Opinion

Tom Kelly: Remembrance events need to be more inclusive

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall
The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall The National Day of Remembrance taking in place outside Belfast City Hall

Each year I attend the Remembrance service at Belfast City Hall on behalf of the government of Malta. It’s an incredible event and one, which I didn’t attend until 2008.

It’s run with great precision and professionalism by both the staff at City Hall and the British Legion. For a Catholic with a nationalist background the service is still strangely alien – although it must be said with the regular attendance of the Irish foreign minister and usually the participation of a senior Catholic clergyman it is a much more inclusive event than it would have been in 2008.

The atmosphere is very solemn and dignified. Former servicemen from the Second World War are noticeably deceasing in numbers. They are frail in their wheelchairs but their medals are proudly worn across their blazers. A few wear the berets from their regiments. Rows and rows of organisations line up to lay wreaths. The attendance of so many of the loyal orders is incredible but it also makes the event seem very one sided.

Obviously Remembrance Sunday is hugely important to unionists and ever since the horrific massacre at Enniskillen in 1987, it has taken on an even greater poignancy and cultural significance.

Each year I have this internal debate about whether or not to wear a poppy to the ceremony. It’s not an act that comes naturally. I mostly opt to wear it only for the ceremony and then take it off. It's always a balance between wanting to show respect to the past fallen and not wanting to be caught up in an act that supports all British army activities.

It’s quite easy for me to go to the ceremony without feeling in any way compromised. I am there representing a country which was bombarded during World War Two, a commonwealth country and one which collectively holds the George Cross, just like the RUC.

But I also had a grandfather and two great grandfathers who served throughout the Great War – one in the Irish Fusiliers and two as pioneers in the Royal Engineers. Two received injuries from the conflict - one shot and the other gassed three times. Bizarrely they both were sent back to the front despite being hospitalised. Going to Remembrance Sunday is about them too. This is a heritage that I as a nationalist co-own.

Given the numbers of nationalists who joined up in the First World War, there’s hardly a family who doesn’t also have a war hero in their history. Despite genealogy sites being swamped with interest in old soldiers and their records, Catholics/nationalists still recoil from joining their unionist neighbours in going to go the Cenotaph and sharing something that is in joint ownership.

There’s no doubt that the service is very British in orientation but it makes you wonder does it have to be so as the Irish section of the British Legion host events in a much more inclusive way. Even the trendy Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was sporting an Irish shamrock poppy in the Dail last week. Thankfully he spared us novelty socks with poppies and shamrocks.

However, those who criticise him for wearing the shamrock poppy better start getting real. If unionists are ever to be persuaded that their ultimate destiny is in an united Ireland, as Sinn Féin and the SDLP believe, then there’s going to have to be much more of a diverse crossover in official Ireland so that space is given to the unionist identity and culture.

One suspects that most unionists in Northern Ireland are quite happy with the overtly British displays at Remembrance Sunday throughout our towns and villages. What should be concerning them is the attendance of certain bands and organisations like the UDA, which have no place there at all.

As we grew up, a unionist lady who lived on the Armagh Road went around her mostly Catholic neighbours and sold her poppies. And for as long as I can remember we always took one and it was placed discreetly behind the clock above the fireplace. I remember too in June at the annual blessing of the graves ceremony being fascinated with the headstone of the neighbouring grave, which was engraved with a regimental crest to the memory of a soldier who died in the Great War.

Someone who didn’t forget each November tenderly placed a poppy cross on that grave. By June it was worn, wilted and torn from the ravages of the weather but it still clung on amongst the weeds awaiting its replacement. Reminding us lest we forget.