War, peace and a sea of poppies

“To own a compass
And have no direction in which to go;
To own a barometer
And feel the pressure yourself;
To own a watch
And run short of time;
And to own a thermometer?
That’s so cool!”
From Jig-Jigri Baatein by Bachchoo

On November 11, Britain celebrates or remembers Armistice Day. It’s the day that George V, the monarch who, together with his uncle Kaiser Willhelm II, presided over that holocaust, dedicated for the remembrance of the millions who died in World War I. It was commemorated each year after that war ended in 1918 by the symbolic sale of poppies. The proceeds of the sale went to the widows of the war dead and to the wounded who had returned maimed and unable to earn a crust. The poppy and its crimson colour symbolised the blood that was spilt. The flowers grew over Flanders Field, one of the sights of that barbaric European slaughter.
The tradition continued in Britain and in the Commonwealth up to and after the Second World War in which, as they had done in the First, many soldiers, sailors and airmen from what were then the British colonies gave their lives.
It continues today, though the poppies that are sold from baskets at most supermarkets and other High Street outlets and from street corners by cadet volunteers and others, are now made of fabric, paper or cardboard. One gets a poppy and pins its stem to one’s lapel or dress, fixes it to the bonnet of one’s car or displays it in some other way to betoken support for the soldiers who have given life or limb in the service of Britain. There are now, of course, Internet outlets and the charities which Poppy Day supports can be contacted throughout the year through these.
The appeals to support Poppy Day have begun in late October and in the last few years, apart from mentioning the remembrance of those who fell in the World Wars of the 20th century, they turn their attention to current wars which have claimed the lives of British and Commonwealth service men and women, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The charities say they support the families of those who have fallen in these wars and those who have returned maimed in them.
That’s what’s bred trouble. In the last three years there have been several incidents of young cadet volunteers being attacked or abused at the street corners where they have stood selling paper poppies. The assailants are, one can deduce from the reported rhetoric they use, against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are, predictably, exclusively young British Muslims.
I am no great enthusiast or supporter of either the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I and very many of my friends would readily abuse Tony Blair or David Cameron, George Bush or any other warmonger whose policy of sending thousands to their deaths in a fruitless struggle I wholeheartedly oppose. If Mr Blair was standing alone at a street corner without bodyguards I may even contemplate giving him what my aunt would have called “two slaps”.
I am aware that Mr Blair was democratically elected, consulted Parliament before going to war, even though he gave them the wrong information, got some sort of clearance in international law and waged his wars which were nominally legal. Even so, it’s my democratic right to think his military aggression a crime and to call him a war criminal. (I am not sure the “two slaps” would be legal but it would get something out of my system and win the support of thousands who’d visit and write to me in jail!)
However unpatriotic I feel about these last wars, I would not spit on, abuse or assault a 14-year-old girl who was selling poppies for charity on a street corner of one of Britain’s cities. Especially if there were six of me and she was alone doing what she obviously thinks is a charitable duty.
As a result of these assaults, the organisers of the Remembrance Day poppy sales have asked for volunteers to accompany the young cadets who will go out on that day. The volunteers will act as chaperones, keeping these brave Islamist opponents of British invasions from venting their spleen on children.
The move and the necessity behind it are largely seen as sad.
In the radio debates condemning the assailants and would-be assailants I heard a Muslim woman come on and identify herself as British and professionally as a teacher. She said she was born here though her parents came from Pakistan. Her grandfather fought in the Second World War and she was very proud of him. She said she was a patriotic British citizen and that Islam taught her to be loyal to the country that nurtured and educated her. Further, she said that though she was identifiably a committed Muslim of a particular persuasion and wore a hijab in public, she’d encouraged her teenage daughter to join the Air Force Cadets and volunteer for poppy-sales duty on November 11. She was against the Islamists who assaulted children poppy-sellers and was willing to step out as a chaperone.
She didn’t, with caution for which we must be thankful, give any details of her name or address or even which city she lived in.
Britain today does have feral gangs of youth who gather, not in very large numbers, to jeer at the coffins of dead British soldiers being brought back from the killing fields of Iraq and now Helmand.
These protesters are invariably protected by cordons of British police who separate them from the families, friends and citizen-mourners who come out in their thousands to the ceremonials that accompany the burial of these servicemen and women. If the cops weren’t there to protect these Islamist’s right to hold an opinion and express it, there would be unpleasant retaliations and perhaps a few funerals of the jeerers to follow.