow Derry man Martin McGuinness didn’t have the luxury of flatly ignoring it, but the playing of the anthem in an unusual quirk of a pre-season trip in America, called into question his stance once again. In an era where people and journalists are constantly berating Politicians and public figures for flip-flopping their policies and reneging on election promises, McClean is making difficult decisions and sticking with a consistent approach. It should be said he has received the vilest of abuse on-line and in person, death threats, bullets sent to him in the post and DUP MP Gregory Campbell publicly criticising his stance. McClean, wanting to quiet this inevitable whirlwind directed twitter trolls to an online article called ‘In defence of James McClean’.
McClean’s behaviour is a bit like his on field demeanour, chippy, confrontational, and unrelenting. His apparent support for an IRA anthem on social media just one example of why he was banned from on-line platforms by his employer. There is however, a great value in someone having the courage to say the unsaid.
I recently visited the house of a man who lives in a strongly unionist community. His views would be of a nationalist nature. He buys a poppy every year from a neighbour who sells them for the British Legion. His wife has an Uncle who died in WW1 and is the only person on the road who has a relative who died in a war serving in the British Army. Our history is like anyone else’s, far from black and white.
Perhaps next November we all remember the people/things we want to remember, and we don’t forget that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission ensures that 1.7 million people who died in the two world wars will never be forgotten. We need more virtuous people, not less. And we need more respectful remembrance, not enforced and uninformed conformity. If people can use the time of year to remember loved ones who have gone, it might actually enhance our experience and teach us to appreciate the living before they leave us.
That’s something worth remembering.
