The "Red Poppy Appeal" has come to be a tradition in the United Kingdom, where in the month of November people are encouraged to wear a poppy on their lapels to mark remembrance for the lives lost in the first and second World Wars. Respect for the dead is a huge deal in this country, and it is impossible to turn on the TV during the month of November without seeing a presenter wearing a poppy. So it has outraged a few people that a group of activists in Glasgow chose to put up posters of a black poppy, with the website URL "www.resistmilitarism.com"; a clear affront to what is considered a national pastime of mourning those lost in what we tend to glorify as honourable combat. At a time where we are decorating a national monument with one ceramic poppy for every death in World War One, any reaction against the poppy is seen as anti-patriotic and disrespectful.
War is unwanted, unneccesary, and the cry from the public on both sides of the Atlantic to withdraw troops from war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan has finally been acted on. So why, when a group of people subvert the symbol for war remembrance, is there such disgust? For me, it's as much about the symbol of the poppy itself as what it represents. We know the poppy is red, we can identify it instantly and describe it to someone else with ease. Most importantly, the red poppy is the "brand" by which we identify the idea of armistice, and the message of "Lest We Forget", which for a country such as ours which has a history so tied up in warfare is a nod to the past and a warning to the future. To the British public, the idea of a black poppy is morbid and unfamiliar. It appears to be a twisted take on what is perceived as an honoured tradition.
Interestingly, those driving the campaign for de-militarisation disagree. The 16000 posters, they say, represent the number of men who refused to be drafted and were consequently assigned the white feather - another symbol, to mark them out as cowards. The aptly White Feather Collective, the "movement" behind the posters, believe these men to be the true "honoraries" of the time and claim that "the red poppy has, for want of a better word, been fetishised." (Murphy, interviewed by Turbett, 2014).
"It was an action to provide an alternative message of remembrance to the way the red poppy is used, which now symbolises a permanent war industry. It shows up how one moment our leaders are teary eyed at the Cenotaph and selling weapons in the global arms economy the next." says Zara Murphy, who is a part of the Collective. While the movement does not wish to change the tradition of remembering the war and the deaths that occurred because of it, it does aim to point out that "we are being told how to remember and it's a very narrow frame." (Murphy, interviewed by Turbett, 2014) Murphy argues further that the red poppy is used to glorify war, referencing statues and ceremonies which honoured those in combat for dying in the name of a service that promotes death and violence. "…we hope to re-politicise the poppy to what it was actually meant to stand for: to remember the futility and horror of war, and all the people who have lost their lives to war, and who continue to suffer today due to war." (Murphy, interviewed by Turbett, 2014)
Looking at the matter from an angle of persuasion, it could be argued that the red poppy symbol represents the element of glory that is wrapped up in combat; the connotation of being proud to serve your country is used to gloss over any death and devastation which a British-led war undoubtedly also causes the other side. Many British people take pride in their ancestors having fought for British freedom in the war, and emotionally this is what the red poppy currently represents. Murphy and the rest of White Feather Collective want to change this. "Right now, the way the symbol of the poppy is being used is that the dead are being exploited. They're being used as tools - just the way there were when they were soldiers - to bolster this idea of "the nation" and excuse more destructive violence in the future. That's exactly the opposite of what the remembrance poppy should be about." (Murphy, interviewed by Turbett, 2014).
Here, both the red and black poppies have been shown as an identity of something bigger and the ideas they represent. Both continue to be used as devices to continue a line of thinking, and in the case of the black poppy, to persuade the public to question what the brand that is the Poppy Appeal really represents.
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