Poppies and Badges and Ribbons, oh my!

Wednesday 4.11.09

There are red paper poppies, there are red polyester ribbons, there are semaphore 'N' 'D' badges. They are all causes for the lapel. I've worn all of them at some time in my life.

Poppies are everywhere now. Red paper poppies with plastic stems. The pins that used to go with them have disappeared. As a child, I used to like the pins, neat rows on the paper, I used to think they were lined up like that to represent soldiers on parade. My Nan would buy me a poppy sometimes if I pleaded for one. Often, by the end of the day, all that would be left on my coat would be the pin. I wasn't allowed to have it because I might swallow it, but if I remembered in time, I would sneak the pin away. Such illicit contraband. My family were never into causes, and my Nan was, and still is, actively against charity. I grew up to take the opposite view in work and word, but I'm still wrestling with the concept of wearing my beliefs on my collar.

The poppies are given out in return for a donation by the Royal British Legion, their big earner towards their work supporting soldiers and their families. There's a lot of work to be done after all. When I was a teenager in the cause-hungry '80's I never wore a poppy. It seemed to me to be a right-wing symbol supporting war, almost an advertisement for the nobility of conflict. Also, it seemed to be about old men. I would say all of this to anyone who would listen, but I never thought it through. I wore a CND badge though. I suffered the genuine, now almost forgotten fear of nuclear annihilation experienced by loads of people at the time, even the ones who liked Spandau Ballet. Most of my mates wore CND badges (the lines on a CND badge relate to the semaphore 'N' and 'D') and, in spite of the badge having been designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958, I never saw an old man wear one. I must have got old quick, because I gave up CND badges too long ago to remember. I don't know when I started wearing the red ribbon for World Aids Day, it's the one I'm least conflicted about, and I've worn one every year, usually pinned on to my handbag, since I was at college.

The poppies are giving me a bad feeling. A sick kind of shame. War seems both inevitable and unremitting, peace the dream of a child. Some of the boys and girls who grew up alongside my children are soldiers now. I see pride and fear in the eyes of their parents and no longer think, as my young self would have, that these young people should not do what soldiers do. Even so, a corner of me believes that these young people are exploited by politicians whose motivations are dubious, and a larger corner believes that their sacrifices are futile. I'm sorry for that too, because I see that they want to be doing a good and noble thing as well as making a living and having a good time making dens. It seems that everyone on TV is required to wear a poppy. I imagine huge vats of them in green rooms, with makeup artists having to check that they are worn on the correct side, and that there is a poppy present, not just the space where the pin would have been. It seems a very trite thing to do in these troubled times, the wearing of paper flowers. I feel like the issue is too vast for such a small token. I just don't know what it says.

All of the causes represented by ribbons and badges and wrist bands, aren't they all too big. I wonder now if all the time I've worn them, I've just been declaring myself to be part of a club. A liberal pseudo-meritocracy of people who like to think of ourselves as compassionate thinkers. At least my Nan was honest in saying that she didn't support charity because she had enough of a job keeping herself together. In her defense, she did believe in the welfare state, she lived off it for much of her life. Finishing writing this, writhing in irony, I'm finding myself no further forward.

Some of my favorite lines by Billy Bragg: Peace bread work and freedom/Is the best we can achieve./Wearing badges is not enough/In days like these'. It's from one of his early political songs, redolent of '80's agit-pop and dated now. I love the sentiment though. Here's the youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE6jO6HUvtU .