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| Lest we forget |
Poppy day as it is now known, is a fundraiser for the Royal British Legion, a charity that does excellent work with ex-servicemen and women but this year they took their brand to a level where some now feel a certain amount of resentment for them.
People were trolling the internet sending abuse to people who didn’t have a poppy avatar on their twitter and facebook profile pictures. The internet was full of people using the event to promote their nationalist views and quite frankly, they are not welcome.
The two world wars touched the lives of everybody in the country and their effects still ring around our generation. The wars and our fairly new found ability to travel the world means that we have to carry the flag for tolerance and friendship and it means that we must always remember those that fought against fascism and destruction.
I do not know a single person who did not spend a few minutes contemplating at 11am on 11 November but equally I was one of two or three in my work place who chose to wear a poppy. We even had someone appear of national TV not wearing a poppy because they had made a personal choice not to.
My poppy was a poppy that I have had for several years now and I wear it as an act of remembrance. I do not wear it to appease the people who say that we are disrespecting the war dead if we don’t.
The England football team have played nine friendlies in 11 years on remembrance weekend for the first time people decided that England HAD to wear poppies on their shirts.
FIFA rules said we weren’t allowed to so David Cameron went on another populist mission to try and get the poppy on the shirt. Thankfully he failed but they did agree a compromise of having it on an armband.
If anyone thinks that this is anything but a foolish choice really hasn’t given it any due consideration. The same people did not fight for the Iranian women’s football team right to wear headscarves and I bet that the same people would protest madly if the Afghanistan or Iraq football teams wanted a symbol of remembrance for their war dead.
I think that the British Legion lost control of their brand and I think, whatever their financial gains this year, that they have done immeasurable damage to their future.
Eight years ago I went to France and Belgium on a college English trip. We were studying the poets of World War One and what better place to do it than where those men fought, wrote and fell?
Two things stood out for me on the trip, leaving out for decencies sake the debauchery the comes from putting five boys with twenty girls and a lot of booze in a youth hostel in France, the first was the grave of the youngest known soldier to have died in that war and the other was meeting a group of people from Newfoundland in Canada.
The soldier who died was 14.
He died in the trenches, he died amongst all the god forsaken madness that went on. I don’t know what happened to him, if his body was even under where the tombstone lay but I do know that he shouldn’t have been there. He wouldn’t have even been old enough to fight when the war finished, never mind when it started.
The innocence of a generation, the innocence of all generations died with that boy.
The group of people we met from Newfoundland were all girls and in the truest traditions of Canadian women, they were all beautiful, intelligent and incredibly articulate. They took us on a tour of a battlefield at Beaumont Hamel at the Somme and a scene of such horrors combined with so much pride for those who had been sent into battle.
A day later we went on another expedition, this time to the Menin Gate in Ypres, where we ran into the Newfies once again. Every night people turn up there to honour the people that fought in the war and they were singing the Canadian national anthem, in line with this tradition. I stood listening and openly wept as the song echoed off the stone walls with my head hung. I am a proud Englishman and as such I have so much respect to those who can so wonderfully represent their country. These young people made their country proud.
After the ceremony I talked to them again and they talked, with tears in their eyes, so eloquently of their reasons for taking the trip. They loved history, their country and teaching others but they wanted to pay their respects and that was most evident.
What showed more respect, travelling halfway around the world to sing at a memorial to the fallen or to troll the internet abusing people for not having a picture of a poppy on their twitter?
Next year, wear your poppy with pride but equally respect others decisions not to. It doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten, it just means they chose not to wear one.
