To not wear a poppy?

[Notjustmesurely]

I just don’t like how it’s expected or assumed you will wear one.
A friend at work bought me a poppy bracelet type thing which was kind of her but I literally wore it for that one shift and haven’t worn it since.
I appreciate its symbolism but don’t appreciate the assumption that everyone is going to be wearing one or HAS
to wear one to appreciate the cause.
If I were to wear one it would be for the conscripts who had no choice in the matter during the world wars. Not for the “modern day” political wars that the UK has involved itself in. Help for heroes and all that. The charity should come from the politicians who vote for it imo?
Newsreaders and celebs slated for not wearing one as well, what’s that all about.
Dunno it just all seems a bit fascist these days.
I always have and always will observe the two minutes silence tho.

@Vikina I'm not telling you what it means to you, only what it means to me.

Like I said, I respect anyones choice over the red poppy, it just isn't for me.

I do find it ironic that so many trot out the "xyz died for your right to choose" in response to anyone expressing any hesitation whatsoever about wearing a poppy. Surely if you're going to use people previously dying for our right to choose as some kind of stick to poke at others with or a way to direct the discussion, that defeats the very presence and nature of the freedom.

Never mind that many people didn't actually die for that by any choice of their own or indeed in any manner as noble as "fighting for our freedom" - they died in a war many were, consciously or otherwise, socially pressured to fight and die in, lest they be branded cowards and ostracised. And many died miserable, needless deaths at that. I feel and acknowledge the weight of the position they were placed in or volunteered bravely to be in, absolutely. But I don't think it was as simple as "good and freedom and bravery vs. evil foreign invaders" either. War always involves propaganda and psychological manipulation of the masses, armed forces members included.

Is it just "free to choose as long as you make the broadly accepted choice"?

@ManateeFair - thank you.

I remember that the Cenotaph was built to remind those in power of the human costs of war and their decisions in waging it in WW1.

War Christmas is spot on. It is insulting to those who have seen, been or fought in one.

The Legion gets my donations. I don't wear one

How exactly is it making it about yourself to wear a poppy that acknowledges the deaths of civilians as well as military personnel, rather than the one only commemorating the British forces and its allies specifically?

I think about the war dead fairly often as I regularly walk in a cemetery with lots of war graves, including enemy soldiers and blitz victims.

I don't feel the need to wear an outward sign to prove I'm thinking about them. And I don't like the idea that it should be somehow mandatory.

‘But there is a part of me that thinks the pushback against poppy wearing is simply because it's a British tradition. And people seem to have problems with general Britishness nowadays.’

what ARE you in about…

And there is a strong body of opinion that states it's not over yet, so it's not too surprising an emblem associated with British military actions is not welcomed universally.

@fearfuloffluff I always make a point of looking at the fallen of the 2 WWs on war memorials. Never get on with the idea of the 'glorious dead'. Those who die are a mixture, just like the living and I am sure some chose it and plenty didn't want to be there but had to be anyway for whatever reason. It still saddens me any of them had their lives cut short.

Just thinking about that bit in the Vera Brittain film where she buys a newspaper - page after page after page of names of those who were never coming back, sons, brothers, cousins, nephews, dads. What a heartbreaking scene - she turns the pages like she can't believe her eyes.

Funnily enough, the place I work was where Vera Brittain was once a nurse for a time.

Our town (UK) had a hospital where lots of Canandian service men went for treatment during/after WW2. Sadly there is a line of graves for those who never recovered to make it home. I always stand and pay tribute to their service, and feel sorry they died so far away from their families.

I suppose what I'm saying is that tribute doesn't need to be something public and out loud or visible. Often it just means standing by someone's resting place and feeling sad and grateful that they were fighting for something important (WW2), maybe they never even knew that the allies won the war.

Its something you feel in your heart. Poppies are just a symbol of our collective remembrance, even if the colours can be interpreted divisively - and unnecessarily.

Many civilians and soldiers and all the others (resistance workers in France and elsewhere), including those who perished so sadly in the Holocaust never got to know that in the end the Nazis fell and Europe was free (at least for a time - right wing on the rise again now) of their hideous ideology.

I think about all those people, and those living friends and relatives who missed them. So sad to read that Vera Brittain's dad was so grief stricken over the loss of his son that he drowned himself. Yet another victim of war - 20 years after it ended. He was just one, out of a whole generation of families whose lives were shattered. And all those women who never got married, or had children of their own - because there were so few men left.

A white poppy has nothing to do with me - I have never lost anyone through war, and fortunately never had to be in one - and everything to do with all of the above, who did have to live through that.

Same today, those lives lost and damaged in Ukraine, families fractured - and in Israel and Gaza. They will be in my heart and mind too, come the 11th.

I work in a public building, and we stop work and switch all the lights down for the 2 minutes. The last post is played live following the silence.

Every year I find it incredibly moving, to the point of tears.

To me, poppies or no poppies, or sky blue pink poppies with a yellow border, that's the heart of it what's important - and hoping and working for a world where there is less armed conflict, and less people perishing because of it.

It shouldn’t be compulsory on TV, every presenter on every channel now has to wear one. They should be allowed to wear it if they want to not because they are forced to. Given the UK’s interference in wars around the world since WW1 and WW2 it all seems hollow. Lest we forget but let’s conveniently forget those recently and currently being blown to smithereens. Hypocrisy at its worst.

You don't think the Nazis were 'evil foreign invaders'? My god, I feel like my 20 year old dad risked his life for nothing.

I stopped buying them when the poppy mafia emerged. It’s up to individuals which charity they choose to support and I favour others, particularly the one I volunteer with

I didn't say they weren't, just that there was more involved than purely that. My grandmother and grandfather both served, and my grandmother's family were Jewish and very much impacted by WWII.

Reducing it to -only- a romanticised "good vs evil" battle when, in fact, innocent young people here were being pressured to risk their lives or be ostracised on both neighbourhood and societal levels is also an evil in itself. The UK wasn't inherently totally good just because the armed forces fought against the Nazis - the cause was good, but there were numerous factors at play that weren't purely noble or heroic in how people were treated and conditioned as part of that drive.

The problem with some of the culture around remembrance is that it often leaves out that the government and military both stirred up a culture in which people were treated and expected to act as cannon fodder, lest they be branded cowards. While sacrifices were made, the society of the time didn't exactly leave men of the time much choice in the matter, which is why it's somewhat disingenuous imo to turn it into some epic tale of yore filled with heroes and villains.

@PomegranateRose you lost me at 'epic take of yore'. Shameful. Let's agree to disagree and I'm proud that my dad as a young man made it possible for us to do so. All the best. I'm genuinely glad we're able to have the freedom to have different opinions.

I think you both have valid points.

One that people did choose to fight for what they thought was right.

Two that governments are perfectly capable of propoganda in times of war, and some felt obliged to go to war (especially WW1 where there was huge pressure e.g. with the white feathers).

These points are not mutually incompatible.

War is a complex business. Remembering it is likewise.

By epic tale of yore, I think they mean that history is conveniently simplified, and does not reflect the complexities of human beings and their actual experiences.

i.e Government messaging about the past and present massively simplifies and does so for its own reasons.

My father did not choose to fight. He was conscripted. He was 20 years old and frightened.

Exactly this, thank you for this (and your other posts above)!

While the cause of fighting Nazis is obviously good, and while Nazism as a movement is obviously fundamentally and terribly evil, I do feel that portraying the wars as a great battle "between good and evil", with "heroes" and villains, is oversimplifying (and some might say romanticising) somewhat.

While the sacrifices made were undoubtedly heroic in their scale and stakes, there is a narrative around remembrance that does disservice to the nature of the conflict on the ground, the social contexts precipitating and perpetuating enlistment and conscription, and the realities of war and its intrinsic devaluing of human life. I feel that this narrative plays too well into the hands of war-mongering governments for it to be responsible to perpetuate it, personally.

One way that this manifests is in the apparent taboo around questioning or exploring how we remember and discuss wars past and present. Nobody wants to be perceived as disrespecting apparent "heroism". The fact that some people take such affront to the very existence or wearing of white poppies to remember everyone lost through war is an example of this in action - you're either on the same page with this reverent narrative of the armed forces vocally and specifically, or you're (supposedly) inherently disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to preserve your freedom to have differing opinions/practices (a catch-22 in itself in my opinion). Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone - rather just a dynamic I've seen emerge.

@PomegranateRose 'romanticising'. What utter bollocks. I wish you'd spent 5 minutes in my 30 year old dad's shoes.

I'm out.

29 not 30!!

Aaagh 20. I mean 20. I'm now laughing at myself.

Why hijack someone else's form of remembrance? If you don't want to wear a red poppy then don't.
If you want to create a way to remember everyone killed in wars do it another time with another symbol.
The red poppy is very specific to what happened in Flanders in WW1 and to make a white version is just unneccesary. It's not about people having a chip on their shoulder.

Previous posters have provided links to the history of how white poppies came to be as a symbol, and why that wouldn’t be necessarily considered “hijacking” by everyone. If it’s a good faith question, I’d start there. If not, well, have a good night!

Do you understand that we are currently going through these wars and therefor can tell you exactly what that feels like?

I mean, what am I supposed to do, with my mixed heritage? With World War Two vets in my mother’s side and having lived through two gulf wars and likely to be in a third right now?

I mean, this is just mind boggling to me.

I don’t understand why anyone would donate to the British Legion but not wear a poppy?

What exactly do people think poppies stand for?

I wear a poppy because thousands of innocent men, on both sides of conflict were sent to be slaughtered in WW1, and then WW2. Personally, it’s WW1 I think about in particular, because life and death in the trenches was so brutal and senseless. It is to remember them and to remember “never again”