IRONIC, is it not, that when we think of flower people, we think of pacifist hippies? This week, our television screens were crammed with poppy wearing presenters. In a different political climate, Easter-lily wearers might bloom annually on TV. Neither the poppy nor the lily people could ever be accused of excessive pacificism. These flower shows are about due remembrance, of course, but remembrance of what?
The war dead? Certainly. Bravery? Of course. Idealism? Indeed. But the brave and idealistic dead, no more than the cowardly and calculating living, cannot ethically be extricated from context. The flowers, haplessly, or otherwise, symbolise more than virtuous human qualities. Deliberately or inadvertently, the poppy glorifies imperialist war the lily celebrates violent revolution. Too often, due respect becomes smeared by the smugness and triumphalism of the living.
Anyway, 1914-1918, BBC's new seven part, oral history of the first World War, seems crucially cognisant of context. The usual imagery is there tiny helmeted figures, straining under backpacks, are silhouetted against the horizon exploding shells and constant gunfire provide the sounds troop trains leave bleak English stations for journeys to hell. But gradually, alongside such aggrandising images of epic, the focus closes in on real people to reduce the usual horrific grandeur to a human scale.
One anecdote was particularly illuminating. A few years before the war broke out, a Russian peasant travelled to Moscow to see the city's splendours. While there, he saw the less than splendid figure of Czar Nicholas. In a moment of the purest epiphany, reality struck the rustic. He realised that the notion that Nick could be the embodiment of all of Russia's greatness was absurd the czar was just another man. In an instant, an imperial fiction which had lived for centuries died.
It was a moment of clarity for the peasant traveller. Should he be sad, or, at any rate, nostalgic, for the old order? Or should he celebrate and act upon this insight? The documentary didn't say. But, in recounting the tale, it compressed the nascent shift in the European mind set into the mind and experience of one, ordinary man. It was clear that a convulsion in world history and, ultimately, in the world's balance of power was coming.
Still, the old imperial order, either actively or because it was unable to prevent itself, drifted towards its own destruction, taking the lives of millions of its minions as it did so. Accounts from differing perspectives diplomatic, economic, even artistic/psychiatric did not resolve the question of why the old order engaged in such self destruction. Perhaps though, the case of Britain's suffragettes provided some answers.
Here were women prepared to die, be imprisoned and engage in arson of churches (which they identified as bastions of male power) in order to win the vote. Yet, sooner than risk the charge of unpatriotic behaviour, they suspended their operations for the duration of the first World War. Clearly, whether for tactical or ideological reasons, traditional allegiances even to a state which persecuted them remained stronger than the new goal of gender egalitarianism.
It is hardly too much of a leap to suggest the thinking of the suffragettes was replicated in the minds of many of the millions who fought in the war. And it is on that point that the appropriation of motive characteristic of many of the more belligerent poppy wearers has deliberately made remembering, in its present form, so contentious.
To say, glibly, that those who fought and died always did so with the exclusive motivation that their actions were "for king and country", is simply not true. Indeed, it is no more true than saying that Easter-lily wearers, by definition, approve of murdering innocent people. Some do, most don't. Like fighting for a monarch, really many did and many didn't, or at least, did not do so as a primary motivation.
So, this 1914-1918, on the evidence of its opening episode Explosion, is promising. Its perspective is not limited to that of Britain and Ireland. Eight decades on, television is providing something closer to an overview. The symbolism of the flowers is even more delicate than the flowers themselves. Deep sensitivities are not only understandable, but appropriate. But, as with the Russian peasant seeing the czar, the onus falls on the individual to see clearly. This new series will help.
PEOPLE wishing to see the British and, by extension, the Irish legal says more clearly, should watch The Verdict. If, on the evidence of its first of six parts, the series is going to produce its own verdict, then the law is already looking very guilty. Their be wigged eminences have, so far been portrayed as legal bullies theatrical types more concerned with performance than with truth.
Two women their careers, arguably, facilitated by the suffragettes and their political descendants were featured. Gillian Taylforth, who plays Kathy Beale in EastEnders and Edwina Currie, who plays politics in the Tory party, both sued newspapers. They faced George Carman, the Vinny Jones of British barristers, with startlingly different outcomes.
Taylforth sued the Sun, after it claimed that she performed oral sex on a male companion in a lay by. It was, to put it mildly an embarrassing charge, the sort of thing which only the very well heeled and well connected could be expected to have the neck to withstand. Taylforth's barrister Michael Beloff, warned her from the outset that if she had any "skeletons in the cupboard George Carman will get them".
For a while, Ms Taylforth did fine in court. Being a soap opera actress, she could never be quite "fragrant" in the noses of the law lads. But she seemed demure and sensitive and hurt by the charge. Beloff was happy. "My feeling was that he (Carman) hadn't really laid a glove on her." But then the Sun came to Carman's aid it got hold, of a six year old video of Taylforth acting the mick with a frankfurter.
Oh dear! It was obvious what was coming. Taylforth "We were all mucking about, all picking up bits of food ... there was, like, a German sausage there and I picked it up and held it to my mouth as a Jimmy Savile sort of thing - Ow's about that then, guys and gals?' and that's all I did." But Carman was in like Flynn with the big banger. A symbolic cigar? Not likely. No," said Taylforth, he insisted that I was acting out oral sex with this sausage".
Sure, it's hard not to snigger. But seeing Carman, sitting in front of a plinth marked "Sue The Bastards", relive his victory, you'd wonder if his is the ideal, work of a principled person. Anyway, Taylforth, along with her case, collapsed. Carman had further suggested that her distress was just her acting out of an EastEnders sub plot in which Kathy Beale undergoes a similar courtroom ordeal.
Madam Currie, however, was a harder egg to crack. Suing the Observer, she wore black instead of her usual bright rig outs. She also kept perfectly still. "You just put, your hands on the witness box and you steady yourself and the jury knows you are steady." There are versions of Bunny Carr media grooming courses being offered now to tutor people who have to face barristers. Basically, these are low level acting classes. The theatre of the absurd meets costume drama in the courtroom.
BACK on RTE, an institution which too often has seemed to be all at sea was the focus of an anniversary documentary. The Irish Navy - The First 50 Years was an unbalanced offering of intriguing old footage and screaming new PR. The first half of the programme, while recognising that the Naval Service was and in some quarters, still is regarded as a national joke, provided reasonable, if excessively anecdotal history. The second half was, essentially, a promo video.
To be fair, the terms of the Treaty didn't help. Britain retained control of Cork harbour, Berehaven and Lough Swilly and the Free State was forbidden to raise any naval forces of its own. Scuttled before it could rise, the Irish navy could be only a national embarrassment. And so it was. Considering the contribution of Irish sailors to Britain's Royal Navy, the joke was particularly black.
But archive film provided a lifeboat. Black and white footage of the repatriation of Yeats's remains (from France in 1948) was poignant. The French, as they do with artists, made a great fuss of the dockside ceremony in Nice. It lasted longer than an hour and a half. Former Petty Officer Luke Cassidy, at the time a young Leading Seaman, stood guard over the coffin. To retain concentration, he silently recited the Yeats poetry which had been drummed into him at school.
A 1962 PR stunt by the navy, however, provided the craziest incident. Inviting the press to be impressed, our doughty sea dogs almost blew up their own ship. The 1996 PR is slicker, of course but not much. Along with praising advances, the Naval Service should have made a stronger case for itself. At present, it has seven ships to patrol an area four times the size of Ireland. It is not its fault that drugs arrive by the container load. A few bob from the State would hardly sink us all.
FINALLY, Simisola a three part Ruth Rendell mystery with George Baker as Inspector Wexford. There's also a Constable Malahide, which would make you wonder about where they get their characters' names. What next? Detective Booterstown? Sergeant Dundalk? Or, how about a double barrelled Superintendent Howth Junction? Anyway, this week's opening episode, rather ploddingly, introduced plots centred on racism, reverse racism (black on white) and middle class unemployment.
As plots for cop opera, these are fine. But there is a lack of grit and, crucial, a lack of adequately motivated characters in this one. Perhaps the first episode has just been too turgid in setting up the mystery. But really, it all seems too cosy. A skeleton has been found in the cupboard of an obnoxious accountant. But even this hasn't prevented the drama from being as droopy as a raw sausage or as dull as Edwina Currie in court.