Remembrance Day: Wearing a poppy is not a political act, but a human one
Stephen Jardine’s grandfather warned his son to never join the army but wore his poppy with pride to remember his fallen comrades
Amidst the cacophony of modern life, tomorrow morning something remarkable will happen. At 11am, Britain will stop and become silent to remember all those killed fighting for this country. It’s a tradition stretching back to the First World War and it’s never been more important.
This week I watched some grainy monochrome footage of football fans heading to the 1922 Cup Final on top of a London omnibus. Smoking, singing and swinging rattles, they were fresh-faced enough to have fought and survived the Great War.
As they passed the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the mood changed. The men fell silent and removed their hats and, in their eyes, you saw what they had seen.
A century later a 19-year-old protester was arrested while trying to set fire to a Union Jack on the Cenotaph during an anti-racism demonstration. He failed because it was made to the anti-flammable standards of an organisation created to try to prevent further European bloodshed. An irony no doubt lost on the young man.
His freedom to march and protest exists because others fought the dark forces of totalitarianism. Those liberties were hard won. It’s our job simply to remember and respect that. Is that really too much to ask?
Passions inflamed because people care
Every year remembrance comes with complexities and controversies. From Fifa having to back down on a ban on footballers wearing poppies to a Loose Women presenter in the stocks for her decision not to wear one, the start of November always brings a row over the little red flower.
Passions are inflamed because people care and families have long memories. Of the 700,000 Scots who fought in the Great War, around 25 per cent did not return home, compared to 12 per cent for the rest of the UK. The scale of that impact touched every family in Scotland in some way.
Opponents of the poppy see it as a symbol of inward national chauvinism and the glorification of conflict. But it’s not. For a long time, reminders of the conflict’s cost were everywhere, from the limbless ex-servicemen selling matches to the elderly spinsters who never married because their sweetheart had died at the Somme.
A father and three sons, four brothers
Those collective recollections are now all gone but their memory echoes down the ages in the 5,000 war memorials all over Scotland. From the grand, national monument in Edinburgh to stones in almost every town and village, they represent lives cut short, dreams shattered and families left bereft.
At Kingholm Quay in south-west Scotland, a plaque remembers a father and his three sons who died in the war. Two miles away in Dumfries, another commemorates four brothers lost. The collective trauma of all that is hard to comprehend from our comfortable perspective nowadays.
When we wear the poppy, we remember them and what they and others have sacrificed down the years for our benefit. I have a letter from my grandfather to his son, written in a field hospital after being gassed, telling him to “avoid war at all costs” and never to wear the King’s uniform.
And yet, my grandfather wore his poppy with pride and stood at the war memorial every year to remember those that didn’t return home. Remembering them and what they did is not a political thing. It’s a human thing.
Lest we forget.
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