At this time of year our country comes together to support the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal campaign. No change there. This year however, there was a very public challenge from another group championing the sale and purchasing of white poppies.
I’m not going to give a detailed history of the story of the Poppy Appeal, anyone interested can access this information from a quick type of the subject into a search engine of your own choice. To summarise though, the idea of the Poppy appeal was born in the bloodbath of Flanders’ Fields in the First World War and the subsequent poem by Lt Col John McRae. In 1921 the RBL organised the purchase of 9 million silk poppies and sold them to raise money for returning WW1 veterans struggling with employment and housing issues. Subsequently a poppy factory was set up and employed disabled and disfigured ex-servicemen.
At no point was the message behind the campaign one of celebration or even commemoration of war. It was an altruistic initiative aimed at alleviating the suffering of men who had suffered the very torments of hell already.
What we have this year is almost a protest campaign by the white poppy supporters of the Peace Pledge Union. The white poppy too, has a long history, having begun to be promoted in 1926 for people to show their support to the ending of wars. They claim that their campaign is to support all the victims of all the wars. They believe that they stand as a group to promote the ending of warfare however it is the former element that brings them a lot of negative publicity.
During an uncomfortable chat show interview, Symon Hill of the Peace Pledge Union was put on the spot when he had to declare with a direct answer whether his organisation’s stance recognised members and supporters of ISIS. Citing the party line that his organisation could not pick and choose which victims of which wars, I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t prepared for the vehemence of the public response to his comments. Which surely is only to be expected when you are saying that you recognise people whose sole reason for existence is to kill anyone who disagrees with their philosophies and refuses to convert to their ideology.
I don’t have an issue with the Peace Pledge Union’s ethos of a war-free world and remembering victims of warfare. My issue lies with the poisonous narrative that is being spread about the origins and values of the Red Poppy campaign. I have watched as many people have swallowed the rhetoric spouted against the RBL’s ongoing efforts: That the Red Poppy is a celebration of war, that it is a commemoration of bloodshed, that it is a symbol of racism to wear one.
This is what makes the blood boil. Utterly untrue smears trotted out as facts by those perpetuating these myths. The PPU was also lambasted when it was discovered that they had exhibited at the National Union of Teachers’ conference to promote their campaign in an effort to being granted access to schools. It worked: The PPU signed up over 100 teachers to their initiative and this enabled them to have their £60 school education packs put into state schools throughout the UK.
Col Richard Kemp took umbrage with this initiative, highlighting the fact that taxpayers’ money should not be spent on indoctrinating children with a left-wing political agenda. The PPU counter that the Armed Forces are allowed to enter schools and talk to those of school-leaving age about life in the military and that therefore, the PPU should be allowed to counter this initiative by educating the same children with an alternative narrative. Even their language betrays the scorn and outdated, left-wing views that they hold about the Armed Forces.
The Armed Forces are part of the state’s infrastructure for the defence and security of the realm. They are essential to this and it is important that both recruitment and retention continue to be developed. Contrary to the PPU’s assertion, the Armed Forces offers some outstanding career paths for those who perhaps would be limited in their choices in a conventional environment. I certainly count myself as being included in this bracket.
I remember a conversation a couple of years back with a supporter of the PPU making the point that the Red Poppy and Remembrance Day in general was nothing short of a glamorisation of war and they had made the decision to support neither. When I pointed out the origins of the Red Poppy and the reasons behind it, I was accused of being unable to be objective, having come from a background in the Armed Forces. When I pointed out that actually, my first-hand experience in war zones had made me far more empathetic to the civilian victims than a casual observer of television reports, I was rounded upon and accused of being part of the war machine that caused the deaths in the first place.
Yes, part of the ‘war machine’: An evil conglomerate that deploys on a whim to murder, destroy and pillage small, defenceless nations cowering in fear. But what hit me more than anything else was this person’s absolute hatred for the Armed Forces and what they represented, and their apparent preference for a socialist/communist state that would address the situation. So I pointed out their lack of objectivity and congratulated them on their stubbornness for holding on to a discredited ideology that suppressed and massacred its own people as a means of controlling the masses.
The argument soon turned bitter to the point where my education was brought into question as some kind of justification as to why this person’s university-level education should add more weight to the discussion than my own. Despite the fact that their degree was in English Lit which, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t hold a significant element of geopolitics or social science modules…
I rarely lose my temper during debates or discussions with people like this, having learned many years ago that you can’t reason with morons. However on this occasion I was angry. This person was nothing less than ignorant, insulting, obnoxious, and unwilling to listen to any other viewpoint than that of their own. The irony being that these were all attributes that they levelled at members of the Armed Forces during our discussion.
So the angry me came out. But the good anger: That cold, controlled anger where you dominate the situation by projecting it through your demeanour, expressions, tone of voice, gestures. I delivered a monologue, punctuated by finger pointing and the ‘pusser’s hand’, on everything that the Red Poppy campaign stands for and destroyed every one of the individual’s misguided and misinformed opinions that they’d spouted as facts. I pulled their assertions apart and provided examples to highlight the erroneous beliefs. I could see the change in our dynamic with the person holding up their hands and nodding, leaning backwards, obviously feeling intimidated at my assertive stance.
When I had finished I asked them why they’d felt it acceptable to rant and rave at me with their insults and diatribe and how uncomfortable they’d felt when the behaviour was mirrored back at them. There was a lot of waffle at this point regarding their strongly-held beliefs and passions overriding manners and courtesy but I don’t believe this is the case.
I believe the problem is that their narrative, for the greater part, goes unchallenged or, at best, is given the minimum of rebuttal due in no small part to the vehemence with which they deliver their utter tripe. People being people, most probably walk away with a roll of the eyes or a slight shake of the head, ceding their corner in preference for the quiet life. Unfortunately this is interpreted as another victory and the moral high ground claimed with the flag of the misguided and misinformed, lending strength to their causes and campaigns.
So we should always challenge it. As I said at the start of this piece, I have no issue with the PPU’s aspiration for an end to all wars. I do take issue with their attempts to portray the Red Poppy campaign and Remembrance Sunday as things that they are not. I take issue with state schools spending taxpayers’ money on the white poppy educational packs. I take issue with the PPU’s loathing of the Armed Forces and its efforts to undermine recruitment among school-leavers.
But mostly I take issue with the fact that the PPU goes mostly unchallenged. The money raised by the sale of their poppies goes right back into their own coffers, not to any charitable cause or to aid civilian casualties. The RBL continues to this day to provide aid and assistance, through the revenue raised from the sale of the Red Poppies, to service men and women who desperately need their help. The irony is that it is this that is challenged by the PPU and its supporters and not the fact that funds raised by the PPU benefit no-one but their own organisation. And it is this that should be challenged, particularly at this time of year when we gather to remember the sacrifice that a nation made that allows the PPU and others of their ilk, the freedom of speech to deliver their misguided message.
