It's morally wrong to wear a Poppy, while helping to commit genocide.

Eleven years ago, my dad's essay on why- despite being a veteran of World War Two, he refused to ever wear a poppy again for Remembrance Day was published.

If he had written this essay in 2024, he would never have found a newspaper to publish it, considering Britain's current lust for war and genocide.

It leaves me gobsmacked how- over the eleven years since this essay was first published, we now exist in dystopia. I don't think it would have surprised my dad that he would be appalled by how Britain and the Western World managed to make things shittier for most people.

The 21st century is on fire with war, genocide, fascism and a cost of living crisis not seen since the 1930s and the rise of Hitler. To pretend that we preserved the freedoms won on the beaches of Normandy is a delusion. Over the last decade, the collective leadership of the West has done more than any series of leaders following World War Two in service of surrendering our societies to fascism. Trump becoming President for a second time is a case in point.

There is no money for healthcare, no money for housing, no money for schools, no money for refugees because our governments are too busy pretending democracy will be won or lost on the battlefields of Donetsk rather than on our own streets made mean by austerity.

We live in a time of moral darkness and chaos, and it will be a long time coming- if at all before the lights come back on for ordinary humanity.   

One of the most compelling ways to rebel against neoliberalism and the genocide in Gaza is to refuse to wear a poppy in 2024. The Greatest Generation didn't defeat Hitler, so their great-grandchildren's generation could enable a horrendous genocide perpetrated by fascists.  

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Over the last 10 years, the sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders. The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts.

American Civil War General Sherman said "War is Hell", after using his Union Army in a scorched earth policy against the Confederate States. War still is Hell, but despite that truth, today's politicians use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity or to compel us to surrender our rights as citizens, in the name of the public good.

Still, this year I shall wear the poppy as I have done for many years. I wear it because I am from that last generation who remember a war that encompassed the entire world. I wear the poppy because I can recall when Britain was actually threatened with a real invasion and how its citizens stood at the ready to defend her shores. Most importantly, I wear the poppy to commemorate those of my childhood friends and comrades who did not survive the Second World War and those who came home physically and emotionally wounded from horrific battles that no poet or journalist could describe.

However, I am afraid it will be the last time that I will bear witness to those soldiers, airmen and sailors who are no more, at my local cenotaph. From now on, I will lament their passing in private because my despair is for those who live in this present world. I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

Come 2014 when the government marks the beginning of the First World War with quotes from Rupert Brooke, Rudyard Kipling and other great jingoists from our past empire, I will declare myself a conscientious objector. We must remember that the historical past of this country is not like an episode of Downton Abbey where the rich are portrayed as thoughtful, benevolent masters to poor folk who need the guiding hand of the ruling classes to live a proper life.

I can tell you, it didn't happen that way because I was born nine years after the first world war began. I can attest that life for most people was spent in abject poverty where one laboured under brutal working conditions for little pay and lived in houses not fit to kennel a dog today. We must remember that the war was fought by the working classes, who comprised 80% of Britain's population in 1913.

This is why I find the government's intention to spend £50m to dress the slaughter of close to a million British soldiers in the 1914-18 conflict as a fight for freedom and democracy profane. Too many of the dead, from that horrendous war, didn't know real freedom because they were poor and were never truly represented by their members of parliament.

My uncle and many of my relatives died in that war and they weren't officers or NCOs; they were simple Tommies. They were like the hundreds of thousands of other boys who were sent to slaughter by a government that didn't care to represent their citizens if they were working poor and under-educated. My family members took the king's shilling because they had little choice. In contrast, many others from similar economic backgrounds were strong-armed into enlisting by war propaganda or press-ganged into military service by their employers.

For many of you, 1914 probably seems like a long time ago but I'll be 91 next year, so it feels recent. Today, we have allowed monolithic corporate institutions to set our national agenda. We have allowed vitriol to replace earnest debate. We have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that wealth is wisdom. But by far, the worst error we have made as a people is to think of ourselves as taxpayers first and citizens second.

Next year, I won't wear the poppy. But until my last breath, I will remember the past and the struggles my generation made to build this country into a civilised state for the working and middle classes. If we are to survive as a progressive nation. We must start tending to our living because the wounded: our poor, our underemployed youth, our hard-pressed middle class and our struggling seniors shouldn't be left to die on the battleground of modern life.

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Take care, John