How Britain reached Peak Poppy
Poppy scratchcards, beauty pageants and hate mail.
A few years ago, in early November, I was in a driving lesson. We drove down a street in Chingford, on the outskirts of London, where every lamppost had a giant poppy strapped to it. Remembrance poppies have been worn in Britain since 1921, to commemorate soldiers killed in action. Originally worn on shirt lapels for a single day, 11 November, Armistice Day, they’re now typically worn for more than a fortnight and they appear everywhere - projected onto monuments, knitted onto postboxes and, in this case, attached to lampposts.
“Wow, look at those giant poppies,” I said, without thinking.
“Yeah,” said my driving instructor. This was a man who until this point had said basically nothing to me other than instructions on gear-shifts and parallel parking, so I didn’t expect further comment. No. He took a deep breath. “People round here are really patriotic. It’s good to see actually, because you can’t even be proud to be British anymore.” This marked the start of a lengthy rant that started with poppies, travelled through national pride and bafflingly ended with the comment “people can’t even decide if they’re boys or girls these days”. I nodded silently, hands glued to the wheel.
It was awkward. But it also crystallised something I’d been thinking about for a while, and continue to think about, which is the way in which poppies - ostensibly a symbol of remembrance for soldiers killed in action, and a fundraising drive for veterans - have become a stand-in for a whole host of other conversations, like patriotism, national pride, and loyalty to a certain version of Britishness. As poppy-mania has surged and the culture of poppy-policing (whereby public figures face torrents of criticism for appearing without one) has become increasingly insane, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always like this. In my latest story for the Guardian Long Read, published last week, I dug into this, with the aim of trying to work out why and how we reached Peak Poppy.
I spoke to the first person to decide to put a poppy on a football shirt, back in 2003. No teams had worn poppies before that, but by 2011, it was a norm defended by the prime minister and the heir to the throne. I also spoke to tabloid journalists about what an easy win poppy stories are. (“That Fifa ban in 2011 was a moment where we realised poppies would give us a lot of mileage,” one former Sun reporter told me. “And year after year, that has proven to be true, not just in sports.”) And I was delighted to revisit the 2016 incident where, worried about potential backlash, some hapless BBC put a poppy on the Cookie Monster.
As always with a story like this, I did a ton of research and couldn’t include everything. Here are some of my favourite bits of trivia that got cut from the final version:
In 1972, concerned about dwindling interest, the Royal British Legion - the charity that runs the annual Poppy Appeal - launched the somewhat regrettable Miss British Legion beauty pageant. The young women who competed, known as “Poppy Popsies”, sold poppies wearing short skirts and heavy make-up. (It lasted a decade, and didn’t make much difference to the fundraising drive).
In the 1990s, again concerned about falling interest, the RBL tried new ventures, launching car and lorry poppies (both of which are still available) and poppy-themed scratch cards (which are not).
Dating back to the National Front in the 1980s, far-right groups have held Remembrance Sunday marches to the Cenotaph, including a violent protest in 2023 supposedly “defending” the monument from pro-Palestinian protesters. In 2009, Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right British National Party, wore a poppy in June while he campaigned for a European Parliament seat. (The RBL wrote an open letter appealing to his “sense of honour” and asking him to stop politicising the poppy, which Griffin ignored).
In 1995, the Sun called “poppy chiefs” at the RBL “barmy” when the charity said they didn’t want to be jingoistic and glorify war.
Broadcasters put a huge amount of effort into making sure on-screen talent has poppies. The BBC orders boxes direct from the RBL for their international bureaux, since viewers expect correspondents abroad to be wearing one (even though poppies are not available abroad) while TV soaps order them early so that actors can wear poppies for the episodes due to be screened in the remembrance period.
Such is the culture around poppies that I was expecting to get hate mail after writing this, but in fact I’ve had some really thoughtful emails from readers, including a number of veterans who are uncomfortable with the sense of enforcement that can surround the poppy. You can read the full story over at the Guardian website - or, if you prefer, listen to an audio version.
Reading/listening
After the US election result I’ve seen a lot of hot takes around on how it might affect UK politics, but the best thing I read on this subject was this story on the excellent Substack Democracy for Sale, about the role of conservative US donors in the UK.
This is a very moving story about a group of pioneering female cyclists from Afghanistan and their escape from the country after the Taliban takeover.
Like many people I’ve been gripped by the podcast Kill List, about a hitman-for-hire site on the dark web. The site itself is a scam, but the people making orders don’t know that and have a serious intent to kill. This leaves the journalists in a race against time, trying to warn potential victims.
Thanks for reading! As always, feel free to get in touch in the comments or by replying to this - and share it somewhere if you found it interesting. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.