Is popping wearing and remembrance fading with younger generarions?

[mids2019]

At my daughter's school teachers were heavily suggesting that they observe remembrance and it goes in with WA1 and WW2 history.

However it seems at least some think the poppy is outdated or overly political so tend not to wear poppies.

Is remembrance going to diminish with the passing of time and do young people have a point that is has misappropriated by certain factions?

I actually think more is done today than when I was growing up (70s/80s). All the villages around me have big poppies tied to the lampposts, there are huge crocheted displays by the war memorials and all over the village and churches. The primary school kids make poppies each year to put on the memorial. I'm delighted that people feel so strongly about it.

My DS20 went to Newcastle down the weekend and asked if he could wear my poppy as "he felt bad without one"

What a world. Let’s forget a whole generation that died for us but never forget other historical events 200+ years ago that apparently we have to pay for.

And what do you mean by misappropriation, your post is quite garbled at the end.

Agree. There’s a big difference between remembering the World Wars vs supporting the current military. There are recent conflicts that have been misguided at best.

Not where I live - a Commonwealth country. Young people here are very involved in remembering, although we do it at a different time of the year. Young people are always involved in selling poppies on the streets.

I do think poppy wearing to an extent is dependent on community. For instance in the villages and small towns near me the poppy is attached to lamp posts and there are many modern war memorials. However in larger diverse towns and cities poppy wearing is a little less unform.

My local town has named streets and parks after young soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq with Afghanistan where the streets do intersect predominantly Muslim wards. I fully appreciate the sacrifice of the soldiers but I have a suspicion that councillors who renamed the streets were possibly making a political point.

This years (and the past few years) have been made fully of cardboard so fully recyclable

Not sure about poppies but I was in a small town on Monday and at 11am there was a service outside a church. 2 mins silence. Bugler. People wearing their military uniform etc. Very sombre. Very obvious what was going on. Lots of people stopped in the street to observe the silence.

Yet lots more people were trying to get past those of us who were stood still, continued talking to each other, I was stood outside a shop and could hear customers continuing their shopping and the shop workers serving them.

Whether you agree with the services and the silences etc, surely if you see others observing then you stop what you're doing for 2 minutes.

It's about any wars, they are still happening alas! It's just as important today for young people to hear the truth about war so they can work to prevent conflict in the future. Young people I know are very respectful and Remembrance Day. As for the legion, they are working with all veterans, including the Falklands, the balkans, Afghanistan, various Middle East forays...

As time moves on and it becomes less about the world wars and more about every conflict the UK has fought in, it's natural that people's views will evolve too.

It should only ever be a choice, no one should face social pressure to wear a poppy.

The new ones are 100 % paper.

Remembrance Day parades full of kids (guides, scouts etc) are still thriving in my small town. Also a year 2 child in my class (extra curricular) mentioned poppies and when I asked if he knew why we have poppies knew all about it and so did the rest of the 6-7 year olds (in a very multicultural infant school).

I agree with pps that the white poppy can be antagonistic. I would wear a white poppy, but as with any outward expression of an opinion, you will likely receive unsolicited and strongly expressed opinions from others.

I think it is appalling that the government/MoD recruit teenagers, send them to war zones and cut financial responsibility for them when they are injured physically and mentally. There should be absolutely no need for charities like Help for Heroes; the name of which is far too loaded with pro war sentiment.

Damaged and 'badly behaved' boys have always been a big recruitment area for the military. These boys are then taught how to kill, often traumatised and sent back to terrorise the women in their romantic relationships. So I very strongly do not support military careers.

That's not the case though is it? Western powers continually perpetuate war. Just not on our doorstep.

I won't wear one due to associations with glorification of war, more right wing policies etc. It's about nationalism not support at this point.

It is happening again though, right now.

@mids2019

For Germans there is still very often a collective guilt as they are most aware of their history. My friend wasn't born until 1970 but feels immensely upset that her country's leaders caused so much pain and suffering, most specifically the holocaust etc (countries having a standard war because they want more land is somehow easier to comprehend). She wears a poppy

I agree with this. It's important to learn from and remember the awful things that happened in the world wars, but in my experience, the poppy is becoming a somewhat right wing/ nationalist symbol. None of my friends or family wear one.

Well Sebastien Faulks wrote Birdsong 30 years ago because he felt like the wars and sacrifice were falling out of the collective memory. It has long been my favourite book and we saw the stage show on Tuesday and it was incredible (not for children though more for the nudity and sex scenes than the fighting).

I no longer wear a poppy although do chuck money in the bucket, I think it's hypocritical, it was meant to remember all those that had died and sacrificed themselves through no choice of their own and conscription and those men would be dead now anyway. I used to do Remembrance Parade as a Cadet and it used to be full of people and WW veterans but it's just cadets, scouts and their families now. It was meant to be a reminder of never again to have such conflict and yet conflict is all around us and wars have never stopped. Society is worse than ever people don't respect the land that was fought for with vandalism and treatment of eachother worse than ever

@BarbaraHoward This. The poppy became about every conflict, not just WW1&WW2 and the British army have committed many atrocities across the world, particularly in the process of building the empire. Increasingly, people don’t want to support remembrance of that.

it would’ve been far better to have it as WW remembrance because that really is something we need to never forget and as that generation die out the risk is increased (indeed we have already seen so much rhetoric around the war in the Middle East that dismisses Israel’s trauma response)

With regard to German guilt German ministers do appear at global leader events to mark historical anniversaries in at least the second world war. However it to my mind is an appearance to support democracy over tyranny.

I think for the Germans currently is that they have to support and have pride in armed forces which may be a bulwark against Russia. If Germans die in future wars the remembrance may be different to those for their forefathers in previous generations.

I think the poppy wearing and big poppy displays will fizzle out. I noticed not a single person at work wore one and everyone is generally under the age of 35, and I don’t have any friends who wear one. None of them do a minutes silence either and it didn’t happen at work. A lot of people I know aren't proud to be from this country so I feel it’s tied to that a little.

Everyone cares about those who gave their lives but I guess they don’t feel the need to wear a poppy and put on a show about it.

Poppy wearing as it used to be when I was young had already faded away into a fairly minimal and benign commemoration of the dead of two world wars.

Then, during Blair's prime ministership I think, there was a deliberate resurrection of all of the paraphernalia of remembrance. It was intended to coincide with several big anniversaries associated with WW2 as I recall, but it was also a function of Blair's huge talent for branding and show.

Starting from that point, it became huge again, but without the original values. It was increasingly jingoistic, it lost whatever connection it had had with acknowledging the barbarity of the mass slaughter of conscripts and became - as a previous poster said - more like 'Help for Heroes'.
Then it started to be policed by the Daily Mail et al so that (despite the protests of the veterans' organisation that runs the poppy charity) the whole thing was increasingly oppressive and nationalistic.

What is fading now isn't the original poppy tradition, it is the problematic resurrection of it. Hopefully there will be a new resurrection. Something quieter and more in keeping with the original values.

How are councillors making a “political point” by naming streets after young men killed in war? They absolutely are not. They are honouring the dead, that’s all. It’s people like you who are damaging the message behind the poppy, it’s only for remembrance. Nothing more.

There will always be people who wear a poppy. There will always be military families who spend months each year wondering what could be next for their family members and there will always be young people who have recently lost a parent or other family member in service, so the poppy and remembrance will live on.

“ the veterans of the wars who had no say in the matter and had to go and fight like it or not”

It’s not a major issue but I think it should be stated that in WW1 & 2 many of the combatants were volunteers, not conscripts.

There was no conscription in Ireland in WW1 nor in Northern Ireland in WW2 and many volunteers signed up anyway.

I'll wear a poppy when attending an Act of Remembrance, but I otherwise have recently refrained from wearing a poppy. I intensely dislike the 'Poppymas' season of early November, and the social policing of poppy-wearing. I do give to veterans' charities, amongst others.

IMO, the UK has long needed to give serious consideration to the type of country it wants to be, rather than forever looking backwards to increasingly distant (historically and for many of the population, culturally) events for narratives to bind the country together.

I think as the concept of conscription becomes a vague memory, people will support Remembrance Day less and less. It still goes strong today because people are alive who had close relations in the world wars, but in a generation or two I imagine it will disappear. For me personally, Remembrance Day is about honouring those who were conscripted into that horror, and that ends when memory of the conscripted does.

I see the military these days as akin to the police, firefighting or being a paramedic etc. I'm glad someone is doing it and I appreciate it's risky and often unpleasant, but at the end of the day they're doing it because they want to. None of the people I know in the military are motivated mainly by patriotic duty or doing things for others. Like any career, they actively chose it because it was what they wanted to do, for a variety of reasons. If the working conditions or pay ceased to suit them anymore, they'd be out of it as soon as possible.

My DS is a cadet and participates on the local remembrance parades every year. We are in a town in the midlands and the parade is huge with lots of Veterans attending. A large amount of the town also turn out to support and watch the parade and service. School and college also have services and sell poppy paraphernalia. I honestly see no difference in the level participation to when I was a teen 30 years ago.