White Poppies

This is something along the lines of what I'm hoping to say in church on Sunday:

I’d like to say a few words about why I wear a white poppy with my red poppy.

Remembrance Day means different things to different people and we each remember the dead in different ways. Some people will remember people they once knew and loved who died fighting in a war, some people will hold onto a memory of a relative they never knew that has been passed on to them by family members. They may well feel proud that these people did their duty and died serving their country. Others will not have known anyone personally who has died as a member of the armed forces, but will feel some sense of gratitude, especially for those who died in World War II.

So I appreciate that it is important to honour soldiers killed as a result of war and I also realise that the money collected by the sale of red poppies does a lot to help families of soldiers killed in areas of conflict as well as those soldiers who survive but with loss of limbs or other severely disabling after-effects.

However, for me following Jesus is about heeding his call to be a peacemaker, so I have been uneasy about wearing a poppy that could be seen as condoning war. I believe it would be far better if our governments worked harder to find peaceful solutions and were much less willing to send soldiers off to risk life and limb. As a result I am a lot happier if I can combine the red poppy with a white poppy that more clearly represents my hope for a day when war might happen a lot less often and perhaps one day cease entirely.

The idea of decoupling Armistice Day, the red poppy and later Remembrance Day from their military culture dates back to 1926, just a few years after the British Legion was persuaded to try using the red poppy as a fundraising tool in Britain.

A member of the No More War Movement suggested that the British Legion should be asked to imprint 'No More War' in the centre of the red poppies instead of ‘Haig Fund’.

The details of any discussion with the British Legion are unknown but as the centre of the red poppy displayed the ‘Haig Fund’ imprint until 1994 it was clearly not successful.

A few years later the idea was again discussed by the Co-operative Women's Guild who in 1933 produced the first white poppies to be worn on Armistice Day, which later came to be called Remembrance Day. The Guild stressed that the white poppy was not intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War - a war in which many of the women lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers.

The following year the newly founded Peace Pledge Union joined in with the distribution of the white poppies and later took over their annual promotion.

The White Poppy symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflict than by killing strangers. The work of the Peace Pledge Union is primarily educational and draws attention to many of our social values and habits, which make continuing violence a likely outcome. Buying a White Poppy helps to fund this valuable work.