2018 is the centenary of the armistice that ended the first World War. It is a Big Thing in the UK, with many events around the country, the culmination of 4 years of commemoration. I was told recently, seriously, that I should wear my commemorative paper poppy, obtained through a small charitable donation, on the left, over my heart, that the red petals represented the blood spilt, the black centre represented those left mourning the dead, the green leaf the hope of regeneration and that the leaf should be set at the position of 11 o’clock when the armistice was signed. This is all piffle. But an interesting example of how symbols change and evolve.
I recall as a child in the 1960s, in a time of hope in the future and strong anti-war sentiment, that Remembrance Sunday, with the constant exception of the parade down Whitehall to the Cenotaph, was a very low key affair, almost an embarrassment, attended by a couple of local public figures, the Royal British Legion, the police, Red Cross, Scouts and Guides, each putting a wreath on the local war memorial and then hopping off home for Sunday lunch. The paper flower was worn for a day or two, then forgotten. I was considered odd as a teenager for deliberately keeping one on my coat for months. But now it has changed, perhaps since the Gulf War, watched live on TV news. The Poppy Appeal, run by the Royal British Legion (RBL) to support veterans of all the wars fought subsequent to “the war to end all wars”, has branched out to offer a diverse range of attractive and stylish merchandise in it’s year-round fundraising activity. This anniversary year even some police vehicles are being decorated with poppies, to general public approval. Such obvious success has fed controversy, in which it is argued that the Poppy Appeal has become excessive and garish; that wearing a poppy has become almost compulsory, especially for public figures, which is inappropriate in a charitable campaign; that a kind of ‘poppy fascism’, a misplaced nationalism, is being used to marshal support behind British military campaigns and, perhaps worst, that the poppy has degraded into a seasonal fashion accessory.
Yet, go to any town or village in Britain and study the war memorial, look at the extraordinarily length of the list of names killed in the Great War, at the repetition of family names as brothers and sons were lost in battle, at the family names repeated two, three even four times over the course of the conflict, then listed yet again in the dead of the second world war. The impact on 20th century British society becomes very apparent. Unlike other wars, these were not professional military men. These were just plain, ordinary people; everyday folk taken up to be soldiers, sailors and airmen. They deserve to be remembered. And I still wear a poppy beyond Remembrance Sunday, though now it is a neat enamelled pin as the paper poppies fall off too easily.