Tim Jones: Proudly wear your poppy with hope and trepidation

IN the last few weeks there has been some controversy about people wearing, or refusing to wear, a red poppy in the season of Remembrance. Hardly big news in itself – that particular controversy gets an annual public airing. But three things distinguished this year’s debate.

First, of course, this is the centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War. A hundred years is marked because it is a very round number, and our human minds are impressed with neatness.

Secondly, our minds this year have been particularly focused on the poppy by the stunning art installation at the Tower of London. Some 888,246 ceramic poppies have been individually hand crafted, one for every member of the British Armed Forces killed in the First World War. As a symbol and a piece of art it is simply breathtaking. It is beautiful and sad, thought-provoking and strangely uplifting, and vast numbers of people have gone to see it.

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Thirdly, the controversy this year has a slightly unusual focus in the careful and thoughtful arguments put forward by ITN news presenter Charlene White, who has refused to wear a red poppy on air, and received appalling abuse for her trouble.

Her argument commands respect and carries some weight. In her private life she very readily wears a red poppy; her father and uncle have both served in the British Armed Forces, and she is eager to support the remarkable work of the Royal British Legion as they care for the many 
service personnel and veterans who need them.

But she also, in April, wears a badge to show support for Bowel Cancer Awareness; in October, she wears a pink ribbon to show support for Breast Cancer Awareness, and in December wears a red ribbon to show support for World Aids Day. In short, Charlene White happily supports a number of charities and says that she is uncomfortable giving “one of those charities more on-screen time than others”. As a professional journalist she says she prefers to be neutral and impartial on screen.

I admire her sense of integrity, but I think that she’s wrong. Eight hundred and eighty eight thousand, two hundred and forty six dead is a huge number of people, and that represents only those from this country. It was about two per cent of the British population at the time. A very similar number received wounds which changed their lives – missing limbs, blindness, gas damage.

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Vast numbers had seen comrades and enemies suffer terribly, and had themselves participated in horrible violence.

When, in the early 1920s, it started to become commonplace to wear a red poppy to mark the anniversary of the Armistice, they did so with pride, and a lot more besides. People also wore their poppies with grief. People wore them with pain. Some wore them in continuing shame or horror at what they had seen, or suffered, or done to others. Many wore them to mark the perpetual state of shock at what their war experience had been.

It is not enough for us to wear our poppies with nothing but pride. We also need to wear them with remembrance of the grim reality of war.

War is an all too present danger. How we think about war, together, matters immensely, and for that reason it is good and proper – in our ever more individualistic society – that Remembrance is a collective activity.

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Journalism is not just the task of informing the public about events. It’s also about helping us to think through the implications of the news, pointing us towards context and possibilities.

We live in a world where we must constantly weigh the moral and pragmatic worth of sending soldiers to kill and risk being killed, so it’s essential that we take the trouble to remember our actual national experience of war. That’s how we, as a society, are able to weigh the ethical worth of any military action today. Our politicians cannot possibly heed our culture and values if we don’t bother to have any.

I’m glad that we have charities that research cures for cancer and Aids, and support those who suffer. I’m glad we have voluntary organisations that rescue those in trouble at sea. I am proud that we care for animals, orphans, ex-prisoners, retired missionaries and injured veterans. All of that is good, noble, and right.

But Remembrance, and the poppy it represents, is about something fundamentally different than charity. It is about us, as a society, still needing to decide whether to kill others if we feel it to be an awful necessity, sending young people to do that killing for us and risk themselves being killed or maimed or wounded or emotionally damaged. That is a huge burden that we carry, all of us together. Remembrance helps us to carry that burden with due care and attention, with fear and with trembling. It is absolutely not just another charity season, getting special treatment.

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We should wear our poppies with pride but also trepidation and maybe even a residual glimmer of shame, grief and shock. We should wear them with hope, each of us with a determination that, as a citizen ­with the precious, hard-­won right to vote, we will never bear our personal responsibility for peace and war lightly.

• Fr. Tim Jones is a Yorkshire priest

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