Poppies and Remembrance
Nov. 9th, 2008 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yrieithyddIt was Remembrance Sunday today. We marked it at church with silence at the start of the service this morning and then a 'parish service of remembrance' this evening. I finally managed to do what I've been intending to do for years today and wore both a red and a white poppy.*
I'm aware that by doing so I'm probably annoying extremists on both sides, but I think that it gets the balance right. I don't just want to wear a white poppy because I think that that is potentially too much of a political statement (especially given how some chose to interpret the white poppy)** but nor am I entirely happy just wearing a red poppy especially given some of the more extreme views I have heard.
I'm basically a pacifist -- in that I think that in the long run violence doesn't solve anything and that we should work for other ways of solving international conflicts but I'm aware that in a situation like 1939 with an aggressor like Hitler, it's hard to see what else should have been done but fight him, though I still won't justify everything we did.*** Also, my dad's dad was a conscientious objector who was in the ambulance corp and was involved in the liberation of Japanese concentration camps. I think that wearing a white poppy for me has a connection to that.
It might be coincidental in that I only really started coming across white poppies after I went to Cambridge in 2001, but I think the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which I do not believe were justified have made me more wary of the red poppy because I don't want to be seen as supporting those wars, although I still mourn all those who have died in them.
I will also comment that I only wore my poppies today. This is partly because I didn't get my white one until Thursday and by then canteen shop had run out of red ones and so I couldn't wear both until I got a red one at church this morning. However it is also that I find they start appearing on the telly a fortnight or more ahead of time and this seems too long ahead for me. I also find that if I wear one too early, I'll just lose it! I have not yet decided whether I'll wear them tomorrow and Tuesday. Possibly I'll take them to work (because cycling wearing them would be a sure way of losing them) and then decide.
*Some of my colleagues had ordered some.
**Though I find it very hard to understand the visceral dislike of the white poppy.
***But had we not been so aggressive and unforgiving after the first world war, would Hitler have been elected? And were there things which could have been done prior to 1939 which could have solved the problem without a war which killed millions.
I'm aware that by doing so I'm probably annoying extremists on both sides, but I think that it gets the balance right. I don't just want to wear a white poppy because I think that that is potentially too much of a political statement (especially given how some chose to interpret the white poppy)** but nor am I entirely happy just wearing a red poppy especially given some of the more extreme views I have heard.
I'm basically a pacifist -- in that I think that in the long run violence doesn't solve anything and that we should work for other ways of solving international conflicts but I'm aware that in a situation like 1939 with an aggressor like Hitler, it's hard to see what else should have been done but fight him, though I still won't justify everything we did.*** Also, my dad's dad was a conscientious objector who was in the ambulance corp and was involved in the liberation of Japanese concentration camps. I think that wearing a white poppy for me has a connection to that.
It might be coincidental in that I only really started coming across white poppies after I went to Cambridge in 2001, but I think the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which I do not believe were justified have made me more wary of the red poppy because I don't want to be seen as supporting those wars, although I still mourn all those who have died in them.
I will also comment that I only wore my poppies today. This is partly because I didn't get my white one until Thursday and by then canteen shop had run out of red ones and so I couldn't wear both until I got a red one at church this morning. However it is also that I find they start appearing on the telly a fortnight or more ahead of time and this seems too long ahead for me. I also find that if I wear one too early, I'll just lose it! I have not yet decided whether I'll wear them tomorrow and Tuesday. Possibly I'll take them to work (because cycling wearing them would be a sure way of losing them) and then decide.
*Some of my colleagues had ordered some.
**Though I find it very hard to understand the visceral dislike of the white poppy.
***But had we not been so aggressive and unforgiving after the first world war, would Hitler have been elected? And were there things which could have been done prior to 1939 which could have solved the problem without a war which killed millions.
