{"id":257132,"date":"2025-11-11T17:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257132\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T17:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:04:07","slug":"arguing-about-whether-or-not-to-wear-a-poppy-misses-the-most-crucial-point-zoe-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257132\/","title":{"rendered":"Arguing about whether or not to wear a poppy misses the most crucial point | Zoe Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of last week, I was thinking my regular Remembrance season thoughts \u2013 Are people wearing poppies earlier every year? \u2013 and by the middle of the week, I\u2019d agreed to have a quick morning argument about poppies on the radio. David Lammy<\/a> had been caught in parliament without one, and roundly castigated. He had responded with sentiments to the effect that Remembrance Sunday was the most important day of the year; nobody found it more important than him; anyone who didn\u2019t think it was important was not a patriot; and by sheer hideous happenstance, he had a new suit, and his poppy was on the other suit. Some of us were thus called on to adjudicate on remembrance, while the more agile wing of the commentariat was wondering how Lammy could afford a new suit.<\/p>\n

Anyway, my line hasn\u2019t changed on this for at least 25 years. Wear a poppy, don\u2019t wear a poppy, both are legitimate positions. Honouring the fallen is worthwhile. Finding all that performative honour a bit militaristic, and declining to have your love of country elided with celebration of war, even in a tinged-with-sorrow way, also worthwhile. You do you.<\/p>\n

The world around me has changed immeasurably in that time, however, and what was once a sidebar to the national debate is now a matter of rigid consensus. If you were a public figure seen not wearing a poppy, you would probably be proscribed as a terrorist organisation; in the best-case scenario, people would think you were simply incapable of any memory, maybe you had just come out of a coma. And this all seems a little extreme.<\/p>\n

It surprised me, when I heard the counter-argument to mine \u2013 from Simon Weston, Falklands veteran \u2013 that it was basically exactly the same. If people didn\u2019t want to wear a poppy, fine, he said (I precis), just don\u2019t go on and on about it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Sunday came, I was bombing along the Thames on my bike, and I couldn\u2019t figure out why I wasn\u2019t allowed to cycle round Parliament Square, nor why all the crash barriers were down across Westminster Bridge. It wasn\u2019t until I noticed a large number of people wearing medals that I clocked it; I\u2019d spent so long arguing about poppies that I\u2019d forgotten it was Remembrance Sunday. Obviously, I can\u2019t speak for everyone; plenty of people did remember. But poppy-mania is all about the scrap, now, and actively blocks the one useful memory: choose harmony.<\/p>\n

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the start of last week, I was thinking my regular Remembrance season thoughts \u2013 Are people wearing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-257132","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}