I have written copiously before about Remembrance Sunday and if you want to see those posts of previous years, perhaps just search Remembrance up there to the top right hand side of your screen. There’s little need to repeat all that stuff here.

However, I have had a few more thoughts this year:

For many years, I noted Remembrance Sunday but it only became really meaningful when I had children as, suddenly, I identified with the sacrifice of families with lives torn apart by war, who lost children or simply lost their dreams.

My poppy invariably falls off my coat and is lost well before Remembrance Sunday so I often used crocheted poppies or badges instead.  I always buy a red poppy and donate to the Royal British Legion charity: I am only too aware of the impact of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on ex-servicement and women who have survived conflict and need constant support which, often, they do not receive.

Others decide not to wear a poppy at all perhaps because they refuse to participate in what they see as the glorification of war; perhaps they are pacifists; perhaps they refuse to co-operate with bullying from far right groups such as Britain First who engage in twisted bullying on Facebook and other social media and imply that people who do not wear a poppy (or who simply aren’t wearing one THAT day and on THAT coat) are somehow unpatriotic and anti-British.

When I was a teenager, I wore a white poppy one year and braved the scowls of a lot of people. At that time I was a member of the Campaign for Nucleatr Disarmament and an idealist pacifist. I am no longer any of those things.

It is up to individual people whether or not they wear a red or white poppy or a paw poppy (to remember animals used in warfare or caught up in it) or no poppy at all. That is, we are told, exactly why troops went to war: for our freedom to express ourselves how we choose.

I like to participate in public acknowledgements of Remembrance, even if that means standing by my steaming iron for two minutes, listening to the silence on the radio as I did this morning. I have always encouraged the offspring to take part in Remembrance ceremonies – we had a lovely rendition of the Last Post as usual in our BYCB concert tonight – as an appreciation of history is vital in our understanding the world. The Boywonder was telling us last week that he is anxious to attend Remembrance events when he leaves university. An ex-cadet, cadet bandsman, and avid History student, Remembrance has become enmeshed in his life.

If you want to wear a white poppy because of your beliefs, by all means go ahead. But I am dismayed at the increasing virtue signalling of the white poppy: public pacifism does not make people morally superior to those who choose to remember relatives who sacrificed their lives or those who, like me, choose to be thankful that someone is out there doing dirty work that I would never in a million years want to do. I want to stand in solidarity with mothers who have lost their children. I prefer to put humans before ideas.

Photo by lovingyourwork.com