There was a time when it was just Remembrance Day, not poppy season. But even then, there was a myth at the heart of the whole thing.

The guns of war have never fallen silent. There was no 11th minute of an 11th hour for the victims of Empire.

Though it’s sometimes portrayed as a symbol of peace, the poppy has always represented war.

It’s a symbol of colonialism. It’s a glorification of what Wilfred Owen called, ‘The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori.’

That’s why I wouldn’t wear one, even though like most Irish people, I have ancestors and distant cousins who fought in wars – some fought for the American Army, and some fought for the British Army.

Even if I was American or English, I still wouldn’t wear one. I’d prefer a symbol of peace, or at least, a change in what today’s poppy represents.

Right now – in England especially – it’s a symbol of nationalism, militarism and myths about Empire.

When it comes to history, the English are taught very little about what actually happened outside of 1914-18 and 39-45.

Everything’s reduced to a story of two wars that they won. Many English people know little of the bloodiness and brutality of Colonialism.

That’s why there’s almost a fetish for war. It’s a kind of sapphic love of stories about Spitfire girls and delusions about dashing army captains.

That, in turn, has shaped what’s happened with the poppy. It’s now become a symbol as showbiz-led and superficial as a Red Nose.

But you can’t sanitise war, any more than you can laugh away poverty.

And in today’s Britain, there is a real attempt to normalise and prettify war.

People also talk about ‘poppy fascism’ when footballers are forced to wear them.

In this past week, Martin O’Neill commended James McClean for his stance on the issue.

Aside from the Serbian defender Nemanja Matic, no other high-profile player has done the same.

Often, in England, that’s taken as acceptance of the rightness, the goodness, the purity of what the symbol represents.

But in actuality, it’s further proof that the poppy has lost any real meaning it ever had.

Should Germans, Argentineans and Arabs wear their poppy with pride? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Does it also represent all the soldiers and all the victims of war?

Does it symbolise the dead of colonial massacres as much as those who pulled the triggers?

If it does, then surely it represents everyone. Surely then James McClean could wear his poppy for those who died at Bloody Sunday. But can he?

That’s not a question I can answer, but in England, I’ve seen no evidence that the poppy represents anything or anyone but Britain’s dead.

Yet at the same time, it’s unfair to think that everyone who wears the poppy does so because they endorse Colonialism.

For many people, it’s a matter of personal conscience. For some, it is also a symbol of peace – of an aspiration voiced in the propaganda of the 1914 Great War being ‘The war to end all wars’.

I can also understand why Northern Irish Protestants might wear the poppy with a sense of pride, having experienced war first hand.

Remembrance Sunday to the people of Enniskillen is very definitely not about any glorification or romanticisation of war.

The Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen on November 8, 1987, is an emotional landmark in the lives of anyone who experienced that terrible day.

Even those not born at the time who read of it now must surely never want to see such days again.

And that’s what has got lost in what the poppy has become. There’s no sense of remembering that war’s a thing to be avoided.

For some, the poppy is even a show of support for present day troops.

And it has to be said that, in some quarters, The British Legion seems to push that sense of supporting present wars over the fight for peace.

Maybe that’s because if they didn’t, they’d be seen as damaging the morale of those who’d served and made sacrifices for the country.

But again. surely the greatest thing that any military charity could do for ex-soldiers is to make sure future generations don’t have to fight wars? That’d be truly living up to the ideals of The Great War.

Because, as I’ve said, Britain’s guns didn’t fall silent in 1918 on November 11 at 11.11am.

They may have turned away from the slow-drawn slaughter of places such as The Somme – but they just pointed in other directions – Ireland, India, parts of Africa and the Arab World.

That’s why – to me – the poppy is a symbol of Colonialism.

But I understand why people wear it, because it’s also a symbol of many other things. And it’s an act of personal conscience.

That’s why pressuring people to wear one is wrong, whether Premier League footballers or TV newsreaders. There’s no dignity in that, and it just causes division.

But then maybe that’s the whole idea.

If we keep on being divided by issues such as the poppy, we’re not concentrating on other issues such as the poverty that’s ravaging society.

Ironically, too, people often get more worked up about poppies, flags and other emblems than they do about their own poverty.

John Hume used to say that you can’t eat a flag. I’m not quite sure whether or not you can eat a poppy, even the new environmentally-friendly ones.

It didn’t work out so well for Dorothy, Toto, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz when they fell asleep in a field of poppies. If my memory serves me right, they just wakened in the nick of time.

Maybe it’s the world that needs to wake up now to the opium of endless war.

If the poppy represented peace and a break with the past, maybe more people would wear one.

Or maybe there’d be no need for them, because at last ‘the war to end all wars’ would have been won.