16th November 2007

John Marjoram responds to a letter in The Citizen re white poppies. See also Philip Booth's blog entries on poppies:

http://ruscombegreen.blogspot.com/search/label/Poppies 

As I walked into Stroud town centre last Saturday morning I thought how fortunate it was that I am to live in such a tolerant town. You had people selling red poppies or white poppies in the High Street and some shoppers wearing only red, red and white together and some only wearing white, as they have done for the last fifteen years or so. The majority of course wore neither.

I therefore found it most disconcerting to read your correspondent from Longleavens, Shaun Shute’s disparaging comments in Saturday’s “Citizen” and I quote, “wear your poppy with pride unless it’s the white variety usually sold in Stroud town centre –then wear it with shame.”

White poppies for peace were first made by the Women’s Co-operative Guild in 1933. Members of the guild were mothers, sisters and widows of men killed in the WW1 who feared that the ‘war to end all wars’, in which their men had died, would be followed by an even worse war. The wearing of a white poppy now signifies the remembrance of all soldiers and civilians in all countries who have died in such a violent way and the subsequent misery that it has caused their and future generations.

Isn’t it tragic that after nearly ninety years we are still resorting almost at the drop of a hat, to the same tactics although now using weapons of mass destruction to achieve our objectives? Even now our new Prime Minister hasn’t ruled out the option of attacking Iran despite the American and our own recent experience of precipitating illegal wars, by international standards, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I believe that peace initially has to start at home therefore at this moment I am trying to understand what makes Shaun Shute so upset by the wearing of white poppies in Stroud?

John Marjoram