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# Even if the poppy were just for the World Wars, we would not wear it
- URL: https://anfaidh.ie/even-if-the-poppy-were-just-for-the-world-wars-we-would-not-wear-it/
- Published: 2026-11-11T11:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-11T15:32:34.000Z
- Description: We owe the British Army no recognition for their actions in World War 1
- Author: Hugh Lynch

There are a few things happen every year, just coming in to November, that remind us that our current trip around the sun is coming to an end. The fireworks and costumes of Halloween night, the complaints about Christmas advertisements that appear on our screens far too early, and an Irishman in England gets into trouble for not wearing a poppy.

This year that person is, once again, soccer player James McClean. All things considered, there has been far less controversy this year than in the recent past, though perhaps that's just because he no longer plays for an English club.

Regardless, McClean has recently been in the media promoting his new book *The Walls*, an autobiography in which his experience being hounded for not donning the poppy and his justification for choosing not to featured prominently. While promoting the book and discussing the issue in various media appearances, he spoke to a certain argument that I thoroughly disagree with.

The view he expressed, and it isn't an entirely uncommon one, can be summed up as such: the wearing of the poppy is to commemorate British soldiers who died in *all* of their wars, and that while he respects those who fell in the two World Wars, he could never wear a poppy because of it's association with the British army's actions in Ireland.

To some extent this is a fair opinion and one quite hard to argue with, however I am not a fan of it for two main reasons. The first is that it seemingly implies that he would be okay with wearing a poppy if it truly were just for the World Wars, and the second is that I don't believe that the British army deserves any outside recognition, least of all from us Irishmen, for it's actions in the First World War.

The main problem with supposedly not minding the poppy in reference to the World Wars is that it ignores the fact that almost all members of the hated Black and Tans were themselves veterans of the First World War. In commemorating the British soldiers of this war you are directly celebrating the instigators of atrocities like the Burning of Cork, Bloody Sunday and the countless other reprisal attacks on innocent Irish civilians.

This also feeds into my second point. Maybe these horrors could be set aside and the veterans of the Great War partially celebrated in Ireland if Britain could be shown to have been wholly on the side of morality by having defeated an unambiguously evil regime, like is often said of the second war against the Nazis, but this just isn't the case for 1914.

The simple fact of World War 1 is that there is basically no moral dimension to it whatsoever where Britain is concerned. There may have been plenty of idealism and sense of genuine grievance in the Austrian, Serbian, Belgian or even French minds, but for Britain, Russia and Germany, the war was a struggle of *realpolitik*, fought for the cynical goal of weakening the other powers so that they might become global hegemon in their foes ashes, hardly a cause to which foreigners like us should be expected to pay our dues.

An often repeated line among certain Englishmen is that the soldiers of the crown "died for your right not to wear a poppy." Perhaps this is true for 1939-1945, but it rings completely hollow for the rest of world history, especially the First World War. As previously mentioned, this war was fought entirely for geopolitical goals, the empires Britain was at war with could be accused of no crime of which the Brits themselves weren't guilty.

Germany, for example, was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament growing in power and becoming more and more democratic, just like England. It took part in the scramble for Africa and had a colonial empire on which the sun never set, just like England. It's policy of Germanising it's Polish minority was almost entirely in line with the England's policies Anglicisation in Ireland.

To me neither this nor the aforementioned fact that many British veterans of World War 1 went on to join the Black and Tans in reinforcing British hegemony Ireland and suppressing her people's freedom sound like they were fighting for our rights at all. Perhaps, ironically, if they hadn't fought and England were subjected to a peace as punitive as that faced by the similarly multiethnic Austria-Hungary, Irishmen would face much less strife about the wearing of the poppy.

![](https://anfaidh.ie/content/images/2026/11/Trianon.png)

I imagine some of you may be thinking "what about the Irishmen who died for Britain in the Great War?" The answer here is simple, we already remember them any time we commemorate the patriot dead of Ireland. They volunteered to fight under the flawed assumption that it would put England in our debt so they would enact home rule, they were fighting for Ireland first and foremost, even if for misguided reasons under another banner.

Perhaps one could play down the issues of the First World War by focusing purely on the veterans specifically of the Second World War, which does have a better claim to being some sort of moral crusade by the British and took place at a much less turbulent time in Irish history and when the blood toll of the occupation in the north was at it's lowest.

However, I think it's obvious that such a backpedalling would be extremely unpopular in England, and it wouldn't even work without a serious change to the structure of Remembrance Day proceedings. The celebration as it exists is extremely rooted in the Great War, having first taken place in 1919 and timed to also mark the anniversary of that wars end on the 11th of November, the Poppy symbolism itself comes from the fields of Flanders, in direct reference to that war.

All things considered, I see no reason for an Irishman to ever wear a poppy. The English, as is every nations right, may do whatever they please to remember their dead. They can wear their poppies and we can wear our Easter lilies, but any moralising to say that we Irish owe British soldiers any special reverence for any reason ought to be met with complete rejection.