White Poppy Vigil

Sent to our local press today:

Four Eastbourne peace campaigners laid a white poppy wreath at Beachy Head on Sunday, as an alternative Remembrance Day vigil.

Angie Roche, Tania Long, Jean Farebrother and Michael Bentley carried the wreath along the UN Peace Path, before laying it at the foot of the Eastbourne United Nations Association/Eastbourne for Peace and Liberty peace plaque, installed last May at a small ceremony attended by the Mayor of Eastbourne Greg Szanto.

There followed readings of a Celtic blessing, and a 2500 year old poem by Lao Tzu called 'Against War'.

The White Poppy movement was founded in 1933 by the Co-operative Womens' Guild. It aims not to offend or to disrespect the deaths of soldiers commemorated by traditional red poppy Remembrance rituals, but reflects a belief that war should no longer be used as a solution to international problems.

Campaigner Michael Bentley said: "The White Poppy movement is needed more now than ever. Since World War One the numbers of innocent civilians killed in wars relative to the numbers of military deaths has increased exponentially. Now in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is overwhelmingly civilians who face the greatest risk of death and injury, many of them from aerial bombing. An study made in 2007 estimated that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed in the Iraq War alone, at least a quarter of them as a direct result of attacks from the air.

"The only way to end the appalling carnage caused by war is to stop using violence against strangers as a solution to real or imagined international threats. Article 51 of the UN Charter states that war may only be used as self-defence in a situation of dire and imminent peril, when all other options have been exhausted and no time is left for deliberation. In fact nearly all wars are waged for political, territorial or economic gain, often with some idealogical justification, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not even been successful in making those shattered countries - or the world - a safer place.

"The Beachy Head peace plaque seemed a most appropriate place to lay our wreath, as it commemorates the deaths of ALL those killed in wars, and quotes the UN Charter, created in 1945 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war'".

The Beachy Head vigil was the second White Poppy event to be held in Eastbourne to mark this year's Remembrance Day. The previous Tuesday, Eastbourne for Peace and Liberty held a stall in the town centre, where passers by signed and wrote messages of peace on white poppies, to be delivered to MP Nigel Waterson.

More information on the history and meaning of the White Poppy movement can be found at http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/.