A chara, – Ciarán Connolly (November 11th) claims, "The red poppy is unambiguously about remembrance of the war dead and there is nothing to suggest that it advocates war."
This is untrue. The decision to use a red poppy to raise funds for the Earl Haig Fund – named in honour of General "The Butcher" Haig, whose contempt for the ordinary soldier can be gauged from the zeal with which he sent hordes of them to their deaths for no discernible gain in the prosecution of a war fought for imperial ambitions – was inspired by the pro-war poem In Flanders Fields, which emphasises the need for vengeance and exhorts soldiers to continue to kill people.
Although the term “Earl Haig Fund” is no longer used, the poppy continues to be associated with the Royal British Legion, which never misses an opportunity to utilise it as a propaganda tool for recruiting new cannon fodder and for promoting continued British military aggression abroad.
By way of contrast, the white poppy seeks to commemorate all victims of war, and to promote an end to all wars. To dismiss this alternative symbol as “liberal PC claptrap . . . denigrating all that is venerable” strikes me as rather irrational. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN PATTERSON,
Lower Rathmines Road,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – An example of a delusive prejudice that has shown remarkable staying power is the one Brian Hanley (Opinion, November 9th) cites against the wearing of the poppy on Remembrance Day. The poppy is a symbol of those who died in first World War. Among those were the tens of thousands of Irishmen, our relatives who loved and were loved and now lie in some cemetery in France, Belgium, Gallipoli and the Middle East. These men were not sent, as Mr Hanley states; they joined up. John Redmond didn't send them out to die; they volunteered.
“I joined the British Army”, the poet Francis Ledwidge explained, “because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation. I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but passed resolutions.”
One of the aims of our association is to expose the tragedy of war and contribute to its prevention. To write as Mr Hanley does that the wearing of the poppy only encourages those “who want to justify that war” is contemptible and an insult to those Irishmen who gave their lives in defence of freedom.
“Many of those who promote the memory of the first World War are critics of Irish republicanism”, states Mr Hanley. Where is the objectivity here? There is no empirical evidence to support this and it is unworthy of a historian. Even the great republic of the United States could not stand aside when the conviction dawned that the first World War could make the world safer for democracy. – Yours, etc,
JOHN F FALLON,
(Connaught Rangers
Association),
Boyle,
Co Roscommon.