Philosophy Football launches a new t-shirt design in support of the No Glory in War 1914-18 campaign

Today, on Armistice Day 2013, Philosophy Football launch offer a Special Edition T-shirt for next year’s 1914 Centenary. Designed by renowned illustrator and Philosophy Football collaborator Dan Murrell, a hauntingly simple yet incredibly powerful image to commemorate the sacrifice, appalling waste and destruction of the ‘Great War’. A silhouette of an unknown soldier, with a football instead of a rifle in hand, a single red poppy to remind us of the terrible physical and psychological damage that the ‘War to End All Wars’ resulted in.

The soldier might be a Clydeside shipbuilder, a Dublin postal worker, a Welsh miner, an Indian farmer, a New Zealander, a Canadian, an American, an Australian, a South African, a Birmingham foundry worker, a Manchester mill hand, a Fleet Street machine minder. The place and date are unspecified. He’d sooner be playing football, away from the horror. And of course famously on Christmas Day 1914 soldiers from both sides did just that, a brief but hugely symbolic episode of rank-and-file resistance to the juggernaut of war which left 22 million dead. He’d rather be playing football but all his mates who would play in his team would soon be dead at Loos, or Vimy Ridge. Or the Somme, or Passchendaele. He is the Unknown Soldier, shown through a unique Philosophy Football prism.

And it is more than just a shirt. As our unique Philosophy Football contribution to the centenary it will help fund a major event we have planned for Saturday 20 December 2014, to mark the 1914 Christmas Football Truce with a peace football tournament, music, poetry, ideas and art. An event in support of the No Glory in War 1914-18 campaign, which the shirt will be promoting too.

With respect and imagination Philosophy Football mark in a modern way via a T-shirt the memory of World War One. The aim is to help challenge the hoopla of the fast-approaching centenary that threatens to smother us with a message of what a lovely war it was, and never mind cause, consequence or dubious purpose.

Available now from Philosophy Football