On Wednesday, the holder of the most senior political office in the land addressed hundreds of politicians at the seat of British political power and told them that FIFA’s refusal to allow poppies to be worn by England’s footballers is “utterly outrageous.”
In doing so, the Prime Minister did a great service to the country and to the spirit of the debate that is currently taking place. No longer can anyone claim with a straight face that poppies are not political.
We knew that anyway. That some, rightly or wrongly, refuse to wear them and some, again rightly or wrongly, believe them to be symbols that they associate with British military oppression makes them so.
We can’t just ignore that and pretend that such views do not exist because we either disagree with them or want the poppy to stand for something purer than politics. Such opposition is real and has to be treated as such.
That is why FIFA have taken the stance that they have. It isn’t anti-British and it isn’t anti-remembrance: it’s anti-division. If one man’s symbol of commemoration is another man’s symbol of subjugation, how could they, as a sporting governing body, acquiesce to the kind of demands made by the Football Association and the Prime Minister?
England and the other home nations are not being singled out, they are being treated exactly the same as every other member association. It is fair and it is even.
Writing in the Daily Mail earlier this week, the widely respected Martin Samuel nailed the issue. His words are worthy of repetition, particularly given the media outlet that they appeared in.
“FIFA consider this a political gesture, a stance that in turn outrages those who feel it is vitally important that football — more than any other industry, apparently — remembers the dead of two world wars,” Samuel wrote.
“Except poppies are no longer just about those wars. They commemorate other, less popular conflicts, too. What if England were playing Argentina, Ireland or a country from the Middle East?
“Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine commemorates its war dead, including 14 men who are regarded as Class A war criminals. What if Japan wished to mark this at a football match in some way?
“For this reason, FIFA does not do war. In 2013, Josip Simunic of Croatia was banned for 10 matches for leading a crowd in Zagreb in a chant that was a relic of Second World War nationalism, when Croatia was governed by allies of the Nazis. He missed the World Cup, but the message was clear. FIFA cannot pick sides in every military event through history, so wisely keeps its counsel. For the greater good, all nations should respect this and do the same.”
The question many are asking, though, is how did we get here? How did we reach a stage where 98 years after the end of World War One and 71 years after World War Two came to an end that we suddenly feel it an absolute moral obligation for footballers to wear embroidered flowers on their shirts as a tribute to the fallen?
In order to answer that we have to return to the same newspaper because it was they who set these wheels in motion.
In 2009, the Mail’s campaign for all Premier League clubs to have commemorative kits was a resounding success. Eighteen teams duly did so, with only Liverpool and Manchester United refusing to in keeping with their own club policies.
Less convincingly, they also suggested that the red colour of their shirts made it difficult to provide an effective canvas for poppies, an argument that was made redundant as soon as Arsenal found a way.
The following year, having been placed under intolerable pressure, Liverpool backed down with the intervention of their then manager being a significant factor. “Roy Hodgson wore a poppy at the last game against Blackburn and he feels it is very important. We will be wearing shirts with poppies against Stoke on November 13,” Liverpool said in a statement.
United, though, remained unmoved and released a statement of their own in order to underline their own position and in an attempt to ensure it was not misinterpreted as a snub. “We are proud of the work we do with the armed forces and we do not feel a poppy on the shirt would add to our contribution,” they said. “Our staff and officials will be wearing them as usual and we are confident we are doing the right thing.”
Once again the Mail, at the behest of its editor, Paul Dacre, refused to take no for an answer. United’s desire to pay their respects as they always had done was suddenly not good enough, with an editorial piece in the Mail entitled “A simple message to Manchester United: Why won’t you wear the poppy with pride?” informing them, if they did not know already, that this was an issue that was not about to go away however well meaning and dignified their traditional acts of remembrance had been. Furthermore, Liverpool’s change of policy had left them isolated.
“Sadly, United are maintaining their stance in defiance of public opinion. Last year, Sir Alex Ferguson’s side faced Chelsea on Remembrance Sunday at Stamford Bridge in poppyless shirts, upsetting Chelsea Pensioners in the stands,” the Mail wrote. A year on and United bowed to the pressure. “Manchester United will wear poppies on their shirts when they face Aston Villa at Villa Park on November 13,” the Mail reported.
“The decision follows a Sportsmail campaign which has persuaded all 20 Premier League clubs to sport poppies for the first time on Remembrance weekend.”
Victory in our time, indeed, but the Mail were not finished there. Another year passed and with the Premier League having been conquered, their offensive went international. In a story headlined: “EXCLUSIVE: Poppy ban on England kit enforced ‘in case we upset Germans’,” the newspaper explained that “FIFA have insisted that England cannot wear poppies against Spain at Wembley — in case they one day meet Germany around the time of Remembrance Sunday.”
In actuality, FIFA were merely implementing their own rules. “FIFA has 208 Member Associations and the same regulations are applied globally, and uniformly, in the event of similar requests by other nations to commemorate historical events,” it said in a statement.
Nevertheless, the body did approve the FA’s request to hold a minute’s silence before kick-off and reluctantly allowed the England players to wear poppies on black arm bands. But as United had previously discovered, such a concession was never going to be enough, as the latest annual bout of poppygate has demonstrated.
On both sides there is intransigence and on both sides there is an aghast reaction to the opposition questioning either their logic or their motives. For those of us in the increasingly squeezed middle, those who believe in the individual’s right to solemn contemplation and remembrance but also believe in the individual’s right not to participate in such acts, the whole sorry saga is as dispiriting as it should have been avoidable and we are left with opportunist politicians, national newspapers and national associations using the issue to grandstand and divide.
On Sunday, like many people, I will remember those who died carrying out the will of politicians in wars all around the world. I will remember my own ancestors who perished and the ones who returned from battle only to be disowned by the very country who had sent them to fight on its behalf. And I will remember those whom they fought against. But I will not need a poppy to do so. Others will, though, and that should be respected absolutely and that is why we have services of remembrance up and down the country.
As they should and always have, those involved in the national game will pay their respects but they will do so against a wholly unnecessary and manufactured backdrop of acrimony and division.
As the Prime Minister quite rightly pointed out, FIFA urgently needs to get its own house in order, but their determination to prevent the game they govern from being turned into a political football should be respected.
In the unlikely event that that happens, maybe we could turn our attentions to asking why 10% of London’s homeless population are ex-servicemen and why thousands of former military personnel suffer from mental illness and poverty.
Those are issues that should be taxing the Prime Minister’s thoughts but then it’s always been easier for politicians to jump aboard a populist bandwagon and to campaign on behalf of the dead than it is to ask themselves whether they are failing the living.
Poppies aren’t just political, they are a convenient diversion for politicians to draw attention from the policies that fail so many of those who they claim to champion.
