The Tower of London poppy instillation in 2014. Image, Oosoom.<\/i><\/p>\n
For some, the key moment was when they painted a poppy on the side of an RAF Tornado. For others, it was the sense that the symbology was being used to silence criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u201cIt has\u201d tweeted second world war RAF veteran\u00a0Harry Lesley Smith\u00a0in 2014 \u201cbeen co-opted\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For others, it\u2019s a moved from a quiet sign of Remembrance to an icon of Brexit nationalism. The author Matt Haig\u00a0tweeted\u00a0\u201cI'm not wearing a poppy this year. I think it is shifting from a symbol remembering war's horror, to a symbol of war-hungry nationalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poppies always draw out passions, and it\u2019s important to acknowledge that meaning is in the mind of the wearer: that someone does or doesn\u2019t pin a piece of paper to their lapel doesn\u2019t indicate that they sign up to everything that\u2019s said about it. But it seems to me that there are two fascinating things about the sorts of statements I\u2019ve quoted above.\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, red poppies have always been contentious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They were chosen by Lady Haig (wife of the famous Field Marshall) in 1921, in a moment of vital historical context. The preceding years had seen the Easter Rising, the Russian revolution and the \u2018flu pandemic. The war itself had been rife with\u00a0soldier strikes, mutinies and protests, and had been ended by working class German sailors leading\u00a0a massive rebellion\u00a0against their aristocratic commanders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1919, there had been an attempted revolution\u00a0in Glasgow, riots in\u00a0England\u00a0and\u00a0Wales. Strikes rippled through the country. Just as the USA had struggled through its \u201cRed Summer\u201d, Britain had seen its \u201cyear of revolution\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the government had organised a number of\u00a0victory parades, some of the soldiers refused to participate. When they instead held the first, more sombre Armistice Day, in 1919,\u00a0a number of the veterans protested\u00a0against the conditions they were expected to live in.<\/p>\n
The poppy was chosen as a symbol, by the wife of perhaps the most controversial military figure in British history, at a moment when Britain\u2019s blundering ruling class was more terrified than perhaps it had ever been that it was going to be overthrown. In that context, it has to be understood for what it was: a propaganda tool, functioning to silence protest by demanding national unity: the ubiquitous strategy of threatened establishments. \u00a0<\/p>\n
She chose a poppy, specifically, because of a piece of rhyming propaganda for war, written by a Canadian military doctor called John Macrae,\u00a0In Flanders Field<\/em>, whose final verse is an explicit statement that refusing to continue to fight is an insult to those who have already died.<\/p>\n Take up our quarrel with the foe: Similarly, the poppy hasn\u2019t just recently become a nationalist symbol. It always has been. Until last summer, there was a famous memorial on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, to the Anzac soldiers who fought against the Ottoman empire there. Supposedly quoting Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, it reads, \u201cThere is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours\u201d.<\/p>\n The contrast with the British legion\u2019s statement, under the banner \u201cwhat we remember\u201d on their website: \u201cThe Legion advocates a specific type of Remembrance connected to the British Armed Forces, those who were killed, those who fought with them and alongside them.\u201d<\/p>\n Image, Royal British Legion website, (via Forces Watch), fair use.<\/i><\/p>\n The red poppy is \u2013 and always has been \u2013 explicitly about remembering \u2018our\u2019 military dead, not all the victims of war. Not those killed in bombing raids. And certainly not the German or Turkish or Japanese or Italian or Afghan or Iraqi people against whom British soldiers have fought.<\/p>\n It was because of all of these debates and disagreements that the Women\u2019s Co-operative Guild finally settled on the white poppy as a new symbol of Remembrance \u2013 in 1933. Unlike the red poppy, it commemorates all victims of war.<\/p>\n So, if this debate is as old as Remembrance itself, why do so many\u00a0feel\u00a0<\/em>that something has changed?<\/p>\n First, of course, something\u00a0has\u00a0<\/em>changed. It\u2019s certainly the case that poppies these days are more bling than they once were, more commercial in feel (as the Twitter account\u00a0@giantpoppywatch\u00a0documents).\u00a0<\/p>\n And it\u2019s certainly the case, as Michael Gove\u00a0admitted in 2014, that the government wants to use the centenary of the First World War to re-write our national story about it, to teach us that, no, this isn\u2019t a warning against a blundering ruling class but in fact \u201ca just war\u201d. It\u2019s a convenient moment to make such a case, just as the last generation which fought in it is no longer able to respond.<\/p>\n Similarly, there does seem to be a stronger tide of \u2018poppy fascism\u2019 \u2013 the sense that those who choose not to wear one in public will be slated, and\u00a0attendance at Remembrance parades does seem to be growing: people in Shirebrook in the East Midlands last year told me that it's the\u00a0only community event\u00a0that's got bigger in recent years, and the Tower of London poppy installation of 2014 attracted an estimated five million people, meaning it is surely the biggest 'live' cultural event in modern British history.<\/p>\n It seems to me that much of this is really about is the same thing that the First World war was really about: Empire. The combination of the financial crisis, and losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (let\u2019s be honest with ourselves), has forced much of Britain to realise that we no longer rule the waves. The cultural spasms and backlashes resulting from that realisation are playing out in a number of ways: including Brexit, British Empire kitsch and poppy fascism. It\u2019s a century old argument, but it\u2019s surfacing now for a reason.<\/p>\n A version of this piece first appeared in Prospect last year.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Tower of London poppy instillation in 2014. Image, Oosoom. For some, the key moment was when they painted a poppy on the side of an RAF Tornado. For others, it was the sense that the symbology was being used to silence criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u201cIt has\u201d tweeted second world…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.<\/em><\/p>\n