According to Laura Clouting, the first World War curator at the Imperial War Museum in London, there have been paradigm shifts regarding the wearing of the poppy.
“It has now come to symbolise the sacrifice and effort of the armed forces in more recent conflicts,” says Clouting in a video on the museum’s website.
“But because these more recent conflicts have become more complex and perhaps morally ambiguous . . . the poppy has become a more contentious symbol.”
Clouting refers to the red poppy (as opposed to a white poppy used to promote peace) “being appropriated by far-right organisations” and notes that those who object “see it as being connected with the actions of Britain’s army, for example in Northern Ireland”.
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Indeed, the kids I grew up with in Northern Ireland – who in the 1960s and 1970s played on the streets with things they found at home, like their father’s and grandfather’s steel war helmets, old ammunition clips and water flasks – understand how history and symbolism can break different ways.
The bayonets, the spent .303 cartridges and decommissioned hand grenades knocking about the Falls Road in west Belfast were physical, family connections to loved ones that fought and died in two world wars.
They were things the kids held in their hands, used as props for games around Rockville Street and the GAA pitch at the top of the hill, McCrory Park.
They were real pieces of those wars brought into kitchens and sitting rooms by men who had been scarred and broken after fighting and serving alongside others from the area in British Army uniforms.
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The wars weren’t part of some mythological past like those sketched out in the Victor and Hotspur comic books of the time.
They were alive in the memories of people, along with the ageing bits and pieces of metal; all reminders of a grim past but too precious to throw away.
Time passed and McCrory Park was turned into one of several British Army fortresses, called Fort Pegasus. The GAA pitch became part of a different kind of conflict.
There was a real army with real helicopters swooping in low over roofs to land as soldiers crouched in gardens watching people go about their business through the telescopes of their rifles.
Then, in the summer of 1971 on the other side of McCrory Park, the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment killed 11 civilians over three days.
Belfast changed forever.
Many of those kids with the old British army helmets and water flasks are now beyond middle age and – like Katie McCabe last week – are not inclined to wear a poppy.
It appears the Royal British Legion, the people who raise money selling poppies at this time of year, understand why.
“Poppies are worn as a show of support for the Armed Forces community . . . Wearing a poppy is still a very personal choice, reflecting individual experiences and personal memories,” says The Legion.
The Arsenal and McCabe critics have a different view.
[ British media sees red over Irish poppy refuseniksOpens in new window ]
Some other Irish players – Brighton’s Caitlin Hayes and Crystal Palace duo Abbie Larkin and Hayley Nolan – also went without wearing a poppy last weekend.
There was the usual huffing and puffing, while the hawkish right vented and condemned. Charmless GB News called it a snub but many of the reports around McCabe were largely fact driven.
The 30-year-old didn’t have to endure the acid rain that has previously poured down on others, such as former Republic of Ireland player James McClean, when he showed up unflowered.
This week there was a more restrained rage, a less poisonous vitriol – maybe the wearing, or not wearing, of a poppy is becoming less triggering.
Has the life-threatening outrage and widespread contempt McClean suffered blown itself out? Are people beginning to listen to what the Imperial War Museum has to say?
It is not only Irish players who have declined to wear a poppy.
In 2018, Manchester United’s Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic said he would not wear the flower for his club’s derby match against Manchester City, which was taking place on Remembrance Sunday.
“I do not want to undermine the poppy as a symbol of pride within Britain or offend anyone. However, we are all a product of our own upbringing and this is a personal choice,” said Matic, whose village, Vrelo, was bombed by Nato when he was 12.
How many civilians were killed in the Nato attacks is disputed, with estimates running from over 500 into the thousands.
The 11-week campaign in 1999 was to put pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević to withdraw troops from Kosovo. All academic to a child taking shelter from the bombardment.
During the attack, the Royal Air Force were involved, while the British Army played a supporting role.
McCabe has not publicly explained why she didn’t wear the poppy, nor should she have to. But the incident has at least helped show that soccer can abide a grudging tolerance of a different viewpoint.
As an elite LGBTQ+ athlete, she has taken the slings and arrows before, and there will always be some who seize on cultural differences for insult and grievance.
But playing in an Arsenal jersey without the poppy last week was neither disrespectful nor unprincipled. Take it from the British Legion and the Imperial War Museum.
