A FEELING of dread gradually descends on Celtic supporters each year as Armistice Day approaches. Once, this sacred day was commemorated with silent dignity as communities across Britain gathered in churches and workplaces to honour the memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It didn’t really matter that during the First World War many of them didn’t really know what they were fighting for. They simply felt it was their duty.

Sadly, there isn’t much that is dignified and respectful about the braying, triumphalist festival of excess that’s Remembrance Day in Britain in the 21st century. For, lately, this has become an entire season that starts in October and builds into a shouty crescendo on November 11.

In Scotland, of course, we have contrived to produce a few add-ons. One of these is to perform outrage when some Celtic supporters desecrate/dishonour/disfigure (choose your own favourite mode of apoplexy) the occasion at whichever game occurs closest to November 11. They know that it’s coming and there is a palpable sense of glee when it happens that has little to do with actually being offended.

A classic example of this came last week at Dens Park when the BBC Scotland sports department, who specialise in this pretence, asked Ange Postecoglu to comment on some Celtic supporters choosing not to respect the minute’s silence before the game against Dundee. This didn’t arise from any genuine sense of grievance. Rather, it was intended to embarrass a new Celtic manager who might not have been expected to know much about the recent history of this unfortunate ritual.

Postecoglu is alive to the artifices and contrivances of some Scottish football journalists though, and dealt easily with the challenge.

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My own view is that observing a minute of silence for those who laid down their lives in two global conflicts is not much to ask. When it happens, like many other supporters, I offer a silent “Eternal Rest” for my own family members and the millions of others who died in these wars and whose blood consecrates the places where they fell.

In recent years though – and for insidious reasons – the British establishment has moved the goalposts on Remembrance Day. For, it’s now been stretched to include conflicts that were much less noble than the two world wars. On top of this disfiguring of Remembrance Day there has also been something akin to a fetishisation of the poppy. Thus, a small symbol representing quiet sorrow, dignity and lost innocence has been turned into something belligerent and triumphalist. Across social media packs of fake patriots now hunt down anyone who doesn’t seem to have respected the poppy. Meanwhile, if you have any sort of public profile and are photographed without this emblem then you face condemnation by the poppy police. This inversion of what the poppy once represented is much more offensive than a few hundred Celtic fans failing to observe a minute’s silence.

In a better time we remembered the fallen at our local church service, in our homes or simply by remaining still for two minutes wherever we might be at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month. Now, all football games north and south of the border are required by order to do this. Each year, at some grounds, it has become an event in itself as though they are participating in their own imaginary competition for Best in Show.

No one has ever asked why, as a nation, we went from an annual day of quiet reflection - entirely appropriate for the events it commemorated – to this festival of loud excess which dishonours the message of “Never Again”. Some have suggested that it’s arisen with some of the darker forces unleashed by Brexit. But this was a process that had begun well before 2016.

I’d suggest that it’s rooted in something much more ancient and insidious. The UK establishment, especially the Conservative Party, have long used the British Royal Family and military adventurism as a means of fostering a bogus sense of national identity. The purpose of this is to convey a sense that we’re all in it together. And especially in those times when the gap between rich and poor is a chasm or when other forces – Brexit, Covid; austerity – threaten to make this larger still.

To earn their wealth and privilege the Windsors (a made-up name in itself) are merely expected to keep making marriages and producing babies so that we’re rarely far from a royal occasion and displays of Union-Jack fervour. Meanwhile, the political elites have made a false idol of the British Army so that all its conflicts – legal and illegal – are now deemed to have been holy wars. It’s in this context that the recent national desecration of the poppy should be viewed. It’s simply another means by which the elites sew division among working-class people and hunt down non-conformists.

And so now, for a few weeks each year Celtic and their fans must endure this cringe-fest when we are caught between decency and callousness, seemingly helpless to do anything other than wait for it all to be over. No matter how large Celtic’s annual donations are to the poppy fund our critics indulge themselves at this time of year in something that hints at an older, darker foe. Yet, there might be a solution to this. One of the many Celtic supporters who died in the Second World War was James Stokes, who was born and raised in the Gorbals. James received the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious honour Britain can confer.

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James died fighting for his country in Holland on March 1, 1945. In doing so he displayed extraordinary bravery under intense enemy fire to help rescue his platoon from a hopeless situation. You can read more detail about him in the excellent Celtic Wiki.

This is a paragraph from the London Gazette of April, 13, 1945 which announced the honour that was bestowed on him.

“At this stage the Company was forming up for its final assault on the objective, which was a group of buildings, forming an enemy strong point. Again, without waiting for orders, Private Stokes, although now severely wounded and suffering from loss of blood, dashed on the remaining 60 yards to the objective, firing from the hip as he struggled through intense fire. He finally fell 20 yards from the enemy position, firing his rifle until the last, and as the Company passed him in the final charge he raised his hand and shouted goodbye. Private Stokes was found to have been wounded eight times in the upper part of the body.”

The Glenties Celtic Supporters Club from the Gorbals changed their name to honour one of their own and thus we have the James Stokes VC CSC. Couldn’t Celtic hold a small annual ceremony at the place where James Stokes was born and lay a wreath to commemorate him and all those who fell in the two world wars?

Perhaps they might also consider commissioning and erecting a statue in this place which could come to be a sacred place of pilgrimage for Celtic supporters – and others – who want to honour bravery and self-sacrifice with silence and dignity.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.