Peace Matters Index

ONLINE contents

- barbarians at the gate
- non sibi sed patriae
- chancers crooks and con men
- wanted: a new global paradigm
- iran in a calmer light
- human rights


- compled issue pdf















2007 Laying white poppy wreath in Bridgewater

When virtually everyone who appears live on TV in the weeks before Remembrance Day has a red poppy somewhere on their chest, we know that something other than support for a social work charity is going on.

The countrywide war memorial building phase to commemorate the British dead of the first world war ended in the 1930s. Now, in the 21st century, we see an extraordinary acceleration of war memorial building. The British Legion runs a park at the centre of which is a new national memorial recently unveiled by the Queen. Lessons have been learned from the first world war builders, whose monuments were not big enough to accommodate the names of all the dead. The latest memorial has plenty of space to spare for the names of dead yet unborn. Here is a clue, built in stone, to the lack of imagination, enterprise and ability and perhaps even unwillingness of our political leaders, who can foresee only a bleak and violent future.

To be sure there are plenty of villains and murderous megalomaniacs around (some of whom are Britain's best friends), but 'enemies' are in large part a social construct. This does not necessarily such people are harmless, but it reminds us that they did not come into the world ready made. Just as we nurture friends, so we, in part, nurture enemies.

memorials
War memorials are the physical focus for a view of the world that accepts the killing of strangers as essential to wellbeing. 'The Response 1914' pictured on the front cover is a war memorial in Newcastle upon Tyne and is described by former Director General of the Imperial War Museum, Alan Borg as 'one of the finest sculptural ensembles on any British monument.' It is indeed a fine memorial and also one of the clearest examples of the propagandist nature of war memorials. It depicts the Northumberland Fusiliers marching purposefully off to war with musical accompaniment from heaven.

Each year in front of this newly and expensively restored monument church and state come to shed crocodile tears and lay British Legion's wreaths of red poppies. Formerly known as the Renwick Memorial because it was commissioned by Sir George Renwick it later became better know in response to the times as 'The Response 1914'. The memorial commemorates the successful recruiting drive for the Northumberland Fusiliers a success today's army recruiters would give their medals for. Remembrance time has long been known as good for recruiting. The memorial also commemorates the safe return of Renwick's sons from the war though the numberless Northumberland fusiliers who did not return are not commemorated here. Finally the memorial commemorated 50 years of George Renwick's successful commercial activity in Newcastle.

self sacrificing heroes
More revealing perhaps is the way the memorial raises the war to a mythic level and casts its participants whether soldiers or supportive significant others into self sacrificing heroes; unveiled 5 years after the end of a war in which a million Britons had been killed it is clearly pure fantasy. By 1923 the raw grief that remembrance ceremonies helped to manage was beginning to ease and while the war receded in people’s minds there were frequent reminders as hundreds of war memorial were unveiled around the country in the years following the war. A crowd can be seen at the unveiling of the Renwick monument in a commemorative postcard; not visible is party of blind ex-sailors and ex-soldiers nor the comment from a bystander who noted that it seemed odd that the soldiers should be resolutely marching off northwards, away from the front.

Of course there may be a more generous interpretation but given the inscription on the memorial 'Non Sibi Sed Patriae' (Not for Self but for Country) it’s unlikely. More appropriate might have been lines from Owen. My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.

Comment is Free
A few days before Remembrance Day The PPU was asked to write a short piece for the ‘Comment is Free’ section on the Guardian’s website. To readers of Peace Matters there is nothing revealing in the short piece but more instructive are the responses to the piece. Many are fairly predictable and for those of us who want to share our views more effectively it might be useful to study these responses, which can be found at whitepoppy.org. One thing however is clear from this and from the discussion on the various radio and TV programs that we took part in (thank you Albert) is that the white poppy carries a complex and mixed message not only for those of us that wear it but for those new to it. If we want to change hearts and minds, we should be a little sharper. We’ll not persuade the likes of SackTheJuggler ‘I'll be wearing a red poppy. If you don't approve, well I really don't care.’ But there are more thoughtful people around. In advance of Remembrance Day 2008 we plan a series of information posters aimed primarily at schools but will also produce documents to help us to promote our views more effectively. If you would like to contribute to this you can do this via whitepoppy.org or write to the office.

A number of respondent quoted parts of McCrae poem In Flanders Fields by way of criticism of the white poppy and what it stands for. A critical take on this poem can be found at whitepoppy.org. Another respondent quoted a few lesser known lines fromthe Scottish-born Australian singer and songwriter Eric Bogle’s song ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ But the band played ‘Waltzing Matilda,’/When we stopped to bury our slain,/Well, we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,/Then we started all over again. Full text – guess where. ‘I don’t need to be told what to think about remembrance’ said another respondent, which is fair enough but hardly the point. None of our minds are always open to different points of view so shifting entrenched views within a complex web of beliefs is not easy.

The white poppy embodies the belief that a world constantly on an armed footing and which now spends $1,204bn on the military, is neither desirable nor, more crucially, inevitable. Some will say this is naive - but surely no more so than believing that submarines with nuclear missiles lurking in the ocean will deter anyone. In an unequal and largely unjust world, our route to security should be through fair economic and political relationships with other nations and civil humanitarian action where necessary and wanted. Attacking other countries, prospering from the sale of weapons, or squandering scientific and technical talent on designing ever more efficient means of killing people should have no place in any society with liberal and humanitarian aspirations.

Negotiating and collaborating on a world stage is even more difficult than on a national one but we have, unlike some nations, learned how to do that without shooting each other. It is this lesson we ought to remember, rather than clinging on to bad old habits of thought and action which lie at the heart of ‘official’ remembrance.