White poppies for peace

Red and white poppiesI’ve always been uncomfortable with Remembrance Day. I think it’s really important to remember the horrors of war and those people who have died and are dying in wars. There’s not very much about the ceremony at the Cenotaph that does that for me. The politicians who provoke disputes for political ends, the generals who constantly lobby for more and more spending on weapons, the industrialists who will sell anything to anyone, the priests who argue that God is on our side, they’re all there. I feel sorry for the soldiers who have seen or done dreadful things, suffered terrible loss. I feel sorrier for the civilians who are increasingly the victims of war.
I love the Two Minutes’ Silence and, if I were King, I would not ban Remembrance Sunday, but I would extend it to a day of remembrance of all the victims of all wars and I would have detachments of housewives, farmers and factory workers standing in Whitehall, because those are the people who made the greatest sacrifices and they always will be.
The Peace Pledge Union site has a lot of interesting things to say about this subject and they also sell white poppies. I like that idea a lot. If I can’t find one to buy tomorrow I may have to make my own.

4 thoughts on “White poppies for peace

  1. I am not sure that I agree with you about this – I like to think that making all those politicians and generals etc. stand there at the Cenotaph perhaps makes them connect with the people that they send out to die for them. They see the faces of people who have been on the front line as they march past and perhaps that makes them a bit more connected to the rest of humanity.

    Buying a red poppy gives money to the British Legion, which supports veterans. (And it also connects us to the soldiers of World War I, who I think are now nearly forgotten – my grandmother used to get very upset about this). For me it gives consistency – it reminds us that actually, not much changes. Soldiers, factory workers, people keeping essential services running at home *are* to me all already commemorated by the red poppy. Somehow a white one politicises something that actually, should not be politicised.

  2. It’s a nice idea, making the generals and politicians face their victims. But couldn’t it be the opposite of that? Making the survivors stand there meekly in their best suits emphasises their passive status; like Greyfriars Bobby, they are still prepared to serve despite everything.
    I agree with you about the continuity though, that’s what I like about the poppies. I ended up wearing one last week because I couldn’t find a white one, but I’d rather give money to the Red Cross than the British Legion because I don’t think that the red poppies aren’t political, it’s just that the politics they represent are so “entrenched as to be no longer visible”, as Janet Daley said about something else recently. We shouldn’t just accept that wars are inevitable, like natural disasters. Of course we should remember the victims of past conflict but there is nothing that we can do to change the past. It’s more important to try and do something about the wars that are happening now and that will happen in the future if we let them.

  3. I can’t say I agree either.

    High ideal indeed and worthy too, certainly with respect to Iraq. But hardly true of WWII – it was certainly necessary to go to war to protect our nation and fight the the terrifying scourge of Nazisim.

    I think the respect and memory of those dead should not be muddled with today’s ideologies and politics.

  4. If there had been more pacifists in Germany in 1939 then there may not have been a war and 55 million people would not have died in Europe as a result. Surely that would have been desirable. Germany was a warmongering nation at that time, it spent a huge proportion of its national budget on its army and on weapons and it embarked on a process of illegally invading other countries. The ‘allies’ didn’t go to war with Germany because of the holocaust, they went to war in order to prevent themselves being invaded.
    All those deaths, those 55 million people who died, were caused by ideology and politics. We can’t do anything about them now, all we can do is try to learn from what happened. Do you think that Remembrance Sunday helps us do that?
    Can you think of a warmongering country that spends a huge and increasing proportion of its national budget on its army and on weapons, one that has been responsible for several illegal invasions of other countries? Maybe we’re not on the ‘good’ side any more. Maybe we should be pacifists now, in solidarity with the pacifists in Germany in 1939.

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