Politics and Football

**InsaneApache** · 11-10-2010, 14:32

Do they dislike the poppy for their idea of Imperialism? If so they are very misguided.

**gaelic cowboy** · 11-10-2010, 16:10

Originally Posted by InsaneApache

Why on earth not?

The heart of this goes back to the internal disagreement in Ireland itself over how independence was to be achieved here by either moderate or by violent means basically.

The Home Rule bill of 1914 was to be delayed for no longer than the duration of the WW1 and naturally everyone at the time thought the war will be over by Christmas so it will mean Home Rule some time in 1915-16. The Irish volunteers decided to march to the front to support Britain to as it were achieve freedom in Ireland and were led by John Redmond of the Irish Parlimentary Party, it was a disaster for moderates as the war dragged on and helped Sinn Fein to win the the 1918 election in Ireland on an anti-conscription ticket.

Afterwards when the War of Independence proper was started the Tans pretty much burned up the middle ground with every peasants house they destroyed. Ireland is a small closely knit country and my own Granduncle marched off with Redmond and he never came back from the front, afterwards my Grandfather then joined the IRA and fought the against British forces here according to him it was the British who betrayed us and not the other way round.

Later with the Civil War the bitterness was even more intense as brother fought brother, the casualty figures are unknown for this conflict but generally people believe/believed that more people died in one year of the civil war that thirty years of shooting in the North.

It's pretty easy to see now that taking a more large scale view of the whole thing the Poppy was going to be discarded as it remembers a war which ostensibly caused a massive bitter division in my country.