Poppies' popularity blooming again

Photo / Rotorua Daily Post.

The lapel poppy began life nearly nine decades ago as Britain reeled from the shock and grief of World War I.

For the millions who mourned a loved one, the blood-red flower symbolised less the bloom that grew in the Flanders battlefields and more the flower of British manhood, destroyed by four years of industrialised slaughter.

World War I left a deep imprint on the annual Poppy Appeal. After two generations, as that conflict retreated from popular memory, the poppy tradition was saved only by brigades of grey-haired ladies, rattling a tin in Britain's dank high streets.

Today, though, poppy-wearing has made an astonishing comeback. If you went to a British town right now, you might well be astonished at the armies of people toting this simple yet poignant emblem.

Office workers, pensioners, schoolchildren, doctors, factory workers and pop musicians wear them. You can find poppies on the front of car radiator grills. In Parliament on Thursday, MPs on both sides of the House faithfully decked themselves out in poppies for the live broadcast of Prime Minister's Question Time.

"In the love-and-peace 1960s, the poppy looked in danger of dying out. But over the past 20 to 30 years there has been a remarkable revival of interest," said historian Nigel Jones, author of The War Walk: A Journey Along the Western Front.

Last year the Royal British Legion sold 26 million poppies, or nearly one for every two members of the population, raising a record £35 million ($74 million). The charity hopes the figure will be surpassed this year, despite the downturn.

There are now two de facto memorial days for fallen servicemen: Remembrance Sunday, with ceremonies around the country, and Armistice Day, if November 11 happens to fall on a week day. On Armistice Day, a two-minute silence is observed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the guns fell silent in 1918.

Jones says the revival has been driven by the deaths of the last veterans of the Great War and awareness that the great generation of World War II is now fading as well.

Added to that are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have led to thousands of disabled veterans and families of fallen soldiers.

Both of today's conflicts, though, are deeply controversial - and the wearing of a poppy has discreetly widened in significance. Some seize on it as a sign of patriotism and national unity. Others, inspired by the appeal's origins, wear the poppy as a show of solidarity with the troops but also to protest against conflicts deemed as useless or wasteful as World War I.

Jon Snow, a popular news presenter on Channel 4, accused critics of "poppy fascism" in 2006 after he was criticised for refusing to wear the flower while reading the news. Snow explained that he refused to wear symbols such as an Aids badge or breast cancer ribbon to raise awareness. A poppy, he said, falls into that category.

"You name it, from the Red Cross to the RNIB [Royal National Institute for the Blind], they send me stuff to wear to raise awareness, and I don't," said Snow. "I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air."

The Poppy Appeal has attained such a sacred height that last week the BBC was accused by the conservative press of belittling the event by letting news and sports presenters wear their poppies on October 23, five days before the appeal was launched.

"The sale of poppies may appear to start early, but thousands of volunteer sellers give whatever selling time they can and the British Legion needs all the help it can get," said John Ingham, an 88-year-old World War II RAF veteran.

"The message is always the same - wear a poppy in memory of those who did not come home, and help those who did."