Whilst we can accept that Micks may not like the poppy, there are bigger issues and concerns. It is good to honour our cannon fodder but should they be used as a pretext for this extortion? Accountability, please.

I never said that they shouldn’t. I said that they normally don’t.

If I got and paste it, it will screw up the whole page by stretching it beyond the normal point, and the administrators will get cross. I’ll post it in the comments story at your own blog.

Although you aren’t the only person to argue this, it remains a very radical piece of revisionism and I wonder can you argue your point of view successfully? Let’s put it this way, had Britain capitulated post-Dunkirk, which many in Britain right up to War Cabinet level argued that they should, then Nazi Germany would have been able to impose a peace on Britain that would have decimated the Royal Navy and given Germany prime overseas territory (a share of Middle Eastern oil, for example). Hitler would then have turned his attention on the Soviet Union without the crippling supply problems that affected the Wehrmacht in the real world; also, he would not have had to ‘rush’ the invasion of the USSR to try and get the job done before the USA intervened in Europe’s war. Because the United States would not have intervened on behalf of the USSR after Britain and France had capitulated.

It’s also possible that the USSR could have bested Nazi Germany all on its own. But far from certain – without American trucks and boots supplied by the British Merchant Navy, it is questionable whether the Red Army could have sustained its incredible land gobbling advances of 1943-5, despite the heroism of the ‘ordinary’ Red Soldier and the tactical brilliance of the Stavka.

Of course, this is all hypothetical alternate history speculation but I am glad we did not have to see that speculation reality checked. Compared to what the world would have been like had Nazi Germany won the Second World War, then 30 years of Brookeborough and his woodentop allies was not too high a price to pay.

Garibaldy – I’d be interested in seeing that story – just cut and paste the hyperlink and we’ll be able to click through.

I couldn’t support the british army for its treatment of Canadians during the war, they viewed us as little more than cannon fodder even though our army was infinately more succesful then theirs.

Steve, that’s so sweet! All armies treat their troops like cannon fodder, that’s one of the many reasons why war is a bad thing.

And if the Brits forget the dismal but necessary crawl of the 1st Canadian Army through the Scheldt and Rhine estuaries, remember that the Dutch and Belgians don’t! Totally by chance, I was in Amsterdam on the 50th anniversary of liberation, and it seemed everyone in the city was a fat, grey haired Canadian sporting medals or an extremely fit Dutch girl hugging a fat, grey haired, Canadian sporting medals!

The simple answer is NO

I can wear the poppy with pride in Canada because it shows support for Canadian Veterans

I couldn’t wear the poppy in nIreland because it would be construed as support for the british army

I couldn’t support the british army for its treatment of Canadians during the war, they viewed us as little more than cannon fodder even though our army was infinately more succesful then theirs.

add that to their heinous record in nIreland and they will never get respect from me

White poppies are still available but in NI can only really be got online as far as I know. The Quakers sell them elsewhere, but whether they do so in NI I don’t know.

On the WWII issue, it is essential to decouple WWII from the other wars in which the money donated through poppies goes to. Which were by and large wars in pursuit of imperialism and aggression.

Just quickly on Sammy’s point about when the USSR entered the war. This was partly because of France and the UK rebuffing Soviet attempts to form an alliance, on which new evidence has recently come to light

See here for details.

No. What I am suggesting is that people don’t buy Poppies just to contribute to the Royal British Legion. They buy them to remember those who died for their country. It is bought as an act of commemeration and rememberance rather as an act of Charity.

“Whoa, Séamus mo chara, that’s a fairly stark bit of revisionism for a Saturday evening”

I didn’t enter the debate on the British War Effort to insult or offend anyone but rather because someone made a provocative statement that I would be speaking German if it wasn’t for the British Army. I personally feel that is incorrect. I believe that the British didn’t affect the outcome of the war. They probably shortened it and removed a large amount of civilian casulties but didn’t actually affect the outcome.

Whoa, Séamus mo chara, that’s a fairly stark bit of revisionism for a Saturday evening…

Until May 1941, the Soviet Union was not making any contribution to the war effort, save for supplying oil and other vital materiel to the Nazi state. Without the contribution of British soldiers in North Africa, German troops would have swept through Palestine – exterminating the Jewish population of the Near East as they went – and secured the oil fields of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula with minimal effort; thereby obviating the critical oil shortage which gravely hampered German resistance in 1944 and early 1945.

British troops in Italy, although ultimately following a grand strategy with little chance of success, tied up German divisions, including a number of elite divisions, which could have been put to greater use on the Eastern Front.

British and Canadian troops executed almost perfect landings in Normandy, before annihilating the cream of German armour in tandem with the Americans. And then aggressively pursued the Germans across France and the Low Countries in a textbook example of blitzkrieg, saving countless innocent French, Belgian and Dutch lives. And the same troops may well have ended the war by the end of 1944 had not Monty’s overcaution at Antwerp and consequent overreaction at Arnhem not stalled their advance. But you can’t blame the troops, or the officer corps, for Monty’s folly.

In invading and occupying Germany, British troops were not perfect, but behaved like choirboys in comparison with the rampant incidence of theft and rape that followed Soviet, French and, yes, American armies, let alone what Axis troops had done earlier in the war.

British sea power destroyed the surface fleet of the German navy in short order, eliminating any chance of Germany secuting vitally needed materiel from outside Europe. And let’s not forget the sacrificial service of Merchant Seamen, many of whom were Belfast Catholics, in supplying the Soviet Union in the dark days of 1942 and 1943.

British scientific genius produced radar, made a huge contribution the Manhattan Project, cracked most German codes for most of the war, and produced the technology and tactics which destroyed the U boot fleet from the Summer of 1943.

And I’m not even going to start on Burma.

None of this is to decry or minimise the heroic achievements of the Red Army – their often recognised blood sacrifice, and their rarely recognised strategic and logistical genius – not least in the single greatest military campaign in history: the 1000 mile march from western Russia, destruction of Army Group Centre in Belarus and advance to the Vistula in the space of three short months.

I can well understand why people don’t want to wear poppies, given the way they have been abused by some in Northern Ireland, and would not presume to judge anyone one way or the other because they did or did not wear a poppy. But please let’s don’t sit comfortably at keyboards in Ireland in 2008 and piss on the extraordinary achievements of ordinary men without which the world would be a much worse place today.

LURIG
perhaps the poppies could come printed with a statement along the lines of “I don’t wear this as a politial, religious or sectarian statement” or ” I do wear this …..” indeed perhaps all stickers, badges, emblems etc should come with such warnings….especially Liverpool Football Club – anyone wearing their badge is just up for stirring it!

Seamus
“People don’t buy Poppies to contribute to the Royal British Legion, but to commemerate British War Dead.”

are you suggesting the money goes to build memorials or some such thing? If that was the case I think the public would stop contributing quite soon.

If it’s OK to contribute to a charity and wear their badge then it applies to poppies as well. I’m sure there are those who those who try to use it as a politial, religious or sectarian statement or to intimidate but not many, and, in any case, I don’t think that’s a reason for the rest of the public to stop – just like wearing football badges (well, apart from LFC – downright sick those people are).

It does bring up an interesting note as to why a charity should be the ones responsible of caring for old veterans instead of the British Government. Seeing every member of the British Cabinet wears a Poppy but then the Government leaves old war veterans completely high and dry. It is despicable.

“… I don’t refuse to wear the sticker …”

I bet you also wear the sticker for a whole month without taking it off.

I sometimes give to people collecting on the street for various causes, be it dogs homes, cancer, 3rd world aid etc etc, and I do it various countries and often they give me a sticker to put on. I’m not a dog, I don’t have cancer (I hope), I not starving and I’m not a citizen of those other countries but I don’t refuse to wear the sticker. As far as I know the money collected by selling poppies goes to help old soldiers in various ways – as the other collections do for their causes. So, is the issue that you are against helping old soldiers in need?

As a republican I could not bring myslef to wear a poppy as I feel that regardless of all the fantastic work done by the british legion for their soldiers, it is an icon that is misused and idolised by others for their political ends.

I also recognise that many people spent the war years working down the mines or in factories under appalling conditions but are forgotten.

Perhaps an alternative (does the white poppy option still exist?)is more suitable for those of us who have issues with the red poppy, or god forbid if it’s only paper, how about a green poppy?

I have no objections to nor do I take offence at the idea of anyone wearing a small, unostentatious emblem to remember the deaths of those from their family or community who fell in war and I respect not only their right, but more importantly, their choice to so do.

I would rather that such quiet reverent commemoration is not hijacked by the unscrupulous to glorify the wars of profiteers and to justify their continuance today but it would be naive of me to expect that it might not.

I cannot however, nor do I, fall into the trap of asuming that all who wear such emblems are either complicit with the manipulators of human grief nor should I be so arrogant as to assume that they must be their dupes, willing or otherwise.

Contrarily, I must assume that they are free human agents acting on the best of motives and out of good principle, and so I do.

So, if you choose, do, please, wear your poppy with my blessing for all men of good heart and good intent.

In return I would ask that you respect my right, my motive and my exercise of principle in refusing to wear one as my way of showing honour to those of my family and community who died like the Irish airman of Yeats’s poem, ruing that,

Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

I have genuine respect for those who fight and die for their country. The old latin phrase of “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” sticks with me. I respect those British servicemen who died for their country. I respect those Russian servicemen who died for theirs and Americans and Germans who died for theirs. I will not honour them by wearing a Poppy as they did not die for my country. I leave that honour to the men of my own country so I will only honour Ireland’s patriot dead, but I still have respect for the dead of other nations.