White Poppies

Remembrance Day is always a bit of an ambivalent occasion for me. On the one hand, I’m awe-struck by the courage of the thousands and thousands of soldiers who have voluntarily suffered terror, injury and death in the wars of the past hundred years, sometimes - as in World War Two - in defence of the liberty of us all. As someone with an intense fear of hardship and pain, I’m not sure I could be brave enough to do that under any circumstances, and so I have huge respect for those who have done and continue to put their lives on the line.

These feelings are balanced, though, by an awareness of the millions killed who neither asked nor volunteered to be in the firing line. Over the past century the number of civilians killed in war has proportionately risen in comparison to the military casualties. In WW1 the vast majority killed were of course soldiers, but whilst WW2 claimed huge numbers of military lives, the bombings of cities like London, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki also killed millions of innocent civilians. This trend has reached a peak in the present Iraq War, where thousands of soldiers have died but the numbers of non-combatants killed is many times that. The famous Lancet survey of October 2006, which Bush and Blair of course dismissed but which even Blair’s advisors considered ‘robust’, estimated that about 655,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion, and that a third of these were killed directly by coalition forces (78,000 by aerial bombing). The latest estimate suggests that now over a million people have died, and it is obvious that the vast majority of these are civilians. A final awful statistic is that British war planes dropped ‘about twice as many bombs’ on Iraq during the month preceding 12 August 2007 as had been used ‘in the previous three years combined’ (Sunday Telegraph, 12 Aug 2007). Brown’s war has been even more destructive than Blair’s.

With these thoughts in mind, on 9 November Angie and I will be laying white poppy wreath at Beachy Head,for an alternative Remembrance Day vigil. The first white poppies were made by the Co-operative Women’s Guild in 1933, to be worn on Armistice Day (later called Remembrance Day). The following year the newly founded Peace Pledge Union joined the CWG in the distribution of the poppies and later took over their annual promotion (http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/).

The white poppy has never been intended as an insult to the soldiers who have died in war, or to their families, but represents a belief that other solutions to international conflicts can be found than killing strangers. My own feeling is that war should be an absolute last resort, to be used only when the nation concerned is in dire or imminent peril of attack, which I suppose means that I’m not a complete pacifist but does reflect the wording of Article 51 of the UN Charter. Almost all wars are fought for political, territorial or economic gain, and often with ideological justifications, which makes them a form of terrorism on an enormous scale. The white poppy movement is therefore as relevant as it ever was, and can be seen as a more progressive alternative to the British Legion event, which whilst rightly respecting the bravery of soldiers killed in war, is arguably a good propaganda tool for the militarist status quo and the acceptability of war as a way of intervening in or creating a host of international problems.

It seems unlikely that a white poppy alternative to the national Remembrance Day ritual could get started in Britain at present, but the white poppy movement and the many local peace groups who lay wreaths show that many people feel there is a need for one. It might however face opposition from the right-wing media and others who feel insulted and offended, despite the PPU’s stated position on the issue. And in London particularly, it would face the currently increasing police intolerance of peaceful protest, and of course the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA), which makes it a criminal offence to protest within 1km of Parliament without applying for authorisation first! This is a highly political law, created in response to public anger at the Iraq War and especially Brian Haw’s ongoing protest in Parliament Square. Our Prime Minister doesn’t need to apply for police permission six days in advance in order to lay his red poppy wreath (his predecessor didn't even need permission to kill people for the sake of American economic and military dominance), but anyone who wanted to lay a single white poppy down would be committing a crime if they didn’t apply first. Like, of course, Milan Rai and Maya Evans when they read the names of Iraqi and British war dead at the Cenotaph in 2005, and were subsequently convicted for it.

Even in Eastbourne, Angie and I are wondering what kind of response we may receive when we lay our white poppy wreath at Beachy Head. It’s not our intention to offend, but although the town is changing it still retains an old-fashioned, conservative population who may misunderstand and feel we are disrespecting the brave soldiers killed in two world wars and in several since. As one elderly lady admonished us at a vigil three years ago, “how dare you talk about peace at a war memorial!” And in a way, Beachy Head seems a strange place to hope for peace. On a beautiful – and usually blustery! - late autumn day, the sea stretches blue and awesome from cliffs to horizon, and war seems a million billion miles away. But of course it’s still going on, and not even in the news much anymore.

Despite appearances, this dramatic chalk headland is already a focus for peace. The start of the UN Peace Path is marked by several plaques in memory of those killed in war, including a new one paid for by Eastbourne United Nations Association and Eastbourne for Peace and Liberty. This commemorates ALL the victims of war, both military and civilian, unlike most war memorials which remember the soldiers only. War in the twenty-first century so overwhelmingly affects civilian populations, that this seems the perfect place to lay our white poppy wreath and to focus our hopes for a world in which war is no longer seen as a valid solution to international conflict.

Angie and I are proud of our peace plaque, which ultimately came about because we founded a local peace group two years earlier, in 2006. The United Nations Charter of 1945, which might be thought to be in tatters after Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other wars since the UN was founded, is commemorated still at Beachy Head, subject only to the elements and the gradual erosion of the chalk cliffs nearby. Its wording is:

IN MEMORY OF
ALL WHO LOST THEIR LIVES
IN THE WARS OF THE
LAST HUNDRED YEARS, WHATEVER
THEIR GENDER, AGE OR NATIONALITY,
MILITARY OR CIVILIAN
SPRING 2008

EASTBOURNE UNITED NATIONS ASSOCIATION
EASTBOURNE FOR PEACE AND LIBERTY

...WE THE PEOPLES OF
THE UNITED NATIONS
DETERMINED TO SAVE SUCCEEDING
GENERATIONS FROM
THE SCOURGE OF WAR

CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS
JUNE 1945, IN SAN FRANCISCO