The poppy, racist? What a contemptible distortion of the truth

As a prominent liberal writer calls it a ‘symbol of racism’, BEL MOONEY, whose grandad fought at the Somme, says . . .

During World War i, some unpleasantly militant pro-war women handed white feathers of cowardice to young men, not at the Front, whom they had spotted on buses and in the streets. Many of the men were on leave from the trenches and so responded with fury.

Today, i feel a similar anger when i read that schoolchildren are being given white poppies as a symbol of peace in place of the traditional red poppy of remembrance. To me, the savage white feather and the holier-than-thou white poppy have much in common. For both express contempt.

Each year the controversy over red poppies is re-ignited, always by Left-wing commentators who have no respect for this country, its history or traditions. To them, we red-poppywearers are always the bad guys of the world — and nothing will ever change that.

The white poppy they espouse — it was introduced by the pacifist Peace Pledge union in the Thirties — attempts to hijack the idea of ‘peace’, as if the red poppy bears the opposite meaning of ‘war’. That’s what i mean by contempt. These people scorn ideas of patriotism, duty, honour, loyalty to country — and the horrible messy complexity of history. They annexe virtue for themselves and try to demonise the rest of us into war-mongering morons.

One of the high- priests of this kind of contempt is the award-winning journalist robert Fisk. Last week, high-minded Fisk excelled himself in an online newspaper diatribe that’s been shared on the internet tens of thousands of times and cited with adulation among the usual suspects on social media.

The headline on his article encapsulates the theme: ‘The poppy has become a symbol of racism — i will never wear one again.’

Yes — racism. You who are already wearing red poppies, or about to buy one; you who sell poppies; you who have already received your British Legion wooden cross and will write on it the name of your grandfather, ready for remembrance Sunday; you who (like me) treasure one of the ceramic poppies from the extraordinary 2014 art installation at the Tower of London, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of red . . . you are all racists.

incidentally — and inevitably — that intensely moving display at the Tower of London was derided in the guardian newspaper by another supercilious commentator from the Left. Art critic Jonathan Jones, looking down his nose at the millions going to see it, declared it a ‘fake and inward-looking ukip-style memorial’.

This year the supercilious derision comes from Fisk. He levels his guns at ‘the boys and girls of the BBC’ and ‘our lively media and sports personalities and politicians’ for ‘flaunting their silly poppies’. But actually we’re all in his sights — we ignorant dupes who wear these ‘vile’ (his word) symbols of remembrance.

‘i rage against the poppy disgrace every year,’ he informs us, and asks: ‘Who are they commemorating? The dead of Sarajevo? Of Srebrenica? Of Aleppo? nope.’ YOu

see, according to this representative of the intelligentsia, the poppy wearers, ‘ only shed their crocodile tears for the dead of the First and Second World Wars’.

Such ignorance is appalling — and cannot be allowed to stand. For one thing, the British Legion clearly states, ‘ the royal British Legion is asking the nation to rethink remembrance by recognising the sacrifices made by the Armed Forces community, past and present.

By wearing a poppy, you aren’t just remembering the fallen: you’re supporting a new generation of veterans and Service personnel that need our support.’

This time two years ago i was standing with a group of congenial people (poets, teachers, therapists, academics, people of faith, people of none — and others, too) on a battlefield tour run by the War Poets’ Association, of which i’m a member. it was the third tour my husband and i had joined, and we will go on one next year.

Led by a brilliant retired headmaster, Andy Thomson, our group studies poetry, listen to talks on history, and, of course, visits the great cemeteries of northern France, so beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War graves Commission. Each time i am overwhelmed by the experience. And by the poppy wreaths everywhere.

Last year we were standing in front of the great monument to the fallen at Thiepval. The 16 pillars are engraved with the names of more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who fell during the Battle of the Somme between July and november 1916 and who have no known grave.

Asked to read aloud a poem about the effects of war on civilians, i dedicated the reading ‘to the people of Aleppo, who are suffering so much right now.’ Many of the listeners were in tears.

How dare the likes of robert Fisk assume, with such arrogance, that those who wear the red poppy don’t give a damn about other conflicts, other deaths, other nationalities than the British or all the suffering war brings?

Another time, we visited the magnificent indian Memorial at neuve-Chapelle which commemorates 4,742 indian soldiers with no known grave. There are inscriptions in English, Arabic, Hindi and gurmukhi (a Sikh script).

Don’t forget that 400,000 Muslim soldiers from pre-partition india fought on Britain’s side — along with 100,000 Sikhs and 800,000 Hindus. it is for them, too, that we wear our poppies with pride.

Fisk is forgetting the multiplicity of ethnic backgrounds in the indian Army. And the gurkhas for that matter. By the end of that war more than 15,000 West indians had joined the British West indies regiment and served in italy, Egypt, india, France, Belgium, iraq (then Mesopotamia) and East Africa.

There were many black soldiers in the French Army, as well. And by the end of the war AfricanAmericans had served in every role, including intelligence. The Harlem Hell Fighters became one of the most decorated units. We wear our poppies for them, too.

Each year thousands of people visit the battlefields of France to remember and honour a universal grief. not all have family connections with someone who has fallen. You are united in a great collective sorrow for the victims of war — and feel it as strongly when you walk the lines of British graves as those in the plain german cemeteries. TO

gO to France wearing a red poppy is to make a sad and solemn pilgrimage. Believe me, there is something sacred in contemplating what the war poet Wilfred Owen called ‘ the pity of war’ — writ large in all those names.

Those who make the despicable accusation that we are glorifying war by wearing poppies have no idea how we feel when we walk along the line of a trench — utterly silent with a grief which cannot be expressed. Again and again, deeply moved by strange names on white stone, we are forced to comprehend something miraculous: that this is all our family — the family of humankind.

And we place our red poppies as a gesture of love and pity and remorse and bewilderment and futile rage. We place our poppies praying for peace.

Those who wear the red poppy are as passionate about the cause of peace as anyone. Blood that is shed will never be forgotten. Thanks to the poppy, it is commemorated every single year — like the permanent sorrow of civilian eyes red with tears.

And that is what the ceremony at the Cenotaph proclaims. And those held all round the country. And in Canada, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Malawi — some of the many places to which the British Legion sends poppies.

no contemptuous and contemptible Left-winger can contaminate that with his loathing. For the meaning of the red poppy is eternal. it symbolises the shattering feelings of love and grief which transcend all political ideologies, which have no race or creed, and which remain the same ‘ though dynasties pass’, as Thomas Hardy put it.

The poppy remembers those who weep in Syria right now, as well as all the brave men (like my grandfather) who entered the hell of the Somme. The red poppy shouts out: ‘We shall never forget.’