Poppy Cock

Advance warning to Foul Play readers: until now this column has resolutely remained an entirely politics-free zone. But not today...

I’ve been moved to cross the line by the startlingly unanimous blanket condemnation heaped upon Celtic fans by the media over the past fortnight, as a result of their temerity in daring to wave anti-war banners at a recent home game.
In case you missed it, the kerfuffle came about because, during Celtic’s recent 9-0 stroll against Aberdeen, a section of the home support waved placards which stated ‘IRELAND - IRAQ - AFGHANISTAN - NO BLOOD-STAINED POPPIES ON OUR HOOPS’ in clear reference to the Remembrance Day commemorations. These placards were condemned by every single media outlet which saw fit to report it. Not just condemned: those responsible were universally casigated as ‘sectarian’ and ‘bigoted’. The club’s hierarchy instantly washed their hands of the protests, and there was talk of banning the miscreant fans from Parkhead for life.
Media commentary was unanimous in its hostility: not a single person on TV, radio or in the newspapers ventured to suggest that perhaps the Celtic fans were making a perfectly valid point. Which begs the question: what on earth is sectarian or bigoted about being opposed to Britain’s wars? And why exactly is a protest of this kind seen as tantamount to insulting the dead?
The entire purpose of the Poppy, as I understand it, is to perpetuate the fiction that these wars and the resultant slaughter of ordinary British citizens were justified, perpetrated in the name of freedom. That the senseless massacre of millions – mainly young men – was all in a very good cause.
Leaving aside any specific political opinions for a minute, there is surely a straightforward issue here of freedom of speech. The ‘Love United Hate Glazer’ banners which have recently become omnipresent at Old Trafford are generally viewed as a legitimate protest against the regime that has saddled England’s largest football club, Manchester United, with crippling debts; similarly with the slightly less subtle ‘Yank$ Out’ banners that proliferated at Anfield until the recent Liverpool take-over. Yet Celtic fans get typecast as intransigent bigots for daring to wave banners which state an incontrovertible truth: that the British government does indeed have a frightening amount of human blood on its hands, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and (slightly less recently) in Ireland.
The right of Celtic fans to hold this view – a perfectly reasonable opinion, which I personally share, as do many thousands of thoroughly non-bigoted observers – is disregarded entirely: the fans concerned are spoken of as if they were an embarrassment, and the talk is of hunting them down and banning them from Parkhead for life.
But then, it’s just so unfashionable to give voice to sentiments which might be interpreted as in any way, shape or form implying sympathy for anyone who has ever implied sympathy for anyone who has ever accidentally rubbed shoulders with anyone who once lived in the same street as anyone who might be suspected of holding republican political views. It’s so, y’know, backward. Worse, it’s uncool. We’re all continental European sophisticates now, and let’s not rake over awkward old ground.
This tendency to sneer at the perceived backwardness of Celtic supporters is long-established, reaching a peak in 2007 when an alleged Celtic fan was snapped ‘protesting’ outside Croke Park prior to the Ireland-England rugby match wearing the Hoops’ colours and waving a placard which stated ‘NO FOREIGN GAMES AT CROKER’. Ireland’s establishment commentariat has never laughed so hard, before or since.
Without doubt, there is an element of snobbery involved in this attitude: Celtic fans in Ireland tend to be working-class, certainly those who wear the colours in public. Not to put too fine a point on it, the colours are widely viewed as basically a badge of scumbaggery.
Now, only a fool would attempt to argue that there is no such thing as sectarian bigotry among the hordes who follow Celtic (or Hibs for that matter). Every large group of males contains its share of arseholes, and there are indeed a few neanderthals whose political analysis doesn’t run any deeper than ‘fuck the Brits’. In fact I’ve met quite a few of these people, and I don’t particularly enjoy their company. Not many of them strike me as all that conversant with the principles Wolfe Tone enunciated in 1798, of uniting Protesant, Catholic and Dissenter.
However, the assumption that these people are representative of their community in general ties in with an analysis of the Northern conflict which tends to be especially favoured by British and native pro-Unionist commentators: that sectarianism, rather than being a product of partition and the inherently sectarian State it produced, is something of which ‘both sides are equally guilty’. That it’s just as prevalent among ‘nationalists’ (itself a misnomer: surely one can oppose partition without being a nationalist?) as unionists. That parallels with Israel or South Africa (parallels which seem quite obvious to many outside observers) are completely inaccurate. And, lurking behind all of this, the suspicion that Republicanism is inherently sectarian and Catholic, as opposed to being of its very nature anti-sectarian and non-denominational.
This ‘Two Tribes’ theory fits in very neatly with presentations of Britain’s role in Ireland as that of a neutral honest broker, reluctantly keeping the peace, doing the decent thing by keeping apart the backward Paddy tribes for their own good, lest they tear one another apart. In truth, even the most cursory glance at the history of British involvement in Ireland (certainly up until 1998) demonstrates this hypothesis to be completely unsustainable. But the point has been propagated so often via the media that people seem to have internalised it.
Thus, Celtic fans waving anti-war banners with no religious overtones whatsoever is automatically construed as ‘sectarian’ and clear evidence of their intractable bigotry. How dare they? Can’t be trusted to behave themselves anywhere. Bunch of savages. They probably drink too much and listen to The Pogues. A stain on our modern European nation.
Not least of the many significant differences between Rangers and Celtic is this: one club can pride itself on a long and distinguished anti-sectarian history, while the other was defined for many decades by a horrifically virulent sectarianism, manifest in Rangers’ refusal to sign a Catholic until as late as 1989. It is true that (whether they were driven by business imperatives or not) Rangers have made vast strides over the past 20 years in ridding themselves of this disgraceful sectarian baggage, and should be commended for that. Gone are the days when a hearty chorus of ‘Ten Dead Fenians’ would be shrugged off as a harmless spot of good-natured japery. Nonetheless, a glance at the T-shirts on sale outside Ibrox on any given match-day suggests that there is still plenty of ground still to be made up.
In terms of the entire issue of Remembrance Day: the First World War was a mass slaughter. No respectable historian today would dare to suggest that Britain entered the War for ‘the freedom of small nations’ or anything of the kind. I believe that the dead should indeed be remembered and honoured, and that the best way to do so is by continuing to vocally oppose blood-soaked British Army adventures such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan to which the allegedly offensive banners referred.
Lest anyone wonder whether I’ve any personal axe to grind, I think it might be helpful to lay my cards on the table: I’m a Dubliner, half-Scots on my mother’s side with a large Edinburgh extended family. I don’t get over as often as I used to, but intend to make it at least twice a year from now on. I’ve followed Hibs for three decades, but tend to root for Celtic when the title race gets serious, since it’s usually a two-horse race. I’m very proud of being Irish. I would love to see a United Ireland some day, and no, I didn’t approve of bombs in shopping centres. I’m not a Catholic and would happily wipe that vile Church off the face of the Republic. And yes, my great-grandfather fought in the First World War.
I think about him from time to time and wonder what horrors he went through, and I do feel it’s entirely appropriate to honour and remember that generation’s suffering. But I won’t for a minute subscribe to the bullshit theory that the government and army which sent him and millions of others over to the killing fields of France and Flanders were in any way engaged in a heroic struggle for ‘the freedom of small nations’, or for ‘an end to all wars’, or for any cause at all other than the narrow interests of their ruling elite. And, for all these reasons, I will never wear a poppy. Certainly not a red one. Maybe a white one to symbolise peace, outrage against the politicians responsible for the slaughter, and a resolve that it doesn’t happen again.
I never knew my great-grandad, but I can remember his son (1914-1991) as vividly as if he were alive yesterday: he was, I suspect, the nicest man I ever knew, an absolutely passionate Hearts fan (he tried but failed to pass it down to me) who despised the Falklands War on every level, just before Alzheimer’s began to dim the brilliance of his lights.
The issues today, in Afghanistan, are not significantly different than they were then, in 1914 or 1982. And those who draw attention to them might rightly be regarded as principled, rather than poisonous and bigoted.