Ds, Remembrance Day, white poppy- Daily Mail do your worst!

[BertrandRussell]

We are a pacifist family and we have always worn a red and a white poppy together at this time of the year. This year 17 year old ds has chosen to wear a white one on it's own to his school remembrance service. I probably could have insisted he wear the two together as usual-should I have done? He was asked to take a significant role in the service and declined- the Head was very accepting of his reasons. I don't think he's just being a teenage dick-he's wearing a suit and has cleaned his shoes (is there anything more heart melting than a nearly adult boy in a suit?)-but ..but...what should I have done?

Where does the white poppy money go?
It goes to the Peace Pledge Union, that campaign to educate people about pacifism.

ppu.org.uk/about-us

Thank you.

I wear a red poppy. I am an ex pad brat and ex wife of a serving soldier. Many of my friends are serving/retiring from the military. My grandparents, and great grandparents covered service in WW1 and WW2. My Dad the IRA, falklands, and Gulf War 1991. My friends, Iraq, Afghanistan. I have been fortunate. Only lost one friend in Iraq to an IED.

Upon return to the UK our serving personnel are not looked after by the government at all. Hence why there are over 200,000 forces charities in UK. Many doing sterling work. The RBL is one of them, and I choose to support them because they supported us when my grandmother and subsequently grandfather was dying and we could not get help anywhere else.

My family and friends, like many others, died to give us freedom of choice. So as long as the person who is wearing the white/red/purple poppy I don't care. The only hope I have is that they have made an informed choice.

I don't see it as disrespectful just a bit of a piggybacking gesture.

It's been going for 85 years so only about 10 years less than white poppies.
As it's a well-understood symbol (in either colour) it's no more piggybacking than wearing a pink ribbon for breast cancer is piggybacking wearing a red ribbon for HIV.

I don’t wear or buy a poppy.
No one has to and just because I don’t doesn’t mean I don’t respect the fallen soldiers and all the lives lost.
I care for my elderly neighbour, he was a fighter in WWII and he also lost his son about ten years ago when he was deployed to Afghanistan.
I don’t support war. I don’t support the illegalities around it, including the funding of fire arms. However I do support the people I know whose lives have had a severe negative impact because of it.

Additionally, poppies are a way of raising money so additionally that cause is being supported. Where does the money from the white go to? And the purple?

I can try to explain why I find people wearing a white poppy on 11th November problematic, if it’s helpful. I’ve changed some details below.

DH served in The Army for 22 years.

When he joined, having 3 GCSEs and no particular future that he cared for (he wanted to join a particular ‘trade’) The Army, with the opportunity to learn that trade (which he could then leave to join on Civvy Street) was an attractive prospect.

There was very little ‘action’ when he joined and the benefits far outweighed the drawbacks. Good pension. Opportunity to travel and, as I say, learn his trade.

5 years in he got ill. Life threateningly ill. With good medical treatment and support from The Army, he survived. But now, he couldn’t join his Civvy Street trade. When he was in recovery from his illness (and downgraded so he couldn’t deploy), he worked extremely hard on his fitness. As a result, other opportunities opened up to him and he started to move up rapidly through the ranks. He learned he had a talent for developing his teams, so kept getting promoted and given bigger teams and so on.

So, he stayed. And pretty soon it was only 10 years until his max pension point. It made little sense to leave and be left with practically nothing. In his last 10 years he went to Iraq once and Afghanistan 4 times in a role that saw him, primarily protecting people but with a potential to need to kill (think medic or similar). He saved a number of lives and never pulled the trigger. He lost friends out there.

I wear a red poppy not only to commerate the dead but because everytime he deployed I knew there was a very real chance of him not coming home. I think of what the people who lost relatives in Iraq/Afghanistan must go through every day and am grateful I’m not one of them. Then I feel shame.

The idea I support the wars in Iraq and Afghan would be laughable if it wasn’t so offensive.

I have read threads on here where it was suggested my husband I’d a murderer and should/could have refused to fight.

When I asked how that would have worked in Iraq (when the war was declared illegal, he was already there), I got no answer other than ‘he should have come home’. When I asked how, practically, that was possible (given it wasn’t like he had his passport or credit card on him), I was accused of stalking the poster.

DH was mortared and his hearing started suffering. When it was discovered he had 40% hearing loss the RBL supported him in acquiring hearing aids which have been life changing

I have no problem people not wearing poppies. I have no problem people wearing white poppies. But I do think people choosing to wear a white poppy on 11th November, at a remembrance service, is a statement, and not one which says ‘I support all who died’. It is designed to be controversial and a metaphorical middle finger to our current serving forces - otherwise you’d see them on 21st September too.

Excuse the typos.

The red poppy is not simply to remember British servicemen in any sense of people from Britain. It is a symbol of remembrance for all those from Commonwealth and Empire who fought alongside these islands and volunteered in their hundreds of thousands, well over a million in India's case. They would not have had to do so if people like the Peace Pledge Union, founded in 1934, had not campaigned so effectively against any steps to stand up to Germany and if the Union and others who thought like it had not been so successful in making appeasement so popular.
I believe that had German re-armament, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland and Mussolini's Ethiopian adventure been opposed firmly by Britain and France, the lives lost in the Second World War would have been saved. I also believe that those who thought like the Peace Pledge Union had considerable influence - as did some of the extreme right wing - in making proper steps to stop Hitler politically very difficult. I see no sign that the modern Peace Pledge Union is any more prepared to see war deterred by proper defence and foreign policies than their 1930s predecessors. It is for those reasons that I would never wear a white poppy and believe that those who do have not thought through the superficially attractive arguments about peace which the PPU offers. That however may be because I find truth in the words of an old soldier, who saw Belsen days after it was liberated and spent 6 years of his youth fighting Hitler, and said "You cannot have peace without justice, you cannot have peace with tyranny".

Drspouse I'll have to respectfully disagree on a point of opinion and leave it there.

Totally and utterly disrespectful. Choose a different day to make your stupid political statement. Not at a time of year dedicated to remembering the sacrifice so many made.

This is the sort of post that really worries me on this issue. People died in both world wars to support freedom of speech. My father, who fought in WW2 and was injured, would be horrified to think that, in his name, people are being bullied for their choice of what symbol to wear on this day or any day.

There has in recent years been a noticeable exacerbation of this type of attitude. It becomes utterly ridiculous when anyone with any sort of a public profile is effectively forced into wearing a poppy simply to head off yet another Daily Mail shitstorm - and it is very obvious that their writers are poring over all media trying to find someone to demonise on this count. It becomes utterly ridiculous when footballers have to wear them during matches, and dancers on Strictly have to wear them on their costumes no matter what those costumes are. It's particularly ironic that those aren't even poppies that benefit the British Legion, given that they generally have to be made of fabric so that they can be firmly sewn on. Surely what is important, if anything, is that poppies are bought, not that they are worn ostentatiously every time there might be a TV or journalist's camera around?

As people have said, nobody has to wear a poppy of any colour, anywhere. Plenty of people resect the fallen and give financially, while choosing not to wear a poppy. To assume the only way to show respect is to indicate it by wearing a poppy indicates suggests a bit of a virtue-signalling attitude. I wear a red poppy, but assume I know nothing about the attitudes of those that don't.

My 9 year old has chosen to make herself a white poppy. She did this after listening to a Quaker on Beyond Belief talking about the white poppy and why it is worn. I've asked her not to wear it to school, as I do worry a little that she might inadvertently cause upset and not really understand why someone does not like her wearing it. However, she wants to wear her white poppy, alongside a red one on her choir cassock at the remembrance service, and wants to put it on the war memorial when we lay our cross to remember her great, great grandfather. I'd be amazed if anyone saw that as anything other than entirely respectful.

The idea that the Peace Pledge Union could be responsible for Hitler's activities, or indeed for Britain's and France's political response to those activities, shows an extraordinary unawareness of the relevant historical facts.

I agree miscible, the level of illiberalism and intolerance in our society is growing all the time and it makes me really uncomfortable.

Part of what has made the UK a benign place to live has been it's (relative) tradition of tolerating non-conformism, progress and difference.

Agree with you miscible about the TV/ media poppy policing, it's very odd.

I don't wear one at all, but whatever the arguments are for and against I'd say that at 17 your DS is definitely old enough to make up his own mind. He may look back in a few years and regret it, he may not, but it's such a minor thing that you should leave him to it. I think it's wrong to insist that anyone wear a poppy, of any colour.

It's the media bubble trying to get with middle Britain for one moment in the year and imposing their intolerant groupthink values imo.

I’d never heard of the white poppies.

Just coming back to this now and happy to see there’s a little bit more of a measured discussion going on instead of the shouting down that quite frankly, defeats the object of Rememberance.

One of my grandfathers was too young for WWII but was put to use in other ways. The other one had quite an influential role which we see the product of regularly today. I had relatives fighting in WWI. My father had a specialist role within the British Army and had suffered PTSD relating to this.

I don’t wear a poppy of any colour for many of the reasons better put than I ever could on this thread. The continual and escalating pressure to conform to the ‘rules of rememberance’ each year, is worrying and completely misses the point that was being made 100 years ago at the end of WWI

I wear my poppy every year and with pride and when I do I'm remembering the horrific waste of life on every side, military, civilian and animals. The scale of loss especially during WW 1 and 2 was so appalling and can never be forgotten, I can't see a time when I'll ever not wear one.

Mines is always red and when I go to our local parade on Sunday and try not to cry when I hear the bugle play the Last Post (I'm an army brat so think it's an automatic response to that sound ) I'll probably not care what colour everyone else is wearing because really we're all there to do the same thing - pay our respects.

I'll probably not care what colour everyone else is wearing because really we're all there to do the same thing - pay our respects. Good points tellme
It's the media bubble trying to get with middle Britain for one moment in the year and imposing their intolerant groupthink values imo. I'm quite happy to be part of middle Britain. I'm no one special. As opposed to the very special white poppy wearers. Wear what you like but you're neither better or worse than anyone else.

wear what you like but you're neither better or worse than anybody else

I like that sentiment. People should focus on their own avenues of remembrance

Steakandkidney, when precisely were 14 year olds conscripted into the army?

Not sure about there but over here there are lots of recorded instances of boys that age going off to WWI. Lots of stories in each family that involved boys this age. Basically when they signed up they just said they were 17 which I think was the age they had to be back then. There was no checking of ID etc just the word of the person signing up.

Boys that age thought they were going off on a great adventure and were really going to ‘stick it to the Jerry’. Until they actually got there.......

I’m pretty sure a lot of the people at the sign ups knew a lot of the boys were nowhere near 17yo and turned a blind eye. They were not conscripted but it didn’t make it right. A 14/15/16/17yo (and with boys you could probably even argue until mid 20’s) does not have the ability to make rational and considered choices in this regard.

*nor