The reason I wore a poppy this year

They say that everything is political, well Thomas Mann did anyway. He must have visited Northern Ireland. Here, even your choice of bus could be twisted into apparently declaring a viewpoint on the constitutional position. Wearing the poppy certainly is. This year was the first year I have ever worn a poppy. I hadn’t refrained from wearing one before deliberately, but as a young middle class Catholic who had no immediate connection to anyone who had fought in the world wars, it wasn’t on my radar. I respected Remembrance Day, but this year something was different. In recent days and months, a young PSNI officer Ronan Kerr was killed by a booby trap bomb, a young army medic Channing Day was killed after being shot on patrol in Afghanistan. And then David Black, a prison officer from Cookstown, was murdered on his way to work. There have been many more killed in the line of duty but these three were different for me. Channing and Ronan were very close in age to me and David Black was from a town I practically grew up in. Every day these three put on a uniform and vowed to try and make the world a safer place. They died as a result. Two of them at the hands of those seeking to drag our country back into a time no one ever wants to see again. This year also marked 25 years since the IRA bombed the Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen. This was one of the darkest days of the Troubles. It was a moment of shame for all involved in the violence and yet from that dark and desperate act came the light and hope of Gordon Wilson. His daughter Marie was killed that day and his simple words of forgiveness were, and still are, an inspiration to me and to our province. Standing in Donaghadee at the cenotaph on Sunday I was moved by the dignity and quiet strength of those gathered to pay respects. I thought of how 25 years ago that day Gordon Wilson would have been doing the same and how hours later he somehow found the strength to forgive those who had murdered his daughter. It was people like Gordon who helped create the more peaceful province we now live in. It didn’t matter to me on Sunday that Catholics and Protestants had died together in the Somme, but it was an appropriate context in these times when dissidents have heightened their campaign to dismantle the peace Gordon Wilson helped create and have not discriminated in their victims in trying to do so, targeting innocent people from both sides of the community. And so I chose to wear a poppy this year. Because it has never been more important to show solidarity as a community in our commitment to peace and to show respect for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us all from harm. We will remember them. Together.