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?

The Haig fund anyone? Any comments on Field Marshal Haig?

I wear both.

There is far too much ignorance around this subject. Both poppies started to be worn between the wars. The red poppy in it's initial form as a product of the Haig fund was very problematical hence the white poppy.

Both poppies can be worn today for peace and remembrance. We need to think a little more a criticise each other a little less.

A teenager who is engaged and politically active is on the whole a good thing.

Interesting that they voted him in again in 1951.

Exactly - turns out they missed the old "imperialist warmonger", and that one term of socialist government was quite enough!

Bertram do you think it would’ve been better if Britain hadn’t gone to war in 1939 and just let Hitler walk in?

Ugh please don’t be so reductive, there are vast oceans of middle ground between some of the things Churchill did and “just letting Hitler walk in”

I'm sure the soldiers of other countries died also but they did not do so to save the futures of everyone in Britain.

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/first-world-war-forgotten-chinese-labour-corps-memorial

I'm with him. Where I live the parish council lays both a red poppy wreath and a white poppy wreath at the war memorial. The readings and hymns will be about peace (Sermon on the Mount is this Sunday's reading - blessed are the peacemakers etc). It isn't necessarily a teenage phase that he'll "grow out of".

Bertram do you think it would’ve been better if Britain hadn’t gone to war in 1939 and just let Hitler walk in? This where the pacifist argument falls down. I'm grateful to every single person who stopped Hitler 'walking in'.

If he truly understands the difference between a white and a red poppy, he would still wear the red poppy.

@UpOnTheDowns stop talking nonsense. The one term of socialist government introduced the NHS.

The vote share between lab and con in 1950 and 1951 was very similar. What had changed significantly was Tory policy.

The Conservatives changed tone significantly and did not overturn any of the major socialist initiatives.

Stop trying to put modern meaning on an historical event. It drives me round the fucking bend.

Threads like these when people talk in ignorant cliches just show how our education system has failed!

Silverdoe Bertram said she and her family were pacifists therefore presumably she would have been against the country going to war in 1939.

Stop trying to put modern meaning on an historical event. It drives me round the fucking bend
Mousse I thought you said in an earlier post that we need to criticise each other less?

Less - not never!

It is a bad thing to do.

Yes dapplegrey I did say we need to criticise each other less and then posters started in on the "we'd all be speaking German" nonsense. Unfortunately, I lost my temper. It happens.

Threads like this that refer to past wars brings out the nationalist nonsense. If we should have learnt anything from WW1 it is that nationalism kills people. German people, English people, French people, black people and brown people.

And yet 100 years after a war fought for nationalism and imperialism and death and slaughter on an industrial scale we still have people talking in cliches about letting "Hitler walk in".

Btw the OP said her family has a history of acting as stretcher bearers etc. Conscientious Objectors have a proud history of dying to save others while following their beliefs. I don't always agree but I respect their beliefs and their moral stand enormously.

Nobody wanted to go to war in 1939 - especially after the slaughter of the first war, Mousse, obviously they didn’t.
However if Britain hadn’t fought, what do you think would have happened? Do you think Hitler would’ve left out Britain in his campaign to conquer Europe?

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack."

Conscientious Objectors have a proud history of dying to save others while following their beliefs. I don't always agree but I respect their beliefs and their moral stand enormously.

And what use exactly would conscientious objectors have been against Axis tank divisions and heavy bombers? The square root of fuck all, that's what.

I would assume that most pacifists think it would have been better if Hitler and his friends had been pacifists.

You can't start the historical questioning in 1939. You can't look at the trigger cause and assume that is why the war started.

The question "what would you do in 1939" is laughably simplistic.

The causes of WW2 link back (among other things) to Versailles and the Paris Peace Conference. Vengeance and nationalism and desire for retribution caused WW2.

A little more peace or an ability to work together earlier may have circumvented WW2 with no Hitler at all - who knows. Wilson's Fourteen points would have been a better starting point.

The Germans and French took this onboard after WW2 and worked to form the EEC.

I don’t wear a white poppy and if I was to wear one I’d wear a red and white together but unless I am really missing something I don’t really see the problem? Why is he a dick or showing disrespect? I’m knackered and if someone could explain I’d be grateful, ta.

"And what use exactly would conscientious objectors have been against Axis tank divisions and heavy bombers? The square root of fuck all, that's what."

Well, if everyone was a conscientious objector......

Well, if everyone was a conscientious objector......

And if wishes were horses, paupers would ride. In the real world, unilateral disarmament is just a self-righteous form of suicide.

Ah yes. The real world. You mean, I assume, the world manipulated by the arms industry and powerful vested interests.

The world in which utopian fantasies hold little power outside the minds of those afflicted by them. That real world.

What's the opposite of a pacifist family... a warmongering family?
Surely most people don't want to go to war?
I can honestly say that I have never met anyone who has felt the need to tell me they are a pacifist, I just go through life presuming most people don't like war.
As for your son well he is old enough to make his own decision and if some people are offended then he is old enough to deal with that surely?