To End War

The Guardian editorialises:

It has been another bad week in Afghanistan. Seven British soldiers have died, as well as uncounted civilians, some unintended casualties of the Nato effort. Support for the war has fallen from just under half in September to a third. Gordon Brown's attempt yesterday to shore up support by laying out a renewed set of objectives by which success could be measured were undermined even as he spoke by the former chief of the defence staff Lord Guthrie, who criticised his conduct of the war. An observer from another planet might suppose tomorrow's Remembrance Day ceremonies would at the least be tinged with anger, and might provoke bitter protest.

They will not, of course, despite the growing protests of some soldiers' families. That is no thanks to the dubious new interpretation of remembrance that is evident in the stridency with which poppy-wearing by celebrities and newsreaders and X-factor judges is policed, and by campaigns in some newspapers to make leading football clubs wear embroidered poppies on their shirts. The appetite for public emotion is threatening to turn the act of remembrance into a symbol of conformity, a kind of alternative national flag. The obvious argument against this is that conformity robs it of its real meaning. But it is also a corruption of the original intention of those who commissioned the first, temporary, Cenotaph and put it in the heart of Whitehall.

Their ambitious purpose was to impose on the very centre of imperial power the memory of the millions who had died in order to end war. It was to be a daily warning to the politicians who sent them to fight of the awful cost of war, an ambition whose futility was exposed in 1939. Instead, the dead were recast as soldiers in a just war, defenders of a free world. At the same time, however, the fallen became distanced from the politics that brought war about. Perhaps that is why the last survivor of the first world war, Harry Patch, dismissed Remembrance Sunday as "just show business", a charge uncomfortably supported by its very success. This year's poppy appeal is on course to break last year's record take of £30m. There are queues around poppy sellers, and already more have been distributed than in the whole of last year's campaign. One recent poll found that four-fifths of the population think the two-minute silence is "relevant to them". It is a huge, largely volunteer, locally organised effort.

And yet 40 years ago, Remembrance Day was almost abandoned. First world war survivors were dying, second world war veterans were ageing, and the increase in proceeds of the poppy appeal barely kept pace with inflation. The British Legion might have imagined itself ageing with it. Instead, war came back.

In 1968, no British soldier died on active service. But that turned out to be not just the first but the only year since 1945 when the claim could be made. The uncomfortable question is whether our way of remembering war, or at least war's casualties, has contributed to making that possible. The pacifist White Poppy movement, and some Christian thinkers, would argue that it has, that there is a hypocrisy about it that is reflected in the way the dead are honoured while the last military hospital is shut and those who survive with physical or mental damage have to fight for adequate care. They detect a whiff of militarism in the way civilian dead are ignored, and jingoism in the refusal to recognise that many of the enemy died believing they were fighting for freedom too. But above all, they are offended by the sight of politicians who have embroiled us in war laying wreathes at the Cenotaph in memory of the young men and women who have died fighting it. This is the final corruption of the original intention of remembrance: it has not prevented war happening again. Worse, it can be seen as a balm to the consciences of all of us who have failed to stop it.

I must admit that I am not convinced by the White Poppy. As set out above, the Red Poppy was initially, and is still properly, anything but a glorification of war. The White Poppy message to "remember all victims of war" is already included, and the Red Poppy no longer features the name of Haig. White Poppy money goes to the Peace Pledge Union, a campaigning organisation for absolute pacifism (a cause to which I do not subscribe), rather than to a welfare charity of any kind. Wear your poppy with pride. I am wearing mine as I write. Because of what it really means.