At this time of year it’s always tricky to decide whether you should wear a red or white poppy.
The wearing of which colour of poppy or any at all is a bit of a political issue these days, it’s much like wearing a Marie Curie daffodil or a red AIDS ribbon, you’re actually promoting a charity. In fact, that’s what a red poppy is, a symbol of support for a charity organisation. The British legion adopted a Frenchwomen’s idea to make artificial red poppy’s to raise funds in 1921.
Four years ago, Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow disgusted many with his refusal to wear a poppy on screen. Snow stated that this policy was consistent with his refusal to wear any form of symbol whilst presenting the news. He was happy to wear such symbols, including a poppy, in his private life, but wanted to maintain total neutrality in his professional life.
In my mind there is no reason why one can’t honour the dead, whilst working for peace.
For some people the sign of a white poppy has come to symbolise not just the ‘cowardice’ of those who chose not to fight, but to mean that the wearer in unpatriotic and does not support the individual members of our armed forces. But far from being a lack of respect for the dead and injured, the white poppy is a sign that there must be a better way to settle our differences than killing each others young men and women and mindlessly bombing civilians.
War in the second decade of the 21st century is very different to the war we were fighting almost 100 years ago and our remembrance should be different too. How does it honour those who died to send more of our best to kill and be killed?
Some people wear both a red and a white poppy, both to honour those who gave their lives in the past and to seek peace in the future. Peace, as symbolised by a white poppy, does not mean slavery and surrender any more than a red poppy glorifies war. But working for peace does necessitate a different way of thinking – a world where we seek compromise before conflict.
So why has the poppy, which should be a sign of the ultimate futility of war, become the symbol of oppressive social and political pressure to conform to a crystallised view of remembrance? If we are forced to wear a poppy, whether by social norms, political pressure or the BBC’s dressers, the symbolism becomes meaningless.
The Royal British Legion insist that everyone should have the right to choose which poppy they wear, if indeed they choose to wear one at all, as in their opinion, soldiers fought to win the privilege of such freedom. If those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen fought that we should be free, then let us be free to make our own decisions about poppies and to truly think and understand what wearing a poppy means. And let us hope that future Remembrance Days are to honour those who died in the past, rather than seeing an ever-lengthening list on our war memorials.
