As 11th of November again draws near, we will again see British subjects, adorn their blood stained poppy. To them it signifies their own falsely construed beliefs, that deceased members of the British armed forces, should be shown dignity and respect.
We will see also, some, Irish men and women wear such a horrific symbol of oppression. The very same oppression that has been reaped upon our nation, by such forces of the crown for generations. They believe that they are honouring Irishmen who fought for the British Empire, during the so called “Great” War of 1914 to 1918.
This war was only a war created by European imperialist interests. Irishmen, at that time, believed that in fighting in this war, for Britain, that they would achieve a limited independence for our own nation, under the apparent promise of Home Rule, in the hope of eventually achieving full independence, from the British Empire. The opposite occurred.
By the hundreds of thousands, working class from Ireland and the World were forcefully pitted against each other. As a bottomless cavern of death filled with their corpses, the coffers of industrialists and capitalists began to overflow. Once again the working class had been deceived until death.
Connolly’s opinion on that war was clear
“If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, than to go forth to strange countries and die slaughtering and slaughtered by their brothers that tyrants and profiteers might live?”
The poppy is, for one, a symbol of the forced slaughter of the working class of Europe, and afar, in a war in which they had needed not suffered. It symbolises the tyrannical British invasion and occupation of nations, and of the torture, murder and massacres of the peoples of such nations, from 1914 to the present day.
Even at this moment, British armed forces and the forces of British colonial policing, illegally occupy our 6 counties. Was one of the reasons that Irishmen fought in the Great War, so that nations such as ours could have the right to self determination? Then, as is now, such occupation benefits British capitalists, as the working class continue to fall through that bottomless cavern of suffering.
