....to ask what you think of white poppies (Remembrance-related)?

[PlumpingUpPartridge]

I had been dimly aware of the existence of white poppies but hadn't really given them much thought until DH mentioned them this weekend. I checked out the website and saw this:

linky

I liked this quote:

"In 1933 the first white poppies appeared on Armistice Day (called Remembrance Day after World War Two). The white poppy was not intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War - a war in which many of the white poppy supporters lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers - but a challenge to the continuing drive to war. The following year the newly founded Peace Pledge Union began widespread distribution of the poppies and their annual promotion."

I am very happy to express my admiration and respect for those who died in wars, but I don't particularly want to see any more wars. I don't know what the alternative is, but I'd like to see more effort go into finding it.

I've been sifting through the threads and noticed some anti-white poppy feeling (along the lines of 'it's disrespectful'). I didn't grow up here so don't have childhood experience to guide me on this. Please can you tell me what you think of it and, if you think it's disrespectful, why?

I'm not a journalist by the way, just curious and trying to be impartial

fairy everyone knows squaddies have that look about them . Brawling at the drop of a hat, being sexist, swearing drinking. Short shaved hair. Maybe they had their guns and did a few desk pops

I find the whole poppy wearing process very difficult on a personal level. My experience of the armed forces has been a much less positive one that that of many of the posters, having grown up in circumstances in which being shot by the army was an actual possibility. My mum has an amusing anecdote about having to be wheeled into a corridor stripped to the waist with her legs in stirrups to avoid bullets while she was having a coil fitted. We knew lots of people who were injured, harassed etc by the army.

I also have friends and family who have loved ones in the forces. They are, by and large, good and honourable people who are doing their best to make the world a better place. Some of them have been been in terrible situations and have not had enough support to cope with the aftermath. I wear the red poppy for them, as practical support and to keep them in my mind, and because peace can never be found by ignoring the suffering or ideals of other people.

I wear the white poppy, because my own experience has shown me that peace is more than an absence of war. It is about looking out for the small injustices and putting them right before you have a large group of people who are angry or desperate or hopeless enough to use violence. It is about living life in a way that is always searching for the non violent alternative, and trying to live with empathy and understanding to the people you disagree with. It is about creating a peace on a small scale within my family and community - standing up to bullies, modelling peaceful ways of resolving conflict to my children, listening to the people who are nervous about speaking out looking out for things that need to be changed. This is ptetty hard to do, and I often don't manage. But I wear the white poppy every year partly to reinforce my commitment to living in a way that actively promotes peace, to remember those pacifist heroes like Andre and Magda Trocme who risked suffering snd death to help others while refusing to use violence, partly in memory of all the non military victims of war and partly because I believe that the more people who are openly and publicly committed to non violence, the more likely others are to consider it, too.

I think the white and red poppies go well together. I like to think of red poppies as being about our past and the things we need to learn from it, and the white poppies as being about my hopes for the future and a sign of my commitment to bring that future about.

That was a bit preachy, wasn't it? Sorry. I got a bit carried away.

I wore my white poopy this morning in the doctors surgery,in Sainsburys, and in the post office. Nobody batter an eyelid.
I really wouldn't care less if someone hated me because I wore a white poppy. They wouldn't be the sort of people that I would mix with irl anyway.

Or poppy even

"I feel differently about conscripts than I do about those who enlist, not a popular view. If you voluntarily join the army and take the "King's Shilling" you do so knowing the risks and also knowing it can be a good career.

If you'd bothered to quote the full context then people would know I was referencing WW1. Hence - "the king's shilling".

To complete what I said

"In WW1 men like my gt uncle who had never left their villages were shipped overseas to die "like cattle" in a war they didn't understand, and for which they were ill-equipped. Sent to their deaths by those whose lives were never at risk. A whole generation were "butchered and damned". Their lives had barely begun."

That's what I was saying, pax. The enlisted men were better trained and had better equipment - they stood more chance of survival.

I might tut a bit at white poopies in the doctor's waiting room

Eve: Fairy is a civilian. She also has a DH in the RAF and a DS in the army.
So more connected that most to the military.

I apologise then Sunna, but I have heard that phrase used about the modern military, also the "Crown's coin" gets banded about.

"dangerous I'd tell her to shove her white poppy up her arse if I were you, but then she'd have difficulty speaking ."

Ginger- had you perhaps forgotten that it was you that talked about whit poppy wearers throwing pigs blood over service families, and implying that they were somehow associated with red poppy burning?

I wonder how white poppy wearers would feel in a town like Aldershot is a perfectly reasonable question.

In the 80s the Greenham women were treated with great derision in the nearby towns.
They were banned from many shops.

paxtecum that's correct, and as yet there have been no examples of which of my posts give a bad impression of service people.

Having a DH and a DS in the military doesn't stop me being a civilian though!

I told a story I had heared through a grapevine, believe what you want and I didn't associate white poppy wearers with burning red ones read my comment again I stated "another minority group" but you will twist post to your hearts delight to get your agenda accross....have fun.

"I will now never wear one congratulations."

How terribly flimsy your principles must be. One person you don't know saying something you don't like on the internet and your worldview is changed!

Just read about the supposed pigs blood incident that no one but the poster who said it happened has ever heard of. Funny that
Sounds very Britian first to me..

So, something which was fact at 11.32 "A group of white poppy wearers once threw pigs blood at a group of forces family members in a garrison town about 2 years ago anf called them murdering bastards or something along those lines" has become "something you heard on the grapevine" at 13.43

You do realise that people will have read that story on here, not read your retraction, and pass it on in good faith?

It's OK, Fairy. I can see why you thought what you did. Our family's reason for wearing the white poppy date back to WW1 and the loss suffered.

I do have a lot of respect for some of today's military, less for others. Like most occupations.

monkeys can fly and shit gold....perhaps they will pass that on too.

not everyone is so invested in the internet scribblings of randoms as you may think.

or perhaps your own self importance leads you to believe people take everything you type seriously and pass it on . I'm guessing that's closer to the truth.

Ah, so you made it up ginger, who'd have thought..

Wow. Just wow.

Do you really not see a problem with making up a story about white poppy wearers throwing pigs blood over service families? Really???????!??

Add message | Report | Message poster Celticlass2 Wed 05-Nov-14 14:03:11

Fairycaravan I've never understood that stance. The only way those illegal and immoral wars were allowed to take place was because those men and women were prepared to take part in them. No separation for me..

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Add message | Report | Message poster meoverhere Wed 05-Nov-14 14:09:06

So Celticlass2 - tell me...

Should the entire army have stood down when it was decided Iraq was illegal? Bearing in mind a number of them were there already at that point, how do you anticipate they should have come home? Walked?

Or should they all have been jailed in Iraq?

Or should they have had the international law knowledge to understand the war was illegal even before the UN declared it?

Should our military be able to choose which orders they follow and which they don't?

Pragmatically speaking how should something like Iraq have played out in order to satisfy that argument?

Still waiting for a response on these questions, Celticlass2.....

I did not make it up I passed on what I was told, and that's how I found out aboutthr white poppy. You have two very simple options believe it or don't believe it, you chose the latter I chose the first.

I'm not going to sit here and argue about it. you have a simple choice you've made it, the same way you believed the attacks on the other poppy sellers were stories made up by Britain's First or EDL, that's fine that's up to you.

Many people believe the moon landings are false and fake, people can believe what they want to believe, there's no golden rule on what people are allowed to believe.

"I'm not going to sit here and argue about it. you have a simple choice you've made it, the same way you believed the attacks on the other poppy sellers were stories made up by Britain's First or EDL, that's fine that's up to you."

No, I do believe them. Because they happened. There is evidence. Your white poppy /pig's blood story does not appear anywhere on the internet (people have looked) which means it was not reported in the newspapers at the time and was not picked up later. So it did not happen. It is a horrible, vicious slur. And you should be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.

The other attacks on poppy sellers have been widely reported by mainstream media. I have no evidence to believe they are made up. They have nothing to do with white poppies, though.

No-one has been able to find any evidence of the alleged attack by white poppy wearers.