On a hill above the village of Thiepval in northern France stands a grand and imposing tower. It is the British memorial for the missing troops from the Battle of the Somme.
Architectural historian Gavin Stamp writes:
[W]hat stands at Thiepval is a war memorial – perhaps the ultimate British war memorial. It commemorates a terrible event which changed the course of British history. Carved on the stone panels which line the inner faces of the sixteen massive piers formed by the interconnecting tunnels are the names of over 73,000 British soldiers most of whom disappeared in the desperate struggles which took place around here ninety years ago in 1916 – men whose bodies could not be found or identified. They were but some of the huge casualties (420,000 British dead and wounded) in an unresolved exercise in industrialised slaughter which we have learned to call the Battle of the Somme – victims of one extended campaign in the four-year-long struggle between Christian nations of Europe waged with unprecedented ruthlessness by their governments.
Imagine those 73,000 missing soldiers. I think of my school – a thousand boys lined up in rows in the cold yard, multiplied by 73. Or imagine a nearly-full Wembley Stadium. Now visualise all those people dead. Walk through field after field of broken bodies as far as the eye can see, every one a mother’s son, a child’s father, a wife’s husband, a family torn apart.
Those 73,000 are just the dead that couldn’t be found or identified from one battle in one place in one war. A fraction of a fraction of the total loss in all our wars since 1914. World War I alone killed nearly a million British troops and wounded another 1.6 million.
Every parish in Britain has its own war memorial dedicated to the people from World War I up to our present generation who went off to war and were killed. On the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I on 11 November 1918 and on the following Sunday we keep two minutes’ silence and lay poppy wreaths in solemn memory of the fallen.
As we honour the dead we also support the living, giving to charity to support the wounded soldiers and bereaved families from our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal runs every year from late October through to Remembrance Sunday.
The Royal British Legion is the nation’s custodian of Remembrance, ensuring that people remember those who have given their lives for the freedom we enjoy today.
Sadly, despite all its fine charitable work, the Royal British Legion has become a careless custodian of our Remembrance traditions. Under its stewardship in recent years Remembrance has become an orgy of bad taste, bad attitudes and conspicuous consumption.
Take the poppy itself. As a symbol of war and sacrifice it is simple and unaffected. Poppies grew wild in the fields of the Somme around Thiepval, springing up through the mud of soldiers’ graves as if they had been nourished by the blood of the dead. Paper poppies serve both as a token of respect and a vehicle for collecting donations.
But for the Royal British Legion, today’s poppy isn’t so much a token or a symbol as a product – sold in dozens of varieties at a range of prices to suit every budget and taste in the inevitable Poppy Shop. You can spend £3 on an enamel lapel pin or £50 on a gem-studded designer poppy brooch. But poppy badges and brooches are the least of it. Why not treat yourself to some poppy cufflinks (£15.50), a selection of poppy umbrellas (from £12.50 up to £23.25), a poppy-shaped air freshener (£2.10), a poppy spoon rest (£5.40) or perhaps some poppy-branded hand sanitiser (£2.50)? “You’ll be amazed by our range of poppy products, something for everyone”, says the website. Truly, I’m amazed. Remember the dead while you clean your hands. They gave their lives so we might rest our spoons in peace.
How did we get from the grand monument at Thiepval and the simple paper poppy – both in their way the embodiment of dignity – to a poppy-branded hand sanitiser? Why is the custodian of our national Remembrance flogging off its symbol on a range of sub-Argos-catalogue tat?
Much has been said about so-called “poppy fascism”, the process of social pressure and expectation that effectively coerces many people to visibly support the Poppy Appeal, particularly those in public life. Woe betide any British politician or celebrity not sporting a poppy pinned to their lapel this week. If you’re not wearing one you might as well be swinging off the Cenotaph or torching wreaths with the jihadis.
The England football team’s insistence on wearing embroidered poppies on their shirts (and now boots) for this Saturday’s match at Wembley has brought it into conflict with the sport’s governing body (it’s against the rules) and apparently required the intervention of not just Prince William as president of the Football Association but the prime minister himself. Having already agreed to the laying of wreaths before the match, no-one seems to be prepared to question the necessity for the players to wear poppies while actually playing football. Might the players’ obligation (for that’s what it is) to publicly observe Remembrance be sufficiently discharged by laying wreaths and wearing poppies on their suit coats before and after the match? Must they wear them on the pitch and in the bath too? Is footballing an act of remembrance?
From sport to light entertainment. Over at the X Factor singing competition, contestants and judges alike can be seen with an increasingly bizarre and tacky range of poppy accessories on their bodies, on their fingers and in their hair. Do these outsized rhinestone-encrusted monstrosities trouble the spoon rest vendors at the Royal British Legion?
Here’s Royal British Legion spokesman Robert Lee:
If you are performing on X Factor and Strictly and you are performing on spangly, glitzy programme then it is fitting that you observe Remembrance in a spangly, glitzy way.
This isn’t just Remembrance as conspicuous consumption (“Lovely cufflinks, Alan”), it’s Remembrance as self expression. Pick the poppy that suits your style and mood. If you’re spangly and glitzy you can have spangly and glitzy Remembrance. If you’re sporty you can have sporty Remembrance. Presumably if you’re a horror fan you can drench yourself in fake blood, shred an Oxfam suit and chew poppies down by the war memorial. Do it any way that pleases you but make sure that you do it and do it publicly. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Remembrance has got so weird because we’re all expected to play the game and the Royal British Legion and many of us are simply bored of playing it straight.
This is where conformity leads: rebellion. Just as schoolchildren love to subvert their uniforms by tying their ties in unconventional ways (narrow end at the front; the world’s widest Windsor knot), the inmates of the Poppyplex dick around with things vaguely red and bulgy until all dignity and meaning is extinguished. Remembrance becomes about forgetting, serving primarily to fill a grey week and some vacant column inches somewhere between Halloween and Christmas. The dual aims of remembering the dead and supporting the living are jettisoned in favour of an edgy by-any-means-necessary marketing campaign and the gratification of tin-shakers and poppy shoppers alike. The Royal British Legion, the supposed custodian of our national Remembrance, isn’t deploring the whole farce, it’s cheering it on. As a brand – because that’s all it is now, no more, no less – the Poppy Appeal is in exactly the same place as Burberry was in its baseball cap era.
We need to get back to the simplicity and egalitarianism of the plain paper poppy. Donate ten pence, £1000 or nothing at all. Wear your poppy or don’t. No more designer confections or spoon rests or bling, just one poppy for everyone that wants to wear it and private, discreet donations. We don’t need the prime minister’s spokesman to inform us that Mr Cameron paid £10 for his poppy, nor a file photo of him performing the deed with his furled note. There’s no need to strap a huge poppy to the front of your car, let alone four of them. Your car remembers very little. If you’re agonising over which poppy product to buy to signify the scale of your income, the refinement of your taste or the depth of your concern you’re doing it wrong. If you want to dance, sing and play football, knock yourself out. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may and save Remembrance for when you’re not having fun. Most of all, let’s stop assuming that anyone not wearing a poppy hates our country and dishonours our dead.
I’ve already donated to the Poppy Appeal this year. I will honour the dead of our wars. I will support the living casualties and their families who deserve our respect and need our help. I will observe the two minutes’ silence. But I will not wear the Royal British Legion’s poppy until once again it’s a solemn, dignified and unifying symbol of our nation’s Remembrance. The road from Thiepval to Wembley has been a long one. We need to find our way back.
