British poppy: should the Irish commemorate people who fought for the British Empire?

Grrrr - I hate this thread! The battlefield attracts the warriors, as they say.

A straightforward question: should they?

This thread is dedicated to Fratton Fred (whose post today inspired it), Lord Sutch, Batsy and some of our other British-born posters who expect Irish people to accept their political symbols without question and get rather defensive when they don't.

I don't commemorate anything really, and can't abide the glorification of war and this desperate tabloidesque quest for "heroes" ('Sad is the land that needs heroes'- Bertolt Brecht), but if I were looking for heroes I'm sure I'd find plenty to honour in Irish history who fought for something more noble than British imperialism. I can't stand war films and military history is the least interesting type of history for me. I reckon there are very few "heroes" in the world, and fewer still in armies. Most people do what they do out of self-interest. And if somebody is born in Ireland it doesn't make him/her automatically worthy of commemorating, which seems to be the general idea behind those who push for these Irish-born British soldiers to be commemorated here.

It's that time of year again when preparations for Britain's Poppy Day Month get under way once again. Reading Frank McNally in today's Irish Times it seems there has already been a "National Heroes Day" set up, the first of which is today, 'Trafalgar Day', and is given support by the British Prime Minister who "fully endorse any project that encourages community participation and increases knowledge and support for our Service Personnel." All this commemoration of British imperialist warmongering seems to be kicking off earlier each year.

Do you think people, who happened to have been born in Ireland, who fought for the British Empire's forces should be commemorated by Irish people for that? Do you think people, who happened to have been born in Ireland, should be commemorated for murder, oppression and inhumanity in other professions which they entered? If yes to the former but no to the latter, how do you reconcile both? Do you believe the British Empire was some "greater good" that civilised the world?

Should people be "commemorated" by Irish people for doing something, regardless of what that thing is, because they were born in Ireland? That sounds like dangerous thinking. The British poppy commemorates, according to the website of its organisers: "all generations of the Armed Forces". In other words, wearing the British poppy commemorates those members of the British forces who "fought" in Croke Park, Balbriggan, Derry, Trim, Cork, Galway, Antrim, Roscommon, Longford and so on. It is not selective commemoration: it is wholesale commemoration of all people who "fought" for the British state against native populations anywhere in the planet. Aside from all the British murders in Ireland throughout the centuries, the British poppy also commemorates all those British soldiers who were party to the murder of tens of thousands of women and children in the British concentration camps in South Africa at the start of the 20th century, and those who managed the "enclosed villages" during the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya in the 1950s which had 1 million people at their worst point.

PS: Before anybody starts, the red poppy commemorates only those people who fought in the forces of the British Empire and then British Commonwealth countries. The French, for instance, have a blue poppy. The US, Germany and Russia have none at all. It is not "an international symbol" beyond countries in the British (haha - another sensitive topic) Commonwealth, no matter what Lord Sutch and company try and contend.


Take it away oh fine, erudite denizens of Afterhours.