I do not wear a poppy….

I’m about to be rather controversial, to say something that many will argue with. I would urge you to first think, then react. We will examine a tradition that I think I understand, that I personally have been very close to and involved in, but I have come to think is not helpful. What I am referring to is remembrance, specifically the event and not the ideal.

I think that we have developed a fetish for paying attention to historic narratives of perceived and mediated western moral triumph that are wrapped up in horrendous events associated with unnecessary human suffering which arose following economic squabbles between structures of power. I do not think that there was a moral fight between the righteous protagonist and the evil antagonist, in fact I believe them more normally both to hold evil intention.

Conflict between countries was historically driven by different interpretations of many different, or several similar, religious beliefs. Those systems of belief enabled their most powerful practitioners to believe that action they would then take to improve their own, or their tribe’s, situation were justifiable in moral terms. The crusades were a land grab premised by two competing claims over the importance of the land in question to the followers of different traditions. It was captured by the armies of the European landmass on the orders of the papacy, then repossessed by the Muslim forces of the middle east in the name of their deity by Saladin.

Never was it really about anything more than utility and control of resources such as trade. The capture of Britain by the Vikings was not ideological it was about farming land and expansion. The first world war was a family struggle over European monarchical power. The defence of the Falklands was about political flag waving for an unhappy nation and continued military control of a strategic landmass close to South America. The Europeans took bibles to the new world and swapped them for land with the help of the rifle and the sword. The continuing conflicts in the middle east concern land rights, they are merely masked as ideological or religious, yet they are fundamentally about maintaining the balance of power where the northern hemisphere mostly benefits from the resources of the southern hemisphere as long as the states of the southern countries are prevented from collective thinking, so we keep them at each others throats.

And every year we celebrate the loss of life incurred, as if those lives were given in a moral quest to make the world a better place. There is no way to determine what now would look like if WWI had been lost, there is no way to say that it was a good thing that the Greeks defeated the Persians, and there is no way to determine that all the things that have happened in the time since would not have happened had the event we refer to not happened as it did. Yes there would be differences, the sliding doors effect, but Britain was successfully invaded by the Beaker People, the Celts, the Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings, the Normans, and here we are now thinking that winning conflicts no matter the cost is the definitive aspect of freedom that justifies large losses of life, and celebrating those victories by pinning a badge of honour to the contents of a grave containing a tragedy.

Never forget that for a king or a politician, the loss of your life in the pursuit of their goals is a sacrifice they will always be willing to make.

Paul S Wilson