POPPY PRESSURE

Men marched asleep. 

Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod.  

All went lame, all blind; 

James McClean (23) is a well-paid, professional soccer player, earning his living in The English Premiership, as an employee of Sunderland (54 degrees North, 1 degree West) Association Football Club. On Saturday last, the majority of his professional colleagues wore special team shirts, their working uniforms as designated by their employers, with a red poppy embedded on the front.

The red poppy is a symbol promoted by The Royal British Legion to coincide with Remembrance Sunday in early November to honour the members of The British Armed Forces who were killed in wars and conflicts in the 20th century and today. The symbol evokes particular memories of the horrors of World War 1 French and Belgian battlefields, on which blood-red poppies flourish.

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

James McClean chose not to wear the special shirt. His employers issued a statement affirming his right to make this choice.

An outpouring of vitriol directed against the soccer player followed, in print, broadcast and, in particular, social media.

James McClean grew up in the Creggan Estate in Derry Londonderry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West). It is a locale of mass unemployment and social deprivation all through its fifty plus years of existence. It is a site of great blood-letting in the period from the mid-nineteen sixties to the mid-nineteen nineties during which the British state, as represented by the army and the police force, engaged in violent conflict with residents of the estate, the majority of whom are Irish nationalists and a number of whom support the Irish Republican Army (IRA), in its various manifestations.

James McClean went to school in the estate, showed early athletic promise, excelled and developed in amateur ranks and went on to star for his city's professional team, Derry City Football Club, before making the dream move to Sunderland AFC. His life's journey so far is the classic fable of many young men from housing estates such as Creggan, who achieve economic salvation through their feet (footballers) or their fists (boxers).

The particular circumstances of James McClean's home place in the context of wars involving the British Army makes the wearing of a poppy a complex choice for him. Any pragmatic approach can only work if James McClean's sophisticated negotiation of his new circumstances in relation to his parents' circumstances are embedded in the complexities of that home place.

He is from streets where the British Army, as well as losing members to the IRA, perpetrated numerous killings.

Would you wear a poppy at your work if it meant your parents' home getting attacked?

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues

Ironically young men like James McClean are the very victims of the immolations in wars that the wearing of the poppy symbol seeks to recall to mind. Had James McClean grown up in Sunderland, he might now be in military rather than in sporting uniform, killing and being killed in Afghanistan.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

He is better off in the red and white striped uniform of Sunderland AFC, blazing down the left wing, swinging over fierce crosses, exciting fans who have taken James McClean to their hearts. Among them are many who served in the British Army or who have ancestors and relatives who served. They understand the complexity of these matters and know only to well that no one should be under pressure to do anything, including wearing a poppy.

The lesson to be learned is that freedom of choice only functions if a complex network of legal, educational, ethical, economic and other conditions is present as the invisible background to the exercise of our freedom.

Dulce et Decorum Est: poem; Wilfred Owen; from Scanning the Century; The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Poetry; book; Peter Forbes (ed.); Penguin; London; 2000

Why Obama is more than Bush with a human face: article; Slavoj Zizek; The Guardian; London; 13.11.2012 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/13/obama-ground-floor-thinking?INTCMP=SRCH

www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter