Fuck enforced Remembrance (Day) – it is state sponsored psychological lockdown. It smacks of totalitarianism and fascism.

Remembrance is a Beautiful Thing

Remembrance is a beautiful thing – collective remembrance too – but can only be truly authentic and beautiful if voluntary and free – not institutionalised.

I remember the TV images of the old World War I soldiers coming together every year, to commemorate the war in the trenches. I remember the news articles in the 1980s, the soldiers, by then old old men, with tears in their eyes, remembering the fallen soldiers, who they had befriended and fought alongside, whose memory never left them. What richness, what sense of meaning and love. What an incredible and powerful collective experience – this collective act of remembrance. A beautiful thing indeed.

 

People have the right to remember.

They have the right to gather to remember, collectively.

People have the right to remember who they fucking well want, when they fucking well want.

I can understand why people come together to remember people they knew and relatives who have fought in various conflict.

So remembrance – as a voluntary act – is a beautiful thing.

Through remembrance – we create and preserve culture and history – and identity – and a sense of who we are in the present and who we want to be in the future.

But when remembrance is imposed on other people – its no longer an act of remembrance.

Its political control.

One group of people attempting to organise, intimidate and bully others into an act of remembrance.

Remembrance day itself – the very idea that the government or state – can designate a day – in which institutions and organisations up and down the country are expected to – join in a ritual – is in and of itself – an act of political control. And a successful one at that. In the way that they are able to co-ordinate the successful nationwide act of remembrance.

At school, everyone in the school is expected and obliged to participate in an act of remembrance.

These days, as an adult, there is nothing in my social circles, that creates a build up to remembrance day. But every year, one of the swimming instructors, instructs everyone in the swimming pool to be silent for two minutes. At first, I always think, what? What for? Then it begins to dawn on me.

I don’t object – what’s the point? But then I also get the impression that most of the people at the pool wouldn’t be bothered if we didn’t have two minutes of silence. A lot of the people are not British. They don’t have relatives who served in the British armed forces. Some people think that the British forces have participated in war atrocities, and don’t want to participate in an event, which appears to exonerate and valorise everything that the British forces have done.

So why should the leisure centre swimming instructor impose this act of remembrance on everyone in the swimming pool? After all, we’ve come to the pool to swim.

If she wants to remember whoever for whatever, then there is nothing to stop her from having two minutes – to remember – somewhere else – and leave everyone else to get on with getting dry and changed or preparing for their next lesson. Or if she wants, she can request the day off, and she can gather with people who particularly want to observe two or more minutes.

Later I’m walking down the street, and I see on the front of a bus, something on the screen, an image of a poppy and something about remembering. Why are they doing that? They are a company, trying to make money out of charging people more money for travelling on their buses than it costs them to pay the drivers and pay the running costs of their operation. Why are they imploring people to ‘remember’? Or ‘Less we Forget’.

But frankly. People have the right to forget too. And people have the right not to care. Or just get on with their day in whatever way they see fit.

And by the way? What are we actually remembering?

People have the right to remember who they fucking well want, when they fucking well want, without having a bunch of anal assholes insisting that they stop what they are doing to join in some state-corporate psychological lockdown.

People who impose Remembrance Day and red poppies are not imposing out of respect for the fallen. Instead they are using the fallen to achieve unrelated political objectives and exercise power and authority. They are are also part of the namby pamby virtue signalling WROKE Brigage.

People have the right to say ‘no ta’ to the poppies, to the two minutes silence, without having the WROKE Brigade ganging up on them – victimizing and taking reribution.

But what are people supposed to be remembering on Remembrance Day anyway?

Some people say that we are supposed to be remembering people who are prepared to sacrifice their lives – by signing up to the armed forces. No matter whether they have fought or died.

Some people seem to think it is about those who have fought in battle.

Two quite different things.

I can appreciate the fact that signing up for the country’s armed forces is a commitment – which involves a certain degree of acceptance that at some point one might be required to put one’s life on the line – to protect the country. And I can imagine that those who are related to someone or who knows someone – or who wants to pay respect to those who – who are in or who have been in the armed forces – may quite reasonably want to gather in solemn community to bear witness and pay tribute to the commitment and responsibility.

But this is a different thing entirely – to paying respect to those who have fought and died in every conflict that the British armed forces have been involved. Some of those conflicts have been illegal, and have involved murdering, killing and inflicting pain, suffering and torture on innocent people. Some of those conflict have been more honourable.

The fact that I have been alive for half a century and I don’t clearly know the answer to this – shows that – what appears – culturally and politically – more important – is the imposition of the ritual – rather than people understanding the reasons for the ritual.

BBC article says

Across the UK, poppies are worn each year to mark Remembrance events and commemorate those who lost their lives in two world wars and other conflicts.

Events and services take place around Armistice Day – 11 November – as well as Remembrance Sunday, and the poppy is a frequent sight throughout.

The Royal British Legion and PoppyScotland run two major campaigns to donate funds from the poppies sold to support current and former members of the armed forces and their families.

The tradition has its origins in World War One but has become a symbol of remembering those who gave their lives in other conflicts.

Here is more on the origin of the poppy, its importance and why they continue to be a symbol of Remembrance in the UK.

In 1915, Canadian doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote his famous war poem, In Flanders Fields, following the devastation he witnessed on battlefields in Ypres, Belgium.

The poem describes the delicate red wildflowers that bloomed where more than a million soldiers died between 1914 and 1918.

Inspired, Anna Guérin, a French teacher turned war effort fundraiser, began selling poppies on designated days from September 1919. She then addressed the American, Canadian and British legions to ask for the poppy to be acknowledged as Remembrance emblem.

In 1921, the Royal British Legion ordered a million poppies from Anna Guérin in France and commissioned a further 8 million to be manufactured in Britain.

They were made from silk, and were sold on 11 November that year in the first ever Poppy Appeal.

The tradition has carried on ever since, though the silk has been consigned to history. In 2023, the legion started making fully recyclable paper poppies.

In 1926 in Scotland, Lady Haig opened Lady Haig’s Poppy Factory, employing former veterans to make the flowers out of tissue. This is the hub that produces the poppies for Poppy Scotland’s poppy appeal.

The Scottish poppy does not feature a green leaf and has four-lobed petals, while England and Wales’s poppy features two.

 

Royal British Legion (2024) say…

 

Remembrance honours those who serve to defend our democratic freedoms and way of life.
We unite across faiths, cultures and backgrounds to remember the service and sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. We will remember them.
We remember the sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
We pay tribute to the special contribution of families and of the emergency services.
We acknowledge innocent civilians who have lost their lives in conflict and acts of terrorism.
Remembrance does not glorify war and its symbol, the red poppy, is a sign of both Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future.
Wearing a poppy is is never compulsory but is greatly appreciated by those who it is intended to support.
When and how you choose to wear a poppy is a reflection of your individual experiences and personal memories.
Remembrance unites people of all faiths, cultures, and backgrounds but it is also deeply personal.
It could mean wearing a poppy in November, before Remembrance Sunday. It could mean joining with others in your community on a commemorative anniversary. Or it could mean taking a moment on your own to pause and reflect.
Everyone is free to remember in their own way, or to choose not to remember at all.

 

What is Remembrance | Royal British Legion

 

 

What do the different coloured poppies mean?

BBC article says…

The red poppy commemorates those who sacrificed their lives in World War One and all conflicts that have happened since. It is said to represent remembrance and hope.

A purple poppy is often worn to remember animals that have died in service, particularly horses, a large number of which were killed during World War One.

Donations to the Animal Purple Poppy Fund go to charities including the Household Cavalry Foundation and the World Horse Welfare.

A black poppy commemorates the contributions of black, African and Caribbean communities to the war effort, as servicemen and servicewomen, and as civilians.

The BlackPoppyRose charity was launched in 2010 and aims to end the “ignorance concerning the contribution of Africans and People of African origin to a host of European wars throughout the ages”.

The white poppy represents all victims of war, and are sold by the Peace Pledge Union, which challenges war and seeks nonviolent solutions to war.

 

 

Johnny Mercer

Johnny Mercer says ‘they fought and died so you could choose’. But this isn’t really true.

Soldiers don’t chose to fight and they don’t chose to die. They are told to fight, and they actively chose to try to avoid dying. They might chose to join the armed forced. But of the ones who were remembered from the second world war, some did so because they were conscripted, something that they had no choice in. They didn’t want to fight and they didn’t want to die. Currently, soldiers sign up to the armed forces because they want to prosper and stay alive, and quite often have a family and see their children grow up. The fighting and dieing are unfortunate situational consequences, albeit accepted by the soldier singing the contract, of signing up to the armed forces.

And even if soldiers do sign up to an employment contract with the British armed forces, knowing that they could be asked to fight and knowing that the fighting could lead to their death, they don’t – all universally – do it so people ‘can choose’ – whatever that means. Soldiers hold a variety of different values and beliefs, and have a variety of different interests, and to the extent that they sign up to something that might involved fighting and dieing, it is for a variety of reasons. Some do it because it looks fun and exciting and a way of making a living. I knew a guy who was hoping to go to college, but didn’t get the grades, so applied to the army instead. Some do it because they want to make members of their family proud. Some do it, because they like fighting per se. Some do it, because they are racist nationalists, who like the idea of the power, and lauding it over other people in other countries. Some do it, because they like fighting, and in their mind, they would prefer to live in a totalitarian fascist state, where people did not have the right to chose, and their choice to serve in the British army, and to fight, is coincidental to their belief in denying people the right to chose, and what they are getting out of fighting has nothing to do with their political beliefs and values, and they are certainly not fighting to give anyone the right to chose.

Now it might be true that the combined impact of those who fought in the Second World War, against Hitler’s Nazi machine, was to preserve the choice of the British people to elect a British government once every four to give years, but that’s not the only reason why people who fought against the Nazis fought, and it may not have been the reason at all for those who were conscripted, and for those who fought because they felt a social and emotional pressure to conform and fight. But one can hardly say that British soldiers fighting in wars since the Second World War, have been fighting to give British people the ability ‘to choose’. Iraq, Afghanistan and Serbia were about geopolitical power struggles, and maintaining peace and order in other parts of the world. The First and Second World Wars were about this too. We didn’t fight the Nazis because we thought they were bad people – even if we knew they were bad people – we fought them because they were becoming too powerful and knew they would eventually eat us – if we didn’t try to do something about it.

How does that land, when inserted into Mercer’s quote?

White poppies are attention seeking rubbish. Ignore the wearers of them. If you don’t want to wear a poppy don’t bother; they fought and died so the British government could win geopolitical power struggles in other parts of the world. But don’t deliberately try and hijack it’s symbolism for your own ends.

But even if soldiers fight and die so ‘you can choose’ it is to choose whether or not to participate in Remembrance Day, or choose whether to wear a read or white poppy.

On the one hand he’s saying soldiers should be remembered because they give us the right to choose.

On the other…

He’s insulting people for exercising the choice, that he is valorising soldiers for fighting and dieing to give them.

Well done soldiers for fighting and dieing to give people the ability to chose, but bad people for choosing something that I don’t like!

It doesn’t really make any sense.

Johnny Mercer would have made a lot more sense if he had said something like this instead.

Soldiers were conscripted or paid to fight and die, so the British government could win geopolitical power struggles in other parts of the world. Some of these wars helped preserve the British way of life, and in particular the British tradition of freedom of expression and freedom of thought. Of the many freedoms that you have as a result of these efforts, one includes the freedom to associate and congregate with others, to remember whoever you want, and whatever you want, in whatever way you want. This goes for what kind of poppy you might chose to wear on your suit. If you want to wear a red one like me, wear a red one. If you want to wear a white one, perhaps for reasons I disagree with, wear a white one.  If you don’t want to wear a poppy, you don’t have to. Whatever our differences, the most important thing is that, as as society, we are free to exercise our right to chose, and that right, at times, is something others have fought and died to help preserve. 

And What about this, addressed to Johnny?

Johnny, your tweets are attention seeking rubbish. Its best that everyone ignores them (it’s not hard). Johnny, if you don’t want to write something that celebrates human freedoms and choice, then don’t bother; British soldiers fought and died so others could exercise freedom and choice (without being lambasted by you). Don’t deliberately try and hijack the freedoms and choices made by other people, to your own small-p (penis) political ends. 

Maybe Mercer should take a leaf out of what the Royal British Legion say…

The Royal British Legion says there is no “correct” way to wear a poppy – just that you must “wear it with pride”. Most people tend to pin one on a coat lapel.

 

 

 

James McLean

From BBC article

So what would imaginary Irish Catholic Republican Johnny McMercer tweet?

White poppies are attention seeking rubbish. Ignore the wearers of them. If you don’t want to wear a poppy don’t bother; they fought and died [and slaughtered] so the British government could terrorise and maintain political and military and economic and social power over Irish republicans and Catholics in Northern Ireland. But don’t deliberately try and hijack it’s symbolism for your own ends.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8d6415137o

And what’s this? David Squires.

 

 

 

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