Will you be lucky enough to find a ‘gold leaf ’ poppy?
It’s come under fire from ignorant students and even fraudsters. But this year the Royal British Legion has a way to make the Remembrance symbol more dazzlingly poignant than ever
Most of us don’t give it a second thought as we pop our money in the box and pick up our poppy year after year. this autumn, though, take a closer look. For the lucky ones will find they have a special poppy ahead of this very special Remembrance sunday.
ostensibly, every poppy is identical but one in six will be different this time. they will have ‘ 1918-2018’ printed in gold on the leaf attached to every stem. the idea is to encourage people to take a closer interest in this sacred symbol.
Children will, of course, be particularly keen on the idea. there will be much poking around every tray in search of this one-off trophy poppy. If it means people end up buying a few more than usual, all the better.
Even rarer than the ‘ gold leaf’ poppy will be the ‘khadi’ poppy, made not from paper but from the same Indian linen worn by Mahatma Gandhi. Around 40,000 of these have been produced, in honour of the 74,000 Indian Army troops who lost their lives in the service of the Crown in the Great War.
For the Royal British Legion is gearing up for the biggest Poppy Appeal in its history. this morning, veterans and their families will gather at specially decorated sites all over the United Kingdom to kick off a campaign that aims to raise a whopping £50 million.
Not since the American academic Moina Michael first had the idea of wearing a red poppy in 1918 — inspired by Lt-Col John McCrae’s poem which begins ‘ In Flanders fields the poppies blow’ — has the Legion been so ambitious.
As ever, the Legion in scotland will be running its own distinctive appeal (with its own slightly different poppies).
AhUNdREd years may have passed since the end of the Great War but the Legion’s work is as vital as ever. Each year it helps hundreds of thousands of people in myriad ways, servicemen and women of all conflicts and campaigns, plus their loved ones.
It supports d-day heroes and it helps people such as Chantelle Wynn, 42, widowed with two young children after their father, Ryan, returned from Afghanistan in 2006 so broken that he took his own life.
Yet this is about more than fundraising. It is about ensuring we keep the flame of remembrance going at a time when there have seldom been more external forces working to snuff it out.
take the latest depressing exchanges at Cambridge University, where two weeks ago the student union rejected a motion to make greater efforts to recognise Britain’s war veterans and war dead.
It initially accepted an amended motion which deleted the words ‘British war veterans’, ‘ Remembrance day’ and ‘valour, courage and heroism’, arguing that they did not reflect the university’s status as an international institution. Rather than ‘valorising’ war, the university needed to remember ‘the lives and deaths of all those who have been affected by war globally’.
the union finally decided to drop that motion, too, because it was too vague.
But the damage was done. A predictable media storm ensued. the students involved have since blamed the Press for stirring things up and for the inevitable ‘death threats’ from online trolls.
this week, however, the union had a rethink and finally did pass a new motion stating that it was, after all, ‘important to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice, in particular during the First World War’. Very generous of them ( although I see that seven members of the council abstained).
of course, we can put this down to silly student politics — which it clearly was. on the other hand, it carried unavoidable echoes of the 1933 debate at the oxford Union (a debating society rather than a student union), when students passed the motion that they would ‘in no circumstances fight for King and Country’.
Years later, Winston Churchill wrote that this one student debate had played a part in the war ‘calculations’ of Germany and Japan.
the Cambridge saga will certainly not have had any such consequences. But it illustrates a direction of travel. Likewise, the decision of st John Ambulance to allow its staff to wear pacifist white poppies on Remembrance sunday for the first time, despite critics — including the tory MP and former Army officer Johnny Mercer — arguing that the symbolism of the poppy is being ‘hijacked’ by those with a political agenda.
Likewise, last year’s Consumer Intelligence report which showed that a third of those under 25 feel uncomfortable about wearing a red poppy on the grounds that it ‘glorifies’ war.
It does no such thing. As every Royal British Legion tin- shaker will point out, wearing a poppy is simply an act of thanks to previous generations who died for our right to wear or not wear a poppy — and, indeed, our right to wear a white one, too.
however, it is not just educated people and the usual Corbynista brigade who think it is time to move on.
the poor old poppy is up against the brainless, too. In honour of this year’s centenary, there are two excellent campaigns running across the country. A consortium of military charities led by Lord dannatt, former Chief of the defence staff, is behind those transparent lifesize military figures popping up in public places to promote the message ‘ there But Not there’.
the Royal British Legion has organised a similar campaign called ‘silent silhouettes’, lifesize wooden cut- outs of Great War servicemen and women.
YoUmay well have seen some of these in churchyards, parks, schools or football grounds. they are a simple way of reminding us of the losses felt at the heart of every community when a generation goes off to fight a war.
Yet barely a day passes without news that yet another one has been smashed up or decapitated. In the past few days, a ‘silent soldier’ had his head broken off in Ross- on-Wye and another, in Market deeping, Lincolnshire, had his rifle snapped away.
If this can be written off as mindless criminality, even more disgraceful is the way in which organised crime is seeking to make money out of the dear old poppy. For, though it beggars belief, there is now a market in Remembrance fakes.
Last year, Border Force officers at tilbury docks managed to intercept a shipment of bogus poppy merchandise from China worth £150,000. According to a spokeswoman for the Intellectual Property office, there have been similar detentions at dover and heathrow and further details will be announced later this week.
All these cases have involved more costly items such as poppy pins, poppy brooches and scarves, rather than traditional paper poppies. Nonetheless, it is shocking that someone in Britain woke up one morning and thought: ‘I know. I’ll import some fake poppies and make a few quid at the Legion’s expense.’
of course, we are talking of a minority here. Up and down the land there are countless delightful and often moving examples of the way people are responding to this centenary.
In Kent, for example, the Marlowe theatre is taking over the disused dover Marine railway station, which so many wounded tommies passed through on their way back from the Front.
In the days leading up to Remembrance sunday on November 11, a professional cast will re-enact the dramatic story of the most famous casualty to pass through this sacred spot — the Unknown Warrior. he, of course, now resides in perpetuity at the entrance to Westminster Abbey. tickets are selling fast.
or take the pupils at Frederick Gough school in scunthorpe, who were so moved by the story of seven local lads who never came home that they are busy raising funds to buy seven ‘silent soldiers’ for their local church.
so let’s hope the Legion hits its £50 million target. And may your poppy be a golden one.
Yet let us also remember that once this centenary is over, remembrance will be more important than ever.