James McClean has right to snub poppy but he needs to learn full story

[Bluedell 5,329]

It is that time of year again when James McClean sparks uproar among thousands of football fans because of his notoriously stubborn refusal to wear a decent first touch.

 

No matter how much abuse they shower upon the Stoke City winger, his left foot insists on turning to concrete as soon as it makes contact with a ball. The frustration and resentment it has caused for most of this decade shows no sign of abating.

 

In comparison with this gross professional negligence, his notoriously stubborn refusal to wear a remembrance poppy could be considered a matter of personal choice. For anyone who believes in freedom of expression, it is not a misdemeanour at all. It is the essence of liberty, a living assertion of the citizen’s right to democratic choice — which is not to say that the 30-year-old clogger does not need a few lessons in politics and manners.

 

McClean grew up brainwashed with a simplistic version of the distressing story that surrounded him in Northern Ireland. In this version Martin McGuinness, his fellow Derry man, was a freedom fighter, a working-class hero, a revolutionary inspiration. It seems that John Hume barely existed at all, albeit that he is a Derry man who is revered as a statesman and who in 1998 was a co-recipient of the Nobel peace prize. In his pronouncements over the years, McClean has never mentioned Hume.

 

When McGuinness died in March 2017, McClean described him in a statement as “a good friend . . . a great leader, a great hero and above all a great man. Thinking of all your loved ones.”

 

Julie Hambleton was thinking of loved ones that day, in particular her 18-year-old sister Maxine, who was one of 21 people murdered by IRA bombs in two pubs in Birmingham on November 21, 1974. She has devoted much of her life since to bringing the perpetrators to justice. McGuinness, she steadfastly maintains, had “so much blood on his hands”. The death of the unrepentant IRA commander prompted a diametrically different response from Ms Hambleton.

 

“I feel sad because here was a man who I believe could have given us so many answers to our questions and the questions of many others who are victims of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His family have our genuine condolences. We are not evil people. But he has had a full life and has a family, children, grandchildren — how lucky for him. What about Maxine and Jane Davis and the rest of the 21 who were killed in the pub bombings?”

 

Through Sunderland, Wigan Athletic, West Bromwich Albion and Stoke City, McClean has made a handsome living in those English heartlands where McGuinness and his cadre of sociopaths wreaked the most dreadful human suffering. Warrington, Manchester, the M62: does he know what happened in these places? Does he care? His comments have shown a regrettable insensitivity to the country that has given him a livelihood of which he could never have dreamt in Derry.

 

If he has struggled to show a modicum of consideration for his adopted community, perhaps he ought to be mindful of his fellow emigrants, the Irish men and women who for generations before him made their lives in Britain. The atrocities of Irish terrorism brought crippling shame upon them. It was they who were left to deal with the inevitable backlash provoked by these crimes against humanity.

 

It seems that in McClean’s world there is only one such crime that matters: the shooting dead of 13 unarmed civilians in Derry by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday — January 30, 1972. Five years ago, while at Wigan, he wrote an open letter to Dave Whelan, the club chairman. At the time he was being subjected to a storm of vitriol. He prefaced his explanation by stressing he had “complete respect” for those who fought and died in both world wars. But Bloody Sunday made the wearing of the poppy a step too far.

 

“Please understand that when you come from Creggan like myself or the majority of places in Derry, every person still lives in the shadow of one of the darkest days in Ireland’s history. It is just part of who we are, ingrained into us from birth.”

 

Fair enough. His conscience will not allow it. The problem arises of someone who seems to know only a fraction of the story. “Ingrained into us from birth” is an admission that he has been force-fed a version that leans heavily on denial, self-pity and sentimental nationalism.

 

While Hume, his SDLP colleagues and their supporters stood four-square for peace, civility and civilisation, it was McGuinness, the IRA and their counterparts in Ulster loyalism who were dragging that society into its chamber of horrors.

One of the most infamous horrors was perpetrated at a ceremony to commemorate the war dead in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, on November 8, 1987. Irish terrorists killed 12 people that day and injured 63, many of them elderly. It was an outrage that stunned both nations, known as the Remembrance Day bombing, the Poppy Day massacre.

 

The wearing or not of a poppy on a football field seems trivial but it would be no trivial matter if McClean reconsidered his position in the light of that hideous day. Stripped of history and tribalism, it would be a simple, stand-alone gesture of atonement for that unfathomable act of cruelty. McClean takes a lot of pride in the strength of his convictions. He insists he has done it on principle and that, as he said in his letter to Whelan, “if you’re a man you should stand up for what you believe in”.

 

The point is that it matters less what you “believe in” than what you know. Believing in something is often a shortcut for people who do not bother to inform themselves or who do not want to know. Blind conviction becomes a refuge from inconvenient truths.

 

McClean’s political sensibilities are as crude as his football skills. He has not made life easy by refusing to wear the symbol of “the Brits” but it is easier than telling home truths to his people. If he needs to know one thing, it is that standing up to one’s tribe is the toughest principle to live by, the hardest test of all.

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/james-mcclean-has-right-to-snub-poppy-but-he-needs-to-learn-full-story-vwmgbl5j0

 

 

 

[ian1964 10,390]

 

[RANGERRAB 3,253]

James MaClean will be more remembered for refusing to wear a poppy on his shirt than he will be remembered as a footballer in years to come. 

 

Why does this piece of pond life always need to be given publicity every  Remembrance Sunday ?

 

Ignore him ??????

[Franc Ergs 1,348]

11 hours ago, ian1964 said:

Michael Stewart agrees with a lot of the political things the Gangrene Brigade bring to football matches!!!!!!

[ian1964 10,390]

 

[Gonzo79 13,555]

I see there was a PA announcement at the Huddersfield Town vs Stoke City match, due to Huddersfield fans singing "F*ck the IRA" at McLean.

 

It's widely being reported as a 'racist' and 'sectarian' incident. McLean was apparently making hand gestures at the Huddersfield fans (who he has previous with) prior to the chant and then applauded the announcement. 

 

We live in odd times...

[Bluedell 5,329]

So we aren't allowed to be anti-terrorist? Being against a sectarian terrorist organisation is apparently sectarian in its own right? 

 

Someone will need to explain how the authorities are able to justify their warped logic. 

[ian1964 10,390]

 

[RANGERRAB 3,253]

Who’d bet against the yahoos signing MacClean ? 

Imagine him against Barasic ???

Like a Robin Reliant against a Ferrari ? ??

[barca72 440]

I wonder how the FA would react to Huddersfield and Stoke City and Barnsley fans refusing to attend matches with McLean on the team sheet.
Really, don't f*ck with patriotism!!
It worked for Kaepernick in the States.