WITH Remembrance Week over for another year…
Wait, I’m getting a message here… Let me just press my middle finger to my ear… Remembrance Autumn, you say? Fair enough, let’s go with that, since we’re all for truth in the news…
With Remembrance Autumn over for another year, I propose a case study in order that those many people who seem to confuse the solemn remembrance of the dead of two World Wars with cheerleading discredited armed groups can perhaps begin to understand that continually walking into lampposts is bad not only for your nose, but for the cause you and your nose espouse.
Take my hand and come with me back to the weekend of Remembrance Sunday, 2023, when the Belfast and British media was chock-full of indignant stories about a unionist OAP who was foully abused for selling poppies in Lurgan Tesco. The facts were undisputed, the disgust unalloyed.
‘Tesco poppy volunteer attacked for selling “badges for murderers” as horrific abuse hurled at pensioner’. GB News.
‘Fury as shopper filmed berating poppy seller in Northern Ireland saying they are ‘badges for murderers”’. LBC.
‘Fury as Tesco shopper confronts poppy seller and blasts “it’s not acceptable to sell them” in rant’. The Sun.
‘Pensioner speaks out after being abused by angry Tesco shopper while selling poppies’. Daily Express.
‘Lurgan poppy seller confronted in online video speaks out’. Belfast Telegraph.
‘Woman who asked to sell IRA badges in hate incident with elderly poppy seller at Tescos in Lurgan’. News Letter.
The incident, as relayed in the stories above, played out like this:
A maniac with a trolley approached a blameless, mild-mannered, grey-haired poppy seller in the foyer of Lurgan Tesco and ranted hysterically about poppies and the Ra.
CONTROVERSY: RUC badges at a Lurgan poppy stall caused a confrontation
The truth, however, was rather more, ah, layered. In fact, the woman with the complaint had zero issue with the poppies, as she rather inconveniently made clear in the six-minute video on which the story was based.
"The British army and RUC murdered a lot of innocent people and you are selling for them,” she said. “This is for murderers of innocent people, this is not acceptable selling these. I am not accepting this. A donation for a poppy, that is no problem – but selling badges for the RUC and British Army, I am not accepting it.”
Turned out that the poppy woman had turned her poppy stall into a veritable armed forces gift shop. Beside the Royal British Legion-branded poppies and other merchandise, she was flogging badges for the UDR, the RUC and the SAS – none of the stuff anything to do with the Legion. The ‘badges for murderers’ that the stories above said was a reference to poppies was in fact a reference to badges which shouldn’t have been on the stall to begin with – badges of organisations which the vast majority of nationalists view with deep distrust and suspicion; badges for organisations – the UDR and the RUC – which were disbanded because peace was impossible in the North while they existed.
NON GRATA: The UDR has an appalling reputation among nationalists – particularly in Mid-Ulster
All of this was bad enough, but we haven’t even come to the lovely old lady who was the victim in this latest culture war collision. Roberta McNally she was called and she’s a been a DUP member off and on for a few years – an office-holder indeed – in the mid-Ulster area. And she looked like a granny from central casting – I could easily have pictured her with flour on the tip of her nose from the scones she baked earlier, her needles clicking softly as she knitted while watching Songs of Praise. But just as ‘Vile hag abuses poppy granny’ was quite a bit off the mark, so was the contention that if Roberta popped a bit of butter in her mouth while she was baking those scones it would have remained loyally unmelted. In fact, Roberta’s got a mouth on her like a sailor on shore leave.
Squinter can’t say for sure, but there’s a decent chance that the woman who confronted Roberta about her choice of merch is a Catholic. And if she is, then in fact she’s got more of a beef with Granny Roberta than Granny Roberta has got with her. Writing of unionist in-fighting on Facebook in 2015, Roberta said: “Here we go again unionist attacking unionist on social media. Taigs must love it!!” She later told the Lurgan Mail: “I have many Catholic friends who I hold in high esteem and they know I would not offend them at any cost.”
Not if they’re not on Facebook anyway.
In another social media post she said of Lurgan Sinn Féin member Cat Seeley: “If the vote is split then that tramp Seeley has the potential to be the next MP.”
Squinter hasn’t been able to confirm if Roberta has many friends called Cat Seeley that she holds in high esteem and wouldn’t offend at any cost.
But even as the black and white story of evil-witch-versus-lovely-old-lady dissolved into various watery and confusing hues, Loyal Ulster cleaved to the original narrative. Even as the claim that the original complainant was anti-poppy came apart like a lamppost union jack in winter, unionists continued to splutter their righteous indignation. But, as could anybody who cared to look at the story with a modicum of objectivity, I could see at the time that the final verdict on this sorry episode would be reached not by permafurious unionists or even by frustrated nationalists. Nope, the rights and the wrongs of the thing would be decided by Tesco – and by the Legion.
What was notable amidst the sturm und drang last year was the refusal of the supermarket giant and the Legion to join in the faux fury; indeed, both refused to go beyond boilerplate holding statements. And that was because they could see the story developing, they could see that Roberta was a decidedly flawed heroine and the complaint was a rather more complex one than the tabloids invited us to believe. And I knew a year ago that when their verdict was delivered in 2024, not only was it going to be a harsh judgment on the 2023 incident, it was going to prove a setback for those who continue to insist that the poppy relates to whoever they want it to relate to. I'm not just saying that now with the benefit of hindsight, I said as much on Twitter even as the story broke…
1/3 I'm not saying a woman who calls Catholics Taigs doesn't deserve to be forgiven. I am, however, saying her presence at a poppy stall at the main entrance to a supermarket in a majority Catholic/Taig town where all the Catholics/Taigs know her is a provocation and an insult.
2/3 And I'm saying that when she's also selling non-British Legion RUC/UDR merchandise the wonder is she didn't get even more robust challenges. And I'm saying she can be thankful that she wasn't subjected to the kind of language that she likes to subject other people to.
3/3 And I'm saying to unionist media outlets and reps who are inviting me to join their pity party: No, thanks; someone who throws around sectarian language shouldn't need my sympathy – or yours. And I'm saying she'll certainly not be selling RUC/UDR sweg in
Tesco Lurgan next year.
So, was I right when I said that Roberta would be dropped for the 2024 fixture and that the RUC and UDR merch that caused the problem would be given the polished army boot? Let’s see…
Saturday at around 2pm and I enter Tesco Lurgan to see the familiar poppy stall bedecked with... well... poppies, of course, and little wooden crosses that can be pushed into the ground. Presiding over the display are a man and woman of, shall we say, a certain age? Of Roberta, sign is there none.
I enquire about the RUC and UDR badges from last year and I'm told there’s “only RBL stuff”. And in the inevitable absence of Roberta I have a brief chat with the man, telling him I'm relieved that there’s no repeat of last year and that the incident had only made it harder for poppy-sellers like him to do their job. And me and yer man shook hands – him wearing his poppy, me wearing a Gaza badge, and everything was absolutely and entirely shuh-weet.
Which is not only how it should be – it was how I knew it would be. There wasn’t a chance that Tesco or the Legion were going to let non-Legion material go on sale again at a Legion table in a Tesco supermarket. There wasn’t a hope in hell that Roberta would be back deciding for herself who the poppy represents. And it was how Loyal Ulster should have known it would be if it had bothered – or perhaps been able – to look beyond one angry dispute in November 2023.
Because of course a poppy stall in Tesco Lurgan was a concession already. The vast majority of people in Lurgan don’t wear poppies (unionists included, btw) and the location of the Legion table there was an acknowledgment that unionist veneration of the British military is deserving of respect – or at least toleration – in a majority nationalist town; a majority nationalist town that suffered grievously at the hands of the same UDR and RUC, whose badges had no place at that stall.
I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the chances of such a poppy stall being situated at present in a shopping centre in majority-nationalist West Belfast are zero. And so that gesture in Lurgan – that outreach, if you will – should have been appreciated and looked after. In fact, it was tossed back in people's faces.
And so the verdict on last year was reached: Roberta and her vocal DUP, UUP and TUV supporters were wrong. That was not me saying that – it was Tesco saying that and it was the Royal British Legion saying that. She was gone. Her disputed merch was gone. All that remained on Remembrance Weekend 2024 was the plain poppy stand. Which is exactly what the woman in the video said she wanted.
What does that mean? Well, it means the woman who we were invited last year to cheer on has lost; it means the woman we were invited to revile has won.
And I have to hand it to Loyal Ulster: That’s some achievement.
