A pacifist critique of the red poppy: reflections on British war commemorations’ increasingly hegemonic militarism

ABSTRACT

The red or ‘Flanders’ poppy has become the ubiquitous emblem of British war commemorations, yet it is also becoming more hegemonic and militaristic: the poppy’s meaning has always been contested, but its dominant interpretation has become increasingly intolerant. Building on literature on the poppy and war commemorations, on pacifist approaches to security studies and on militarism, this article sketches a pacifist critique of the poppy’s increasingly hegemonic militarism. It starts by sketching out a history of the poppy’s contested meaning. A first-order critique then reflects on the hegemonic poppy narrative’s internal dissonances, on the selective memory which it reveals, and on the blinkered horizon of compassion and identification which it promotes. A second-order critique exposes the broader political and ethical consequences including for the military-industrial-entertainment complex, for liberal institutionalist projects, and for veterans. The final section reflects on the resulting unease that can be triggered by the poppy’s hegemonizing function in British civil religion and calls for poppy commemorations to better accommodate deeper reflections on the causes of war, militarism, and the potentially complicit role played by war commemorations.

KEYWORDS:

• Poppy
• remembrance
• war
• pacifism
• militarism
• hegemony

The red poppy emerged after the First World War (WWI) as a symbol that would soon become the dominant emblem of British war commemoration, even if the precise meaning of that poppy and indeed the proper way to remember the war were contested from the start.¹ The poppy’s stature in British civic rituals also evolved with its context – through the interwar years, the Second World War (WWII), the Cold War with its proxy wars, Pax Americana, and the post-9/11 wars – but, a century on, the red poppy has become increasingly ubiquitous, commercialized, and hegemonic. It now colours memorials, vehicles and clothes in the run-up to Remembrance Day across Britain. Every year, there is pressure to wear it as a symbol of remembrance and respect for members of the armed forces who fought and sacrificed their lives for British freedom and security. Questioning the symbol or its hegemonic meaning is sure to stir controversy. Nevertheless, behind the chorus of dominant public opinion can be heard voices expressing concerns. In 2006, Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow decried an ‘unpleasant breed of poppy fascism’ putting pressure on him to wear a red poppy on air (Snow 2006). Veterans for Peace UK, founded in 2011, has denounced the patriotism and militarism channelled through the red poppy and promoted white poppies instead (Binenti 2018; Boulton 2013).

Meanwhile, there has been renewed scholarly interest in the poppy, whether to discuss recent trends (Keating 2014; Withers 2019), its enduring appeal (Iles 2008), or its historically contested meaning (Andrews 2015; Fox 2014; Saunders 2013). Particularly notable is Basham’s feminist analysis of the poppy (Basham 2016), which expresses concerns about the gendered, racialized dimensions of militarized discourses around the symbol. The broader subject of militarism – defined by Enloe as ‘the step-by-step process by which something becomes controlled by, dependent on, or derives value from the military or militaristic criteria’ (Enloe 2000, 291) – is also gaining considerable academic attention (Stavrianakis and Selby 2013; Stavrianakis and Stern 2018). And there is plenty of scholarship on remembering war (Bourke 2004; Danilova 2015; Winter 2014) and on the centenary of the First World War (Andrews 2018; Beaumont 2015; Jeffery 2015; Winter 2017). Parallel to this, also burgeoning is literature on the potential contribution of pacifism to topics central to politics, international relations (IR), and security studies (Howes 2010; Jackson et al. 2020; Jackson 2018a, 2018b). Still missing in peer-reviewed research, however, is a specifically pacifist critical discussion of evolving trends of red poppy commemorations. This article is a step in that direction. Building on historiographies of the poppy and on work in critical security studies, on war commemorations, on pacifism and on militarism, it articulates an original pacifist critique of the increasingly hegemonic militaristic drift of poppy-centred British war commemorations.

The argument proceeds in five sections. The first reviews the history of the poppy’s contested meaning to contextualize its increasingly hegemonic militaristic overtones. The second briefly explains how pacifism tends to be silenced in academic discussions, and how it can be mobilized to develop a critique of poppy commemorations on two levels. The third articulates a first-order critique focusing on the prevailing poppy narrative’s internal dissonances, selective memory and blinkered horizon of compassion and identification. The fourth turns to a second-order critique exposing the broader political and ethical consequences including for the military-industrial-entertainment complex, for liberal institutionalist projects, and for veterans. The fifth takes a step back to reflect on the annual dilemma – whether to wear a poppy – confronting those concerned by the increasingly hegemonic militarism of British war commemorations, and then concludes by calling for granting greater space and attention to pacifist contributions.

Mirroring these five sections, the article thus makes five main original contributions to existing scholarship. First, it provides a potted history of pacifist contestations of militaristic interpretations of remembrance and plots the recently intensifying hegemony of militaristic frames. Second, it identifies three themes with which a pacifist critique destabilizes the poppy’s official narratives from within. Third, it considers some of the broader political and ethical consequences of contemporary poppy-centred commemorations. Fourth, it reflects on the annual decision facing those Britons who share pacifist concerns about now-hegemonic poppy patriotism. Fifth, in so doing, the article provides an example not only of the kind of enriching contribution that pacifist approaches can make to the study of politics, international relations, critical security and critical military studies, but also a distinctive ‘ethico-political’ critique of ‘the mutual imbrication of politics and war’ which hopes to be insightful to those engaged daily ‘in the terrain of politics and collective action’ (Hutchings 2018, 188).

A history of contested meaning

Here is not the place to examine in detail the poppy’s botanical varieties, the long history of the medical and narcotic uses of the opium that can be extracted from it, its central role in British colonial wars, or the numerous works of art that it has inspired across the ages (Saunders 2013, chap. 1–3). The exact chronology of its adoption as a symbol of postwar remembrance can also be found elsewhere (Saunders 2013, chap. 4–6). The fact is that the red poppy inspired numerous poet soldiers during WWI, growing abundantly as it did in the war-torn fields of Flanders and northern France, blooming where so many had fallen, strikingly red like their blood, symbolizing fragility and regeneration, and thus providing a fitting metaphor for this extraordinarily brutal war. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the red ‘Flanders’ poppy soon became the favoured symbol with which to remember the war and its victims in Britain as well as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand – though notably not in Ireland (because of its association with British rule), and nor did it catch on in France for example, despite some efforts to promote it (Iles 2008, 208–9; Saunders 2013, chap. 5, 9).

However, even though it has become a widely embraced symbol in Britain, it has not meant the same thing to all those who have adopted it. For some, it conveys the memory of personal and/or collective suffering and loss (‘lest we forget’). For others, it is a respectful reminder of heroic and righteous struggles (‘shoulder to shoulder with all who serve’). For others still, it helps recall and warn about the horrors of war (‘never again’). In other words, what is remembered about war through the poppy ranges from the personal to the international and can just as much reinforce one’s patriotism as one’s pacifism. Hence Andrews’ remark that ‘remembrance and the production of cultural memories … have always been contested’, in fact that the ‘process of creating and contesting memories of the First World War began during the course of the war itself’ (Andrews 2018, 2–3).

Indeed, the poppy’s very ‘capacity to encapsulate multiple meanings and to represent different things’ is arguably one explanation for why it has proved such a powerful symbol (Iles 2008, 206). Much like the Cenotaph, it ‘function[s] so well as a commemoration because its essential indeterminacy … allow[s] mourners to ascribe to it their own feelings and thoughts, whether of private grief, patriotism or pacifism’ (Jenkings et al. 2012, 360). This indeterminacy leaves it open to different preferred interpretations, and to political capture.

When a country has just emerged from years of total war fed at least in part by patriotic narratives of courage and duty, some of that patriotism can be expected in ensuing remembrance narratives. Nonetheless,

In years following the war, in the face of the army of the dead, the effort to commemorate went beyond the conventional shibboleths of patriotism. Yes, these millions died for their country, but to say so was merely to begin, not to conclude, the search for the ‘meaning’ of the unprecedented slaughter of the Great War. (Winter 2014, 2)

If patriotism had intoxicated belligerent nations and fed militarism during the war, the hangover in the 1920s and 1930s was marked by a ‘revulsion against war that was widespread in Britain’ (Gough 2000, 214). Even though few commemorative memorials and rituals were explicitly pacifist (Winter 2014, 95), the overwhelming tone of remembrance both in Britain and beyond was of grief, not ‘hatred, or triumph, or worship of the military’ (Winter 2014, 98). ‘By 1919ʹ, as Harrison puts it, ‘if the war had any justification, it was as the war that would end all wars’ (Harrison 2012, 51). In that context, one of the reasons the poppy developed an ‘enduring appeal’ was its ability to capture ‘the universality of bereavement in the Europe of the Great War and its aftermath’ (Winter 2014, 5). The poppy could accommodate at the same time pride in the military victory, grief for immense losses, and an aspiration that this would not have to be experienced again. In other words, in the immediate aftermath of the war, there was no necessary contradiction between honouring the military and wanting to avoid future conflict, and the poppy could signify both military pride and a longing for peace.

It took the tireless work of two women, Moina Belle Michael and Anna Guérin (one American, the other French), to raise the profile of the red poppy as a symbol of remembrance (Saunders 2013, chap. 5). They campaigned in the USA, France and across the British Empire, but in Britain it was Guérin who convinced the newly formed Royal British Legion (RBL) to adopt the poppy ‘as part of its Appeal Fund’ in 1921 (Saunders 2013, 106). Ever since, the RBL has been responsible for its production and distribution in the UK. Every year millions of poppies are produced by disabled veterans it in its London factory. The funds raised provide financial, social and emotional support for veterans, serving soldiers, and their dependents (Saunders 2013, 132–3).

In 1933, concerns about rising militarism across Europe led the Co-operative Women’s Guild to produce and sell white poppies to symbolize ‘commitment to peace and avoidance of another war’ (Andrews 2018, 8) in addition to commemorating all the victims of war, but this was immediately controversial (Saunders 2013, chap. 7). It had not been ‘intended to offend’, but ‘many veterans felt’ that it ‘undermined their contribution’, and the RBL saw it as ‘an unwelcome competitor to its own emblem’ (Iles 2008, 209). More generally, ‘social divisions’ in the 1930s ‘led to political demonstrations from left and right’ on issues of commemoration and war preparation: remembrance and the revival of militarism were inevitably among the topics that proved divisive in the era of the Great Recession and the rise of fascism (Andrews 2018, 8; Gregory 1994, 149–83; Harrison 2012, 50–5; Saunders 2013, 157–66).

When WWII broke out, unlike WWI, it was ‘not greeted with patriotic bravado’: memories of the previous war taught many to approach this next one as a sombre necessity, not with jingoistic swagger (Winter 2014, 8). Moreover, ‘Many of the commemorative forms created after 1918 were intended to warn’, so ‘when the warning was not heard, … that message of hope, of using the witness of those who had suffered during the war to prevent its recurrence, was bound to fade away’ (Winter 2014, 9). Remembrance – either red or white – had not helped prevent another devastating war. But WWII also came with new ingredients such as fascism and the Holocaust, as a result of which that war would increasingly come to be seen as ‘Britain’s good war’, in contrast to WWI, which had ‘seemed futile’ (Andrews 2018, 10; also Harrison 2012, 39–41). In other words, to remembrance narratives focused on the tragedies of trench warfare, of colonial envies, and of total war, would now also be added the memory of fighting for a good cause against menacing foreign threats.

In the subsequent decades, the poppy became a vehicle to remember the fallen across all the wars involving British personnel – wars ostensibly to restore or preserve order and democracy or to defend important national interests, wars therefore not futile but apparently necessary and legitimate. Wearing a poppy during remembrance commemorations on Armistice Day (11 November), Remembrance Sunday (the nearest Sunday), and at most a couple of days before those was a way to show respect and remember the lives lost to all those wars (Saunders 2013, 142–3).

At the height of the Cold War, with fears of Mutually Assured Destruction and the enduring quagmire of the Vietnam War, the poppy quietly endured as a discreet symbol with which to remember past wars (Saunders 2013, 167). Yet the funds raised by poppy appeals started stagnating in the 1960s and 1970s (Kalia 2018). The 1970s was also ‘a difficult period’ for the RBL: it ‘lost a whole generation’ with the passing of many of those who had directly experienced WWI and who therefore had the strongest connection with remembrance rituals, whilst successive generations of people born after the war struggled to ‘remember’ events that they had not experienced and felt ‘remembrance rituals’ to be ‘little more than backward-looking, empty rhetoric’ (Iles 2008, 207). The white poppy struggled too: not only did sales keep declining, it was also notably denounced in Parliament as of ‘deep distaste’ by Prime Minister Thatcher in 1986 (Iles 2008, 210).

At the same time, the RBL’s poppy appeals raised more funds during the conflicts of the 1982 Falklands War and the 1991 Gulf War (Fox 2014, 25). Things also started to change in the 1990s – ‘a period of sustained growth for the remembrance industry’ (Iles 2008, 207), of ‘growing participation in battlefield tourism’, of a ‘spreading orthodoxy of ritual remembrance’ (Gough 2000, 214), and of a ‘new assertiveness about recollection’ (Ferguson in Iles 2008, 207). With this also came mounting ‘pressure to wear poppies’ (Gough 2000, 214), perhaps in part because the ending of the Cold War invited some rethinking concerning British identity and history in a new world order which Britain had helped to shape.

The wars in Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq from 2003 also affected the poppy. Unpopular though these wars were, there was widespread sympathy for the troops sent over to fight. Dixon argues that ‘a loose and diverse group of politicians, military chiefs, newspapers and pressure groups’ launched a ‘Militarisation Offensive’ in 2006 in order ‘to generate support for the “good war” in Afghanistan and to repair the damage caused to the military’s reputation by the “bad war” in Iraq’ (Dixon 2018, 1). New initiatives indeed emerged to express renewed solidarity, such as Veterans Day from 2006 (later renamed Armed Forces Day), Help for Heroes from 2007, The Sun’s annual Military Awards from 2008, and the Invictus Games from 2014 (Andrews 2018, 14; Dixon 2018, 15–20; Kelly 2013, 728). The RBL nearly doubled its revenues from its poppy appeal in the second half of the millennium’s first decade (Fox 2014, 26). In 2011, the RBL produced ‘a new strapline to their annual poppy campaign’: ‘shoulder to shoulder with all who serve’, which ‘seemed to imply that buying a poppy signified support for the contemporary armed forces, rather than remembrance of those who had died in previous conflicts, or support for injured veterans’ (Andrews 2015, 110). In 2014, the centenary of the start of WWI, Education Secretary Michael Gove stirred controversy by criticizing the ‘Left-wing’ reading of that war and defending British involvement in it as ‘more than justified’ (Jeffery 2015, 564).

By now, the red poppy has become a ‘hyper-commemorative spectacle’ (Withers 2019, 2). No longer just a discreet symbol pined on lapels for a few days, poppies can now be found sometimes all year round adorning private cars, company lorries, house fronts and pub fronts (with sometimes complex installations including hundreds of poppies flowing around soldiers’ silhouettes, tanks, and gravestones), but also police vehicles, army tanks, football shirts, birdhouses, onesies, underwear, Christmas jumpers and wedding dresses (@giantpoppywatch 2019; Binenti 2018; Tweedy 2015). Hence Ramsay’s comment that ‘poppies these days are more bling than they once were, more commercial in feel’ (Ramsay 2018). Andrews speaks of a British ‘obsession’ with ‘Remembrance, histories of the first and second world wars, and the military’ (Andrews 2015, 105). In other words, nowadays ‘The British nation-state is characterized by a condition of continuous remembrance … – a state where collective mourning verges on euphoria’ (Withers 2019, 2).

Moreover, ‘Poppy Appeals launches’ focus increasingly ‘on the celebration of serving soldiers’ (Basham 2016, 885). Over time, ‘the British Tommy’ has ‘taken over from the Miner as a national working-class hero, stoically carrying out the nation’s dangerous dirty work’ (Andrews 2015, 215). One can even argue that ‘war memorials and associated myths and ceremonies may have less to do with remembering the past and honouring those killed on the battlefield than with rationalising recruitment for current or future wars’ (Herborn and Hutchinson 2014, 134).

Furthermore, ‘Red poppies are as notable for their hegemony as for their militarism; not only are millions sold each November, but the act of not wearing one is frequently read as a political statement’ (Rossdale 2019, 61). Some tabloids are fond of denouncing the few public figures who choose not to wear one, just as they expressed fury when FIFA banned poppies on England football shirts in 2011 and again opposed black armbands with embroidered red poppies in 2016, because they were (not unreasonably) deemed ‘political’ (Andrews 2017; Fox 2014; Harrison 2012, 67; Saunders 2013, 151; Tweedy 2015, 7). In this evolving context, ‘the wearing of white poppies stands as a very public refusal of the militarised spectacle of remembrance’ (Rossdale 2019, 61), but it is also passionately denounced as ‘disrespectful’, ‘offensive’, ‘self-righteous’, ‘unpatriotic’, as an ‘attention-seeking’ act of ‘cowards’ (Harris 2018; Kennaugh 2018; Weston 2018). Commemorating war may not necessarily be party-political, but it is always political in projecting particular and contestable readings of history, identity, and morality (Fox 2014; Harrison 2012, 55–6, 66; Winter 2014, 82).

What the poppy means to Britons has therefore evolved with the changing context, steered by the RBL and the institutions who coordinate remembrance, and echoed by broader public engagement. As Keating remarks, however, if ‘dominant interpretations of remembrance’ today ‘revolve around militarism, commercialization and political exploitation, … the troubling conclusion is those sentiments perhaps reflect contemporary values instead of pointing to a problem with Remembrance traditions’ (Keating 2014, 118–9). In other words, if the poppy has turned more visibly militaristic and hegemonic, it is possibly merely a reflection of a gradual revival of British militarism and an increasing intolerance for those who object to it.

Unshackling pacifism

Jackson has demonstrated that pacifism is largely ‘subjugated’ in IR in the dual (and Foucauldian) sense that it suffers from both ‘silencing’ and ‘shaming’: it is ‘simply not mentioned or discussed in relation to relevant subjects’, and ‘when pacifism is confronted head-on, it is virtually always dismissed and denigrated’ (Jackson 2018b, 165–6). All pacifists are familiar with their caricature as absolutist, naïve and reckless in apparently refusing categorically to accept the need for any form of violence ever. How then, the ridiculing goes, would they respond to a mugger or to Hitler? The pacifist response is in fact less naïve or empirically groundless as the question might assume, and it does not take extensive digging into pacifism to appreciate that it is the caricaturing itself which is simplistic and unfair (Cady 2010; Howes 2010; Jackson 2018b).

For one, whether pacifism is defined as ‘opposition to violence’ (Jackson 2018b, 167) or ‘the view that war, by its very nature, is morally wrong’ (Cady 2010, 17), it also advocates ‘a comprehensive political project aimed at constructing a nonviolent form of politics’ (Jackson 2018b, 167) and the view that ‘humans should work for peaceful resolution of conflict’ (Cady 2010, 17). There would be fewer muggers and Hitlers in a society of less structural violence and less vindictive peace treaties in the first place. Moreover, pacifists can point to plenty of historical examples of not ineffective non-violent responses to such scenarios (even Hitler) (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011). Furthermore, although a few pacifists do cling to an absolute rejection of violence, most variants of pacifism and indeed most pacifists do not. Most concede to the potential justifiability of violence in a very limited range of scenarios. The consequent variety of moral and practical scenarios produces what Cady (2010) identifies as a continuum of pacifist positions between warism (itself internally diverse along variations of just war thinking) and absolute pacifism. Either way, my aim here is neither to critically discuss objections to pacifism (for this, see Cady 2010, 93–104; Jackson 2018b, 167–9) nor to arbitrate between different types of pacifism, but to articulate a pacifist critique of the hegemonic framing of poppy commemorations.

Jackson notes that the subjugation of pacifism in IR ‘works to maintain the core identity and boundaries of IR as a discipline concerned with states, war, military force, national security, coercion, alliances, strategy and the like’ (Jackson 2018b, 170). He furthermore notes that ‘there is an entire cultural industry invested in the war system, including … war memorials and commemorations’, and that ‘it is obvious that pacifism and nonviolence … directly threatens the continuation of [this] military-industrial-entertainment complex’ (Jackson 2018b, 170–1). Jackson goes on to develop a first and second-order critique of this ‘anti-pacifist discourse’ (Jackson 2018b, 167). He explains:

A first-order or immanent critique uses a discourse’s internal contradictions, mistakes, misconceptions, and omissions to criticise it on its own terms and expose the events and perspectives that the discourse fails to acknowledge or address. The point of this form of internal critique is not necessarily to establish the ‘correct’ or ‘real truth’ of the subject beyond doubt, but rather to destabilise dominant interpretations and demonstrate the inherently contested and political nature of the discourse.

A second-order critique entails reflecting on the broader political and ethical consequences – the ideological effects – of the representations and more importantly in this case, the silences, enabled by the discourse. Specifically, it involves an exploration of the ways in which the discourse functions as a ‘symbolic technology’ (Laffey and Weldes 1997) that can be wielded by particular elites and institutions, to: structure the primary subject positions, accepted knowledge, commonsense and legitimate policy responses to the actors and events being described; exclude and de-legitimise alternative knowledge and practice; naturalise a particular political and social order; and construct and sustain a hegemonic regime of truth. (2008, 379)

Jackson’s two-layered methodology is not specifically or exclusively a pacifist one. What makes it appealing is how it focuses first on critiquing a discourse on its own terms before then reflecting on its broader consequences. Jackson uses it effectively to dissect misrepresentations of pacifism (Jackson 2018b) and the silencing of state terrorism in terrorism studies (Jackson 2008). My purpose here is to apply this methodology to examine the hegemonic and militaristic drift of poppy commemorations from a pacifist perspective, and in so doing provide an illustration both of the ongoing subjugation of pacifism and of what its unshackling can help draw attention to.

First-order critique

Informed by a pacifist perspective, three separate arguments emerge to compose a first-order critique of hegemonic contemporary poppy discourses and performances: that they can display what comes across as a narrative dissonance, that what they choose to remember is often rather selective, and that the solidarity expressed tends to be blinkered.

Narrative dissonance

As already mentioned, since the turn of the new millennium, the poppy has come to be deployed in a variety of ways that have caused controversy. In 2012 three RAF Tornado fighter jets were graced with red poppies (Royal Air Force 2012). In 2013, the RBL tweeted a picture of children holding giant poppies and wearing t-shirts with the inscription: ‘future soldiers’ (Kleinfeld 2015). Major weapons manufacturers such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin have long sponsored national poppy appeals and other RBL initiatives (Binenti 2018; Tweedy 2015). Such developments might be compatible with an interpretation of the poppy as celebrating the work of the armed forces, but they are less compatible with those interpretations that remember war as horrific and to be repeated ‘never again’.

One of the most prolific, fervent and eloquent (even if controversial) early contributors to the modern pacifist tradition was Leo Tolstoy (McKeogh 2009). He, like Jesus, railed passionately against hypocrites (Christoyannopoulos 2020, 72–4; Tolstoy 2001). One of his favourite targets was the notion of ‘Christian soldiers’, for Tolstoy a contradiction in terms (given his pacifist interpretation of Christianity). In politicians and commentators preaching peace but preparing for war, alleging innocent intentions whilst concomitantly oiling the machinery of industrial violence, Tolstoy saw self-serving role models of hypocrisy and moral depravity who furthermore corrupt the moral intentions with which they adorn themselves by giving them a bad name. Tolstoy was keen to expose such dissonances and called his audience to reach back to the pure intentions alleged but betrayed by such hypocrites.

War is brutal. Its scars, visible and hidden, are deep and painful. Its victims and casualties include some who courageously fought for others and for laudable ideals, but also, always, long lists of innocent victims and grief-stricken survivors. The red poppy can, and sometimes does, accommodate the memory of all such scars. But how should a victim of Tornado fire – intended or collateral – interpret the poppy on that jet? Is the meaning of the poppy for weapons manufacturers compatible with a veteran’s post-traumatic memory, and, if not, which one should take precedence? Are ‘future soldiers’ wearing their t-shirts fully aware of the traumas of war and burdens they can look forward to carrying as veterans? Echoing therefore how contested the meaning of the poppy always has been, there appears to be a narrative dissonance between the sombre memory of the violence experienced in war and the exploitation of a popular symbol to promote and give ethical coating to the industry that produces war. This dissonance is jarring in at least two distinct but related ways: in the first instance, to observers looking to interpret its purposeful display, the dissonant meanings ascribed to the poppy can cause confusion; but also, when some actors invoke the poppy as a solemn symbol of commemoration to grieve about the horrors of war, yet then act in ways which seem to undermine these meanings, this dissonance smacks of more blatant inconsistency, arguably even hypocrisy.

At its starkest extreme, this narrative dissonance appears in examples such as English Defence League demonstrators posing for a Nazi salute whilst wearing a red poppy, and more generally in the widespread adoption by neofascists, racists and xenophobes of the red poppy as one of their favourite symbols (Andrews 2017, 6; Dearden 2014; Ev 2018; Fox 2014, 27–8). That many of the victims ostensibly remembered through the poppy fell whilst fighting such ideologies of intolerance appears overlooked in the process. If the poppy must carry not only the sombre memory of war but also that of some of the ideological values for which those wars have been fought, then right-wing extremist views are not the best candidates to ensure consonance between that sombre remembrance and those values. If anything, pacifism is a more consistent candidate ideology.

Selective memory

As Basham (2016) argues, the poppy has come to celebrate primarily patriotic masculine heroism and glorify the white Tommy, thereby ignoring women and non-whites, despite their very considerable input and sacrifices. It also ignores those whose contribution to war was away from the front: factory workers, food producers, rationed citizens, children who died in mining accidents extracting fuel for the war machine (Andrews 2018, 3), and in general those whose contribution was indirect and away from the war theatre. Also ignored are conscientious objectors, even though those who were punished for their principled objection were also in effect victims of the war.

Moreover, by focusing on the heroism of soldiers, what tends to be obscured is what soldiers did, which includes killing, maiming, raping, and torturing – especially in colonial counterinsurgency campaigns, but also in WWII, in Northern Ireland, and in the War on Terror (Basham 2016, 884–5; Cobain 2012; Emsley 2013). Armed forces personnel are instead primarily remembered for their heroism and sacrifices, and ‘are now assumed to be victims’ (Beaumont 2015, 530). But ‘designating soldiers as “the fallen”, and their deaths as sacrifices, enables mourning and remembrance to be separated out from military violence’, and celebrating soldiers’ ‘service and duty’ erases memories of ‘war as visceral and embodied – as violence to bodies, ecology, and territory’ (Basham 2016, 885). Thus, when commemorations are focused on the death and suffering of soldiers, ‘their role in bringing about the deaths of others is obscured’ (Basham 2016, 889). It might be easier to stomach and to sell, but it amounts to a partial recollection of the agony felt by fellow humans during those historical events.

The victims of war are many, and the scars they bear remain open for decades after the guns fall silent. We would also ‘do well to remind ourselves of the war crimes and other atrocities carried out by British and American service personnel, which have also been written out of our grand narrative of war’ (Bourke 2004, 475), because usually these atrocities are very much remembered by their victims in their own historical narratives, and can be revived for political and indeed warmongering purposes. It is important to remember war, its victims, and their sacrifices. But if our memories are so limited to our own tribes that they ignore or obscure the suffering of many others, if we only commemorate or even celebrate a narrow slice of the huge canvas of war, then perhaps we should not be surprised when other victims find themselves offended, or when this offence comes to mobilize political forces that dispute our selective memory.

Besides, the soldiers’ suffering which is remembered with the poppy often focuses predominantly on the supposed heroics of the battlefield (McCartney 2011). Quite apart that, according to some veterans, ‘there is nothing heroic’ about many of the ways in which soldiers end up being killed (quoted in Harrison 2012, 58),

images less conducive to myth, such as the WWI veterans who were emotionally and physically scarred by war and struggled to return to everyday life, or sometimes turned to drink and subjected their families to physical violence, have been airbrushed from history, as has the immense emotional labour of women who looked after so many mentally and physically damaged veterans. (Andrews 2015, 112)

Indeed, veterans and their relatives have long denounced the contrast between the speeches and posturing on Remembrance Day and the support and funding provided to those returning soldiers and their families. As early as 1921, ‘Armistice Day ceremonies were disrupted by groups of unemployed ex-servicemen with placards stating: “The Dead are remembered but we are forgotten”’ (Gough 2000, 215).

McCartney (2011; 2014) in fact shows that this has been slowly changing since the 1960s and 70s, that the image of soldiers as ‘victims’ is gaining increasing attention, as is returning soldiers’ psychological trauma and its impact on domestic and socio-economic life. But she also shows that the image the soldier as hero still gets considerably more attention, and that complaints about the dishonourable treatment of veterans by the government continue in the twenty-first century, especially with regards to low prioritization and underfunding of their needs (McCartney 2011). She then observes that the proliferation of the soldier-as-victim image risks constraining the government’s ability to deploy armed forces overseas, and makes recruitment and retention harder. Indeed, placing less emphasis on battlefield heroics and remembering more prominently the scars carried by veterans and their families might dampen militaristic propensities and encourage more soul-searching commemorations.

Blinkered solidarity

Related but different to the issue of selective memory is the restricted scope of the compassion and identification expressed by current poppy commemorations. Tolstoy complained about all forms of patriotism. He rejected the notion that some types of patriotism were better than others, such as anticolonial as opposed to imperialistic patriotism. What he disliked with patriotism was its restrictive framing. When a population suffers violence, enslavement, oppression or some other injustice, Tolstoy insists this is morally wrong as such, not just because it happens to have been inflicted on ‘us’. Moral outrage at an enemy’s behaviour need not be couched in patriotic frames: the infliction of injustice is unjust, whoever the victim and perpetrator happen to be. It is the act that needs eradicating, not the actor. Solidarity with victims of violence and injustice is worthy independently of the victim’s proximity to us (Christoyannopoulos 2020, 77–80; Tolstoy 1967).

We identify with the victims we are told about. Collective identities are built on historical narratives. When the poppy is intermingled with patriotic storylines, the remembering, the compassion and the solemn respect that are expressed by wearing it are focused on compatriots: those wars were caused by foreign threats, and the mournful gratitude is directed at ‘our’ victims. The wartime solidarity, the valiant heroism, the moral lessons are all encased in binary identities which simplify and deplete collective memory. Yet the mobilization of selfless solidarity in the face of adversity is not an instinct limited to specific national identities: all human collectives do this. There is nothing particularly ‘British’ or ‘German’ to heroic behaviour, exemplary morality, or sacrificial solidarity. Neither were all the heroes and villains on the same sides. What was right or wrong was not so because of who did it, but because of what was done.

When remembrance of war is framed in patriotic language, the horizon of our compassion narrows, and it becomes increasingly tempting to explain the morality or immorality of particular acts of war based on who committed them rather than on the act itself. This blinkered history then feeds back onto a reading of pan-human instincts as pertaining to specific identities (‘we’ were generous, ‘they’ were aggressive) – which incidentally clears the way for potentially even more simplistic and racist narratives that blame specific identities and affirm our moral superiority. Commemorating past suffering and heroism within patriotic strictures therefore distorts our reading of human inclinations, and thus limits our understanding of human nature and identity. Widening our memory beyond soldiers and compatriots unchains instinctive feelings of compassion, solidarity and identification from arbitrary selectivity and focuses our mind on the morality of acts of war, rather than just their actors, in turn helping us consider all future decisions about war differently.

All victims and heroes deserve mournful compassion and gratitude, not just our own. Some commemorations of the World Wars do ‘frame those wars as common international disasters’, but the dominant framing in commemorative spectacles is either national or local (paraphrasing Winter 2017, 240–1). Poppy commemorations overwhelmingly concentrate on British troops, British sacrifices, and the British experience of war. Even when moves are made to embrace a more multicultural Britishness in the process (Ware 2012), the then more multicultural militarism which wears the poppy still focuses on the heroics and tragedies on the British side of these conflicts. To remember war sacrifices is of course legitimate and important, but why not accommodate also (and just as prominently) the memory of actors and victims on other sides, especially if it complicates any oversimplified historical narratives? Why not remember wars together, including in those commemorations the descendants of all those affected by those conflicts, framing both our admiration and our remorse in a nuanced analysis of the behaviour which human beings of all identities are capable of?

Second-order critique

Where a first-order critique exposes in the framing of contemporary poppy commemorations some internal narrative dissonances, a selective memory, and a blinkered horizon of compassion and identification, a second-order critique turns to the broader political and ethical consequences of these commemorations, and who benefits from them.

Feeding the military-industrial-entertainment complex

One obvious beneficiary is the ‘military-industrial-entertainment complex’ (Jackson 2018b, 170). In an article focused on WWI, Andrews remarks that ‘a range of intersecting institutional, financial and political motivations’ attract ‘organisations and individuals … to the culturally appealing ideas of nationhood that WW1 narratives offer’ (Andrews 2015, 104). Poppy commemorations present tempting opportunities for financial profit, improved moral stature, and electability, as well as the potential subjugation of certain types of dissent. Plenty of actors in the military-industrial-entertainment complex, including politicians, pressure groups, media outlets, commercial interests and indeed the armed forces, can therefore exploit poppy commemorations to posture as righteous, derive personal advantages, and embellish their brand (Binenti 2018; Tweedy 2015). Indeed the poppy brand is so valuable than even companies outside the military-industrial-entertainment complex can profit from associating with it (Tweedy 2015; Harrison 2012).

Poppy commemorations are also an opportunity to polish the national brand. Jackson and Dexter explain that ‘the initiation of political violence requires a set of society-wide military norms, values, identities, institutions and practices which both enable and legitimise political violence’. These values and identities ‘are rooted in a series of meta-narratives’, ‘public narratives’ and ‘myths’ which ‘can be found in official state discourse, in popular culture such as films, novels and computer games, in academic texts, in the media and in folk stories or history books’. These meta-narratives are important since they are what national leaders will ‘draw upon’ when they want to ‘legitimise or “sell”’ the next military adventure (Jackson and Dexter 2014, 6).

One might expect the meta-narratives of liberal democracies to be less readily amenable to the mobilization of military violence, yet countries such as the USA, the UK and France have continued to grant themselves the right to potentially unleash nuclear weapons, to compete as leading arms producers and exporters, and to collaborate closely to intervene recurrently in other countries across the world. In the case of Britain, Basham argues that this relies on the ‘national military myth’, prominent in poppy commemorations, that British ‘armed forces, though strong, are only deployed when necessary’ – even though in reality Britain ‘has waged war more frequently than most other countries’ (Basham 2016, 885–6). Even the ‘“support the troops, oppose the war” mentality’ at the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, ‘separates the soldiers from the wars they wage, and society from the wars the state wages on its behalf’, which in turn ‘depoliticises those wars’, ‘conceals a wider history of British warfare’, and ‘reproduces the myth of a state and society that at once shies away from war but steps up to fight when necessary’ (Basham 2016, 887). In recent decades, UK military interventions have thus been legitimized as benevolent and humanitarian (Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo), as uprooting terrorist threats (Afghanistan), or as aimed at protecting the international community from rogue regimes (Iraq, Libya) – all moments when Britain was apparently called to fight, even if reluctantly. The meta-narratives about British military history reproduced by dominant poppy commemorations not only do not seem to hinder such recurrent interventionism, but to facilitate it.

This is not surprising given the selective memory and the blinkered horizon mentioned above. Focusing poppy commemorations on fallen British soldiers and victims means that past wars are remembered as stories of valiant British sacrifices made for the greater good – a narrative ready for off-the-shelf recycling when the moment comes to sell the next intervention. Were poppy commemoration narratives to draw just as much attention to the suffering of non-British and non-military victims of war, it might be harder to advocate the repetition of further military violence. There are therefore incentives, for those who benefit from war and from dominant meta-narratives in the military-industrial-entertainment complex, not to shine much focus on these victims during poppy commemorations, and to instead keep remembering British military activity since WWI as a sacrificial force for good in the world.

It is also worth noting not just that particular groups and narratives benefit from particular framings of war commemorations, but also what these framings do to how society is organized more generally. Pacifists denounce not just the act of killing, but also the ‘social practice’ of war, in other words the political economy of ‘war making’ and ‘war building’ (Ryan 2015). War is something that needs to be prepared for. It requires scarce resources to be managed in particular ways. It produces a military-industrial-entertainment complex. The way we commemorate past wars can help or hinder this process. Remembering all the many victims of war, analysing the ideological forces that led to the slaughter and rallying around the cry to ‘never again’ is likely to help generate a different structuring of British political and economic priorities than that bred by currently dominant framings of poppy commemorations.

Diplomatic posturing

Heads of state and foreign policy elites do nonetheless pose for ‘memorial diplomacy’ on ‘key wartime anniversaries’. There is therefore ‘a shared rhetoric of sacrifice, reconciliation and “never again”,’ some acknowledgement of wars’ foreign victims, and some talk of the moral duty to prevent war (Beaumont 2015, 534). This rhetoric, however, ‘does not constitute a new synthesis of memories of the war that is more than the sum of the constituent national memories’, because commemorations remain ‘framed within national and local imaginings’ (Beaumont 2015, 534–5). These anniversaries are therefore primarily ‘instrumentalised for diplomatic benefit’ (Beaumont 2015, 534), such as to reaffirm commitment to European integration or to the transatlantic military alliance, but these internationalist gestures are not cultivated to threaten convenient national meta-narratives. Besides, the same poppy-wearing British government ministers who paraded with international counterparts on wartime anniversaries, declared peaceful intentions and bewailed the lives lost to war, have also planned, justified and launched further wars themselves.

This points to a broader critique aired by some pacifists about the inefficacy of liberal institutions in actually securing international peace. Diplomatic efforts since WWI have focused on trying to set up an international framework of treaties and institutions that would, in the words of the UN Charter, ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. For some pacifists this is a miscalculated approach: it places too much faith in such treaties and institutions, and it does not focus enough on the motives that lead to war. Against the Kantian liberal project for ‘perpetual peace’ through international structures, for example, pacifists like Tolstoy insist that the abolition of organized violence hinges on widespread moral transformation (Atack 2018). The proliferation of liberal international institutions since WWI, the restrictions on war placed by the UN Charter and the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and the acceleration of economic and cultural globalization might have pacified relations between countries in the Global North, but wars driven by geopolitical and neocolonial motives have continued regardless – often instigated by those same countries in the Global North. Pacifists like Tolstoy have little faith in liberal international arrangements given they have been built, are led, and are supposed to be enforced by the very same countries whose imperialist colonialism preceded their apparent embrace of liberal international institutions.

Whether widespread moral transformation of the kind preached by Tolstoy is likely to be more effective is a question too large to discuss here (Christoyannopoulos 2020, chap. 5). However, how we remember traumatic events of collective violence does affect how we reflect on their causes and potential solutions. If past organized violence was caused by foreign threats that were insufficiently appeased by international efforts and that required reluctant military intervention, then stronger international institutions and a readiness to intervene when called seems to be what is needed. But if war is caused partly by misunderstandings, injustices, and an uncritical faith in the instrumental efficacy of violence, then this seems to call for reflecting more deeply on what generates such misunderstandings and injustices, and on whether violence really does achieve its aims. It might encourage deeper soul-searching instead of the placing of faith onto international structures or enforcement mechanisms. It might even encourage some reflection on our direct and indirect personal contributions to acts of collective violence, whether as political actors and electors, employees in particular industries, or consumers of particular products (Christoyannopoulos 2020, 203–6). Besides, if the solemn commemoration of past wars does not nurture some searching critical analysis of our collective history, of the efficacy of violence, and of our own participation in collective acts of violence, what will?

One could also question whether the sacrifices of those remembered in poppy commemorations actually achieved the goals which poppy-wearing political elites put forward to justify them. Did the dozens of UK military interventions since WWI deliver stable long-term security either for UK citizens or for those in the countries involved? They may have helped defend what is often called ‘the national interest’ – a rather vague term which conveniently encompasses the interests of the military-industrial-entertainment complex. But did they prevent the independence of former British colonies? Did Britain’s various counter-insurgency campaigns improve the socio-economic conditions which fostered rebellion? Have recent wars ‘against terrorism’ defeated the threat of terrorism? Have they brought stability and prosperity to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya? Was all this British and foreign blood worth it, and for the greater good? Many operations were of course successful in achieving their strategic aims and protecting ‘the national interest’, at least in the short run. But long-term security is not guaranteed by a well-trained, technologically advanced military that minimizes British casualties (if anything, for pacifists, such a setup might act as more of an impediment). It requires action on socio-economic, political, cultural, and diplomatic fronts. A pacifist could even argue that in many of the wars in which the UK has been involved, action on such non-military fronts, instead of military intervention but with a similar commitment in terms of budget and organization capacity, might have been more effective for most of the actors involved (although not the military-industrial-entertainment complex), and might have cost fewer lives.

Charity for veterans

Finally, a second-order critique of the poppy would be incomplete were it not to acknowledge the plight of war veterans. For all the gratitude that wearing the poppy is supposed to express, these veterans and the specific difficulties they face tend to be ignored by political elites (not to mention commercial elites or much of the general public) the rest of the time. Post-traumatic stress disorder is common, yet treatment for it remains underfunded, underplays its severity, and tends to shift responsibility on the individual experiencing it (Glenton 2013; Gray 2015). Homelessness and suicide rates among veterans are high (Geraghty 2019; McNab 2014, 140–3). NHS support for discharged personnel, but also for reserve volunteers and indeed for those in service needing specialist care, is still inadequate (Briggs 2014).

In any case, why should it be left to the philanthropic charity of the many for funds to be raised to help these veterans, instead of ensuring the state for which they killed and died provides them with enough support (Harrison 2012, 61)? The funds raised by the RBL do provide critical support to military personnel and their dependents. Millions of Britons buy poppies and donate to the RBL out of compassion and solidarity. But the framing of this as ‘charitable care’ reproduces an image of ‘the troops’ as victims of what ‘comes to appear as an agentless calamity, much like a natural disaster’, decoupling their wounds from the violence they were employed to inflict upon others, and from the contestable political decisions that led to that violence (Millar 2016, 22). It also arguably reinforces societal militarism by keeping ‘the troops’ at the forefront of discourses of civil responsibility, which would not be the case if veteran welfare were simply another background bureaucratic function of the state. It furthermore generates a poppy industry with commercial dynamics to compensate for the failure of society to provide sufficient support through the state. Instead of committing enough funds to care for those whose sacrifices protected their interests, the elite who benefit from the poppy ritual are happy to leave it to the RBL to raise and organize those funds. To add to the bitter irony, these same decision-makers can project an aura of righteousness by posturing with red poppies, all-the-while looking forward to riding on the meta-narratives this reproduces for future militaristic ambitions.

To wear or not to wear a poppy?

Every year, another appeal is launched for Britons to wear a red poppy. What the analysis presented above tends to suggest is that the associated commemorations have evolved to become at best more compatible with British militarism, at worst complicit in that militarism becoming increasingly hegemonic. The meaning of the poppy has always been contested, but the interpretation of it under the banner of ‘never again’ has been increasingly side-lined. ‘Shoulder to shoulder’ is compatible with militarism. ‘Lest we forget’ is compatible with the elevation of soldiers as sacrificial heroes of the motherland and its values. ‘Never again’ is more discordant, hence British meta-narratives have been allowed to evolve to make the wearing of the red poppy increasingly intolerant of it, despite the lingering dissonances. Poppy rituals seem to have been sliding from a commemoration of the many lives lost to increasingly hegemonic patriotic celebration of local input in past wars (Winter 2017, 240–1). The internal dissonances of the dominant poppy narrative could spark deeper critical reflections open to pacifist analysis, but instead such pacifist contestations are subjugated.

The wearing of the red poppy has become a compulsory ritual in British ‘civil religion’ for all public figures (Angrosino 2002; Harrison 2012, 61). To fail to join in is to be marked as a heretic, unpatriotic and disrespectful. Just like other dogmatic religious rituals, a dominant orthodox interpretation has become intolerant of dissent. Just like other civil religions, one of the main beneficiaries is the state, which here can cast itself ‘as agent and referent of security’ (Basham 2016, 884). American civil religion frames its militarism around the pledge of allegiance, American exceptionalism and ‘manifest destiny’ (Angrosino 2002; Haberski 2012). French civil religion centres on the universalism of the human rights nominally embodied in the French republic, which it commemorates with grand military displays on 14 July (Willaime 1993). British civil religion, struggling to find a single calendar day to unite all Britons (which royal anniversary? which patron saint?), conflicted by its imperial history, but proud of its enduring institutions, has come to find in the poppy a vehicle of comforting patriotism whose ritual is supported by all its established institutions (Parsons 2017, chap. 1; Harrison 2012).

It is indeed notable that the patriotism embodied in the poppy is both top-down and bottom-up. That is, on the one hand, the performance ritual is coordinated by the Crown, the armed forces, politicians, the media, the church and cultural icons – and of course the RBL. It is ‘highly scripted’ (Basham 2016, 888) and ‘shaped by contemporary power structures’ (Beaumont 2015, 531). On the other hand, it is also enthusiastically supplemented by countless expressions of ‘everyday’ and ‘mundane’ nationalism as people adorn their clothes, cars and front lawns with sometimes extravagant displays of red poppies (Billig 1995; Danilova 2015, chap. 4; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008). Those who wear white poppies, meanwhile, have come to expect to be denounced as heretical and unpatriotic – both by elites and in everyday encounters with fellow citizens (Boulton 2013; Harris 2018; Kennaugh 2018; Weston 2018). Conversely, judging by the Daily Mail’s encouragement for Muslim women to wear headscarves with red poppies on, if your allegiance to Britain and its values is doubted, wearing a poppy will win the nod of some sceptics (Doyle 2014; Binenti 2018). The poppy has come to symbolize a hegemonic interpretation of British identity. It functions as a test of how truly and wholeheartedly you belong and can be trusted.

This poppy patriotism is promoted from cradle to grave. The RBL ‘invests heavily in providing free materials to schools’ (Andrews 2015, 111). The annual ‘Poppy Appeal’ is launched ‘in a blaze of publicity specifically designed to engage the attention of young people’ (Iles 2008, 206). The dominant poppy narrative pops up either prominently or discreetly in sports, in the workplace, in shop windows, on streets and roads, in places of religious worship and of course in the media. Poppy appeals are increasingly ‘emotionally charged affairs, from the “celebratory”, in which serving soldiers are venerated as the “real stars” by celebrities; to the “tear-jerking”, exemplified by love songs released by military wives and girls; and the “consumerist”, as poppy paraphernalia becomes a source of belonging’ (Basham 2016, 888). In other words, the poppy has become as ubiquitous as successful commercial brands – readily-recognizable, triggering a distinct range of emotions, standing for a particular set of values – but with a particularly heavy emotional charge, and a hegemonic expectation that all citizens in good standing will readily subscribe. Even if one does not endorse it, the symbol’s omnipresence acts as a reminder of the British patriotism and militarism which it increasingly visibly stands for.

Only after the end of the formal remembrance service at the Cenotaph, at the back end of the parade, when mainstream cameras are switched off and the establishment elite are gone, are Veterans for Peace able to lay their white wreath. Such white poppy wreaths have been removed from war memorials anyway (Coles 2019; Melville-Smith 2014). Britons wanting to combine solemn remembrance with expressions of concern for militarism find themselves having to organize alternative remembrance ceremonies (Peace Pledge Union 2020). Thus, any dissent from the hegemonic narrative and its ritualized performance, either with a white poppy or with an attempt to reinvest the red poppy with some critical reflections on war, is increasingly difficult. As Basham concludes:

The Poppy Appeal’s celebration of soldiers, living and dead, as ‘heroes’ who exemplify the values of the polity, makes it much harder to question the violence done to and perpetrated by them; the impassioned love songs of their wives and (girl) children make questioning that violence cruel in light of their pain; and the ability to consume and exhibit one’s respect for soldier heroes and their families in ever more diverse ways, only invites people to become part of a community of feeling that shares ‘our’ values, not to question them and how they might exclude racialised ‘others’. (Basham 2016, 892)

It becomes disrespectful to question whether these victims should have been sent to die and kill, and the solemnity of poppy commemorations can be co-opted to silence critics. The increasingly hegemonic narratives around the poppy therefore function to mute and exclude from remembrance imaginaries the voices that beg us to reflect on the deeper causes of the wars some of whose victims we remember.

Thus, if ‘civic traditional rituals’ such as poppy commemorations ‘perform an important role for the State’ because they ‘help to express and develop feelings of nationalism and instil them into new generations, … they also have the negative effect of making some feel less a part of the national group, because the occasion stresses for them their apartness’, especially if for example they do not share the group’s ‘respect for established authority; military prowess; notions of devotion to duty, service and sacrifice; honouring the nation; and the necessity for ceremonial mourning of the war dead’ (Newall 1976, 228). In other words, pacifists are made to feel they do not belong. The very premise of their analysis is already frequently ridiculed anyway: pacifism is already – inaccurately – dismissed as naïve, absolutist, passive, even immoral (Jackson 2018b; Reeves-O’Toole 2020). But now pacifists also increasingly do not really belong to the community of respectful Britons.

Yet countless Britons, including thousands of war veterans, have pleaded with their compatriots not to turn away from the sheer brutality of war – the slaughter fields, the maiming, the raping, the torturing, and the traumas carried into the aftermath by those who experienced it. As Bourke explains, society might want to forget about war after it is finished, but veterans often cannot, if anything because ‘the individual memory of having killed [is] relentless in refusing to be repressed’ (Bourke 2004, 478–9). However, the soldiers who do the dirty work are not the only ones who carry moral responsibility and a duty not to look away. Every cog in the machinery of organized violence – drone manufacturer, miner, engineer, marketing officer, shareholder, journalist, politician, legal scholar, UN official, voter – may prefer to feel that the moral responsibility for the violence lays elsewhere, yet the war machine runs on the contribution of all its cogs (Christoyannopoulos 2020, 74–7, 99–104). Whether or not these people wear a red poppy, indeed perhaps especially if they do, the moral duty to remember is only partially fulfilled if it does not include at best a commitment, at least an openness, to reflecting on the causes of war, one’s contribution to it, and the instrumental efficacy of violence. There must be a space in British war commemorations to accommodate such reflections and thereby re-examine Britain’s violent history, its foreign policy, its political economy, and its identity. In particular, the rich and probing arguments articulated by pacifists about war, militarism, morality, and the efficacy of violence deserve measured attention when the merits of political violence are debated, and when society commemorates the violence of its history.

How a society remembers its wars is important. It can provide fertile soil for warmongering and militarism, or a space to question war, its causes, and its effectiveness. It is a mark of respect for the victims of war not to forget the soldiers, the sacrifices, and the wounds. But it is also a mark of respect not to forget those who objected to these wars and those who suffered away from the front. And it is out of respect and compassion for all the victims of war that some insist on drawing attention to those benefiting from the organization of violence, interrogating the activities of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, examining the causes of war, and questioning narratives and performances that seem to facilitate a hegemonic and militaristic kind of patriotism. If we really do mean to treat with grave seriousness the topic and memory of war – the sacrifices involved, the many victims, the enduring socio-political scars – then remembrance occasions cannot be restricted to blinkered patriotic narratives and preferential compassion, especially when these in fact reinforce rather than question the structures of British militarism. At the very least, the narrative dissonances that still reveal themselves could be heard as invitations for reflection.

The red poppy was not intended to deny any space for pacifist remembrance in war commemorations, yet pacifists are among those Britons who feel most ostracized by the red poppy nowadays. Unless the red poppy brand evolves to genuinely make room again for pacifist reflections and contestations, an alternative poppy will probably continue to feel necessary for those who wish to combine solemn remembrance with reservations about the militaristic, patriotic, and hegemonic drift of the red poppy. Whether remembrance commemorations can become more inclusive of deeper critical reflections on British wars past and present is primarily for the guardians of the red poppy to decide – both those who coordinate the civic rituals and those who join in from across society. Those inclined to pacifist critique will in turn continue to decide, come remembrance-tide each year, whether their inclinations are compatible with the red poppy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I am grateful to the several colleagues whose comments have helped me revise the evolving draft of this paper, including Loughborough colleagues in the Centre for Security Studies and in the Anarchism Research Group, and of course the journal editors and in particular the rigorous and constructive anonymous reviewers.