why do you wear a poppy?

That last verse is about carrying on with the fight against evil. I think that’s compatible with remembrance for those who have died.

I think it’s naive to say poppy wearing is still a form of remembrance for WW 1 & 2
Not naive. Wrong. It’s for all the fallen, from all wars.
Remembrance is not the same as remembering.
RBL merchandise isn’t ’cynically cashing in” - it’s raising money to provide t(e services it was set up to do. If others are selling them for profit, that’s cashing 8n but is nothing at all to do with Remembrance.
I don’t think you understand it very well at all.

The Poppy was used in remembrance before the RBL even existed.

Yes, it was chosen because of the poem
In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
In the final verse he urged people to take up the quarrel with the foe, saying the dead would not rest otherwise. The poppy never solely represented remembrance imho, though I know that’s its meaning for lots of people today.

The RBL may support service personnel by proceeds of poppy sales but that is not the meaning of the poppy symbol. The Poppy was used in remembrance before the RBL even existed. Your are making sweeping generalisations about service personnel. My husband nearly died at the hands of the IRA aged 6, but that doesn't make me believe that all Irish catholic men would be willing to kill a young child!

A really interesting thread, thank you OP. I’m Australian with British heritage, settled in the UK. My grandfather served in France in WW1 - I’ve read his war diary, he was very cynical about the jingoism he saw back then in the camps at Southampton and on the ships to France. More recently, my uncles & friends served in Afghanistan & Iraq. I don’t wear a poppy (used to wear a white one which has a very long and meaningful history) and I am very wary of poppy season for several reasons. Firstly, I think it’s naive to say poppy wearing is still a form of remembrance for WW 1 & 2, given these events are largely beyond living memory, I think commemoration is more accurate. Not celebration. But not really “remembrance” - you can’t remember what you never experienced. In Australia poppy wearing is very much a case of nationalism, jingoism, etc - you only have to familiarise yourself with CW Bean’s rational for establishing the War Memorial (the most visited museum by domestic tourists, and a key site in John Howard’s history wars) to see remembrance & Anzac Day (another poppy event) have been deliberately & politically cultivated since the 1910s (eg war being a baptism of blood for a new nation). I’m very wary of the fact that one of the biggest corporate donors to Remembrance Day events is (or was last I checked) BAE Systems, a leading UK arms company. It makes sense, but can hardly be considered decrying war. And lastly, it’s not just poppy badges is it, it’s poppy tote bags, poppy umbrellas, poppy coffee mugs, poppy fashion, poppy jewellery, poppy placemats - it’s an entire commercial industry like Easter or Halloween that is cynically cashed in on and where is all this stuff being made and imported from anyway? In the past, before all this stuff became fashionable, people wore sprigs of rosemary (and in Australia) wattle for remembrance. I’m tempted to do that instead. No shade on the British legion, but there are other charities that support veterans too, that get overlooked. I’ve visited Gallipoli. I’ve spoken with veterans. I have only respect for those that died or have been injured/suffered since serving. But I don’t think poppy wearing means what it’s purported to mean, especially beyond the families of service men & women.

The RBL supports current and former soldiers by selling poppies. Literally, that is what it is for. Click onto their website. ‘We provide lifelong support to serving and ex-serving personnel and their families.’ No requirement to have been killed in service. No requirement to have been fighting in what’s generally considered a ‘good war’, safely over a long time ago. The same help is presumably available to those who shot and killed unarmed civilians while they were running away. Like Soldier F and his buddies in the Parachute Regiment. Soldier F who literally got away with murder last week in a British court.

Goodness, Mumsnet’s shareholders would be delighted to know that it is apparently rivalling Google as a source of information (sample size:1). I hope you get the response you’re looking for but if not, the British Legion website can perhaps assist you.

You’re censured and thought less of by some if you don’t wear a poppy.

You shouldn't be censured for it. But yes, some people will think less of you for it, and that's just something you'll have to accept; people will always think stuff. We've had some frankly barmy stretches on here about people who do wear poppies (not all non-poppy wearers, but several), and there's not much to be done about it. I'll wear a poppy, they'll think all sorts of stuff that's in their heads and not mine. People will wear or not wear poppies and people will think stuff either way.

But the money you spend buying a poppy goes to the RBL who supports currently serving personnel as well as veterans.

Soldier F has nothing to do with the poppy symbol. It's to remember those that were killed in service.

I think there are better ways to support young people without advantages or exams, as a pp said, than letting them see the military as their only way out. They shouldn’t ever be in that situation.

I’m from a place where the British military were the aggressors so I’d never personally support them or the RBL, but I of course understand why British people do. But it’s a terrible tragedy for Lee whatever way you look at it. And the military should be compensating him and looking after him, not the public.

ETA I mean the public can help if they want of course, but that needs to be a choice freely made, and it’s not anymore. You’re censured and thought less of by some if you don’t wear a poppy.

I wear one to remember the many members of my family wiped out in WWI - some family lines lost all males and we still have an incredibly small family.

Also to remember both my grandads who fought in WWII. One was part of the forgotten army and one was a Desert Rat. They were both lovely, caring men and it pisses me off that they fought for a country that’s in the state ours is in and hardly anyone seems to give a shit these days about what was sacrificed.

So Lee from Wherever who joined up at 16 and lost both legs in an IED when 20 odd shouldn't get any support from an organisation that supports veterans?

We've got a military, they don't make the decisions about where they go. Attack and criticise the politicians making those decisions, more than fair enough but don't suggest that the casualties of those decisions are somehow unworthy of help.

Wife of a combat veteran and I agree 100% in all that you have said and the reasoning behind wearing poppies and supporting veterans, survivors and families

Yes, you are correct about current forces. I did say that earlier.
As for it not being conscription, and it being wars I don’t personally support, I’m able to understand that for some young people without advantages or exam success it can be one of the only ways they can build a career. And I can still be sad when lives are brought to an end prematurely.

@Joeyontheshelf I am incredibly grateful for those who join the armed forces. Not because I think war is good but because we need to have a military and without those who choose to join up we would have conscription and I really wouldn't want that.
It's difficult really because many of the modern wars I often wonder why we ended up involved and feel angry about but then there's other wars where our military were involved in as peacekeepers (ie the Yugoslavian War in the 90s).

It’s not just veterans or ex-service personnel they support, but anyone currently serving too.

I think the problem for many is that it’s no longer the veterans of WW1 and (mostly) WW2 that they help. It’s soldiers who weren’t conscripted and who served in wars many people don’t support.

If it were just about remembrance of the sacrifice of the WW’s that would never be an issue for most people.

I don’t wear a poppy because I have no family links with the military

If your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born and lived in the UK, they will have had family members who served in war or lived through one or both world wars as civilians.

If they lived in a Commonwealth country, very likely there were men in the family who went to fight.

If they lived in Europe, they are likely to have experienced war and/or occupation.

It's very unlikely that no-one in your family was ever affected by war, and that can continue to have an impact over generations.

Which is a very good thing. I rather wish they hadn’t used the poppy to do it but I fully applaud the sentiment. Thank you for the explanation, I’m glad to see it posted if it raises awareness.

Your tone is bordering on the offensive. On top of which you don’t seem to be exercising the virtues of tolerance and forebearance for which those soldiers died.

@SundaySunday3 . I'm going to say this too. You are doing nothing for the PPU, a perfectly valid organisation, by spreading untruths about the RBL.

Wear a poppy, don't wear a poppy (of any hue) it is a personal choice and noone should be judged for buying one or not. However, saying that the RBL is a branch of the military and funding wars is just plain wrong.

When I started work there were 2 old guys who ran the cash office (I say old, they were younger than I am now, but I was a teenager)

Anzio and Normandy Beaches. One of them was very involved with the British Legion. I asked him once what it was like on D Day (like teenagers who ask stupid questions do) and he said it was difficult, so many lost and then his eyes filled with tears and he said "But it was nothing like as bad as the American beaches, those poor lads".

Never forgotten that, or his cash office comrade who had his first cigarette put into his shaking teenage hand while waiting to go ashore at Anzio and being shelled. He tried so hard to give up but said he got flashbacks without the cigs.

Two lovely men who I'm sure saw themselves as the lucky ones. This stuff was real and that is what we shouldn't forget.

I’m a veteran. From a long line of family in the military (both sets of grandparents, all branches of the military). I have a cousin serving currently and my DS might go that route too.

It’s an act of remembrance. It’s also supposed to be a nod to “never again”

Despite having lots of Poppies I buy something different every year. It’s a donation to help past, present and future veterans and their families.

All veterans want war to end and never be a thing again.

I will remember them.

I can completely understand and sympathise with those who wear a poppy. My family is not British, although I am and was born here, and I usually do not wear one.

I now do wear one because I got shamed by colleagues at my workplace for not wearing one for the last few years. So in honesty, I wear one because I feel I have to.

I personally think wearing a poppy is a personal choice and I don't judge anyone either way for wearing or not wearing one. But others clearly feel differently.

But for it to be insincere you would have to fail to understand the loss of so many young lives. Can you really not do that just because none of them were directly relevant to you?