To England, where at 11:00 GMT on 11 November, the incompetence and venality
that mark normal public life in this former fishery are momentarily forgotten as their Día De
Muertos comes to an end in solemn incongruity.
The carnival of mawkish hawkishness which typifies Poppy (née Armistice) Day
evolved (like Easter and Transfer Deadline Day) from an earlier tradition, in which widows
with paper poppies, bereft parents and sombre veterans vowed, ‘Never again’.
Their grief and purpose have been largely superseded by a sentimental veneration of
conflict that manifests itself in D-Day postbox tea cosies, Spitfire hand tattoos, and threats of
violence against people who call for peace.
This year, there are many who plan to march to urge a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel.
However, instead of grasping this chance to demonstrate what ‘Lest we forget’ actually
means, swathes of people whose only experience of war is derived from Ultimate Force
with Ross Kemp are claiming that peace is an affront to the dead.
They are emboldened by Suella Braverman, who were she not Home Secretary, might
otherwise have been arbitrarily disciplining junior staff in a minor management role at a mid-
sized Tesco. She derides those calling for peace as ‘hate marchers’.
And backbench drongos like Lee Anderson and Jonathan Gullis, who seem to have
direct lines of communication with the war dead. ‘It’s not what they died for’ claim the Red
Wall necromancers, who devote their parliamentary time to eroding the very freedoms for
which real servicemen did give their lives.
One struggles to imagine how these inadequates, who lose self-control at the sight of
an empty lapel, would have coped upon encountering an MG 42 on Sword beach. Although,
had Hitler actually invaded, it is no struggle at all to visualise Jonathan Gullis reigning over a
Vichy Stoke.
Fetishized conflict, jingoism, and worship of war by people who
have never experienced it is all these children of Airfix have left.
If front lawn Sommes divert from the veterans whose mental health was shattered in
HMS Sheffield, or if five-foot poppy mascots cheapen the sacrifice of warriors who never
came home from Helmand, then so be it. They remind us of the most important
commemorative lesson of all: that those who use history for short term political gain are
dooming the rest of us to repeat it.