‘POPPY DAY’
Football’s increasingly manipulated relationship with nationalism.
Easter, May Day, Bonfire Night, Christmas Day and Boxing Day all pass by with little mention in programme notes or Richie Reynolds’ pre-match routine. ‘Poppy Day’ however, has become the most observed occasion in the football calendar. During October and November football grounds around the country put on increasingly intensified displays of remembrance. The personal, discreet and sombre notion of wearing a poppy on a lapel honouring the fallen, replaced by bloated and undignified pageantry. Men in poppy suits waddle out at Prenton Park, displays the size of stands are unfurled, corner flags, player’s shirts and managers lapels adorned with the red flower, as the Last Post echoes around silent stadia while Gunnersauras, Boiler Man and Gully stand solemnly – styrofoam wings respectfully folded.
During October and November football grounds around the country put on increasingly intensified displays of remembrance. The personal, discreet and sombre notion of wearing a poppy on a lapel honouring the fallen, replaced by bloated and undignified pageantry
For recent governments, hell bent on a kind of warped sense of nationalism, football, a game so intimately linked with traditionalism, presents an opportunity for intensifying nationalistic sentiment. Reduced down to the Trump-speak style term ‘Poppy Day’ – broader, more easily understood, not inconveniently tied to a specific date. Remembrance Sunday gone and replaced by a period of observation running through two footballing and Gregorian months. The aim is to strengthen ties between football, the state, using the military as a conduit. Pacifying national consciousness to the actions of the state and minimising inconvenient public discourse.
What’s the benefit to the FA and Premier League corp.? An association with a moral cause such as remembrance is an opportunity to appear as good and serving a community it grows further away from every day. The British Legion is one of the Premier League’s corporate partners, an example of a mutually beneficial arrangement for a game so readily accused of having no moral compass.
As well as these intangible notions, football provides an opportunity for aggressive recruitment into the army. Army recruitment vans have been seen outside the grounds of Stoke and Carlisle among others. In working class towns where football is a strong force for local identity and communion, young economically vulnerable men have been specifically targeted, a move criticised for its explicit tactics. The notion of ‘Never again’ abandoned for the honorific and noble ‘Lest we forget’ it seems.
‘Poppy Day’ focuses predominantly on commemorating the sacrifices made in the successive world wars which is related directly to the victories in these conflicts. Loss in these wars is arguably uncontroversial and in the name of a pursuit which slaughtered millions but is seen as just by the majority. The Daily Mail claimed in 2009 ‘Premier clubs are still refusing to back Sportsmail’s campaign to honour our heroes’ as three clubs decided to align with Fifa’s (now amended) rules of no political symbols on football shirts. It’s glory glory, honour and sacrifice, fuck the Argies, no surrender to the IRA, God Save the Queen, Brexit means Brexit. Sentiments stoked up by the right as they walk away rubbing their hands, letting the bin fire rage. The discourse warped towards a blatant triumphalism, rather than a sombre reflection on loss. It’s the people in power who pit us against ourselves – as true now as it was in the tragedy of the conflicts Remembrance Sunday respects.
There is a duality at the heart of football’s relationship with nationalism. Our game represents something traditional but also something aggressively modern
‘Poppy Day’ has become the battlefront of the Culture Wars. How often do you hear that politics should be left out of football? Conveniently keeping politics in football when it aligns with a particular worldview. Justifying the ineptitude of our governments decisions on Brexit and COVID 19 by comparing it to the world wars, where we apparently knuckled down, grinned and beared it, were an unthinking blindly obedient mass universally in agreement with decisions of a government elevated to untouchable by the cause of war – a sentiment echoed through these times of perpetual national crisis. Not wearing a poppy is seen by some as unpatriotic and disrespectful – ignoring the subtlety and nuance in an individual’s decision as football has been pressured to apply a blanket political symbol. ‘Virtue signalling’, an accusation readily thrown at the progressive, absent from this particular discourse.
This is nothing new. In the 1960s Pele was gagged by the military junta who had taken power in Brazil. They pacified him in order to win over the hearts and minds of the Brazilian people. His presence in the world cup was supposedly forced by the state, despite injury, their intent to associate the success of the Brazil national side with the ‘success’ of the new regime. Football as the ‘opium of the masses’ and a devotion to the game manipulated by a state intent on gaining populist support. It is concerning that the tactics of the Brazilian fascist state is in any way comparable to a system they tell us is democratic and liberal.
The inspiration for this notion has come from the US. In the states there is a strong association between the military-media-industrial-complex and sport. TV packages rarely go by without the unveiling of an American flag and chants of ‘USA USA USA’. Pop culture and entertainment are a space to support and thank the mechanisms of state sanctioned terror. A silent compliance to an international policy which seeks perpetual war. The adoption of a similar tactic by the British state presents a further shift of British football towards an American-style sport culture which Daniel Levy et al would like us to adopt.
But there is a duality at the heart of football’s relationship with nationalism. Our game represents something traditional but also something aggressively modern. The Premier League is arguably the biggest British brand internationally, filled with beautiful players from around the world and engineered, it seems, more and more for broadcasters internationally. By looking at the success of the Premier League there is a comfort for those struggling with the reality of modernity – that Britain still rules the waves. ‘Best league in the world’ they say. This duality reveals the confusion that so many feel about what it means to be British. They look around them at the reality of modern British society and it concerns them. Football is moving further and further away from them but at the same time is a British success story. This gap presents an opportunity for a state with warped ideas of nationalism to exploit this general sense of unsurety.
In our increasingly divided society there is a solace to be found in an unquestioning view of sacrifice and loss. Something consistent, kept free from debate, by some seen as universally ‘a good thing’. These wars were fought for our freedom they say, but not the particular kind of freedom for the right to disagree, to question and to debate. Remembrance Sunday is a beautiful occasion to mark indescribable loss and suffering, but it’s become a carnival of nationalism, a ‘Christmas day for Fascists’, as a veteran via Joe Glenton described it. The solemn and serious occasion of remembrance has been warped by a society unsure of what it means to be British and using football as a vehicle to exploit this confusion.
