Lesley Riddoch: Flower’s power keeps on growing

SO BRITAIN’S poppy-wearing football players were victorious. Not only did each home nation’s team succeed in sporting “political” poppies on black armbands this weekend – they all succeeded in producing results.

Does this mean Britain’s highly publicised wrangle with Fifa was right? And was respect for Britain’s war dead really the main issue?

The Poppy Appeal has sold a record 46 million poppies this year – which probably means a record income for the British Legion at a time of national austerity and falling charitable donation. That can only be a good thing.

But what caused that rise in poppy sales long before the Fifa argument erupted?

Does it reflect a resurgence of respect for those killed in the last century among pupils studying the terrible losses of the world wars? Is the very real and public connection with present-day troops in Afghanistan and Iraq an important factor? Or has the poppy become a must-wear accessory for “conscience fashionistas” – replacing the worn wrist-bands of Make Poverty History? Is there a tipping point where so many public figures wear poppies on TV that no-one dares leave the house without one during the month of November?

Each person brings a unique set of reasons and associations to the idea of Remembrance Sunday and the business of wearing a poppy. And until now that ambiguity has been part of the poppy’s appeal.

Six civilians die for every soldier killed in modern warfare – that’s why many peace activists wear white poppies, or none. Others conclude this important reality is not denied by Remembrance Day. Others disagree. That’s been the beauty of the poppy appeal. The non-compulsory nature of poppy-wearing has allowed and even demanded an act of meaningful choice – until last week’s stand-off with Fifa when public sentiment in Britain was blatantly manipulated.

Despite the fulminations of certain royals, players, politicians and papers last week, the English football team has managed to play nine matches close to 11 November in the last decade without wearing poppies or raising the issue with Fifa.

Last week a well-meaning gesture was hijacked by Euro-phobes, Blatter-bashers (Fifa boss Sepp was criticised for apparently snubbing poppy-wearing appeals), commercial interests and politicians keen to distract public attention from the almighty mess of euro-zone meltdown.

At least one other agenda was revealed by sports minister Hugh Robertson who claimed: “Wearing your poppy is a display of national pride, like wearing your country’s football shirt.”

Ah, would that it were so simple. In this single country with four home nations there is no shirt that demonstrates British national pride. That’s the divisive and unifying power of the cultural symbol for you. That’s also why Fifa have the “no prominent emblems” rule in the first place. It doesn’t matter that the poppy is indeed non-political, religious or partisan. It doesn’t matter that the German Football Federation’s General Secretary Wolfgang Niersbach said he had no objection to poppy-wearing players.

The British poppy may well be the world’s most powerful symbol of respect for soldiers killed in war. It has transatlantic origins, Commonwealth buy-in and support from the French. But the poppy is essentially a British symbol and that necessarily gives it a different meaning for everyone else. Poppies don’t give the wearer a monopoly on empathy or compassion. Millions of poppy-less Europeans and Russians haven’t forgotten their own war dead. The poppy does not have the unassailable position of representing all war loss to everyone.

Each nation has its own “special” circumstances – some live in the aftermath of war, some endure unresolved conflict with neighbours and some are currently at war. Symbols considered “neutral” by one side in a conflict are inevitably regarded as provocative by another. Consider Union flags and Tricolours at Old Firm matches. Consider how much worse aggression might be if those emblems were woven into the very fabric of players’ jerseys. And we are at peace – aren’t we?

I’m not suggesting the poppy carries any sinister message at all. But last week’s campaign risked opening Pandora’s Box – allowing aggrieved nations to use Britain’s poppy-shaped loophole for their own displays of “cultural pride”. Fortunately, for the containment of conflict and the dignity of the poppy appeal, that didn’t happen.

The synthetic poppy rage that almost swamped Britain does prompt some more difficult questions.

Why was so much anger generated about the right to wear poppies and so little about the right of wounded ex-service men and women to expect state care for their rehabilitation?

Perhaps other nations have no poppy appeal because they provide more than lip-service and charity to war veterans? Does David Cameron’s “respect” for the poppy mean respect for the estimated 2,500 injured troops who are allegedly facing the sack? Should it?

Perhaps the surge in poppy sales – like the steadfast presence of locals at Wootton Bassett – is motivated by feelings of collective guilt over the squaddies left to pay the price for Britain’s ill-judged interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The popular movements behind the overthrow of Gaddafi and Mubarak have demonstrated a different and less bloody way for the West to intervene. Oppressed Muslims risked everything to escape tyranny – and they didn’t need our boots on their soil to do it.

Why then must our soldiers continue to risk everything “holding the peace” in Afghanistan while our government is probably holding secret talks with the Taleban?

War is cripplingly unfair. And that’s partly why strangers feel a connection with the war dead – everywhere.

The Germans had their traditional Day of Mourning yesterday – marked by sombre and thought-provoking speeches in the Reichstag broadcast across the country.

The event is organised by the German War Graves Commission which performs an unenviable task of reconciliation in every country of Europe as it asks for the right to tend the graves of Germans who died fighting for Hitler. These are war dead too. This too is an act of compassion.

The British poppy tradition is special because it has always been low-key, popular and voluntary. That voluntary tradition relies upon an absence of compulsion, a shared belief in the freedom to express identity and emotion in different ways and a refusal to let politicians or big business run the show.

All that is best about the poppy appeal was almost lost last week.

Thank goodness for stubborn Sepp Blatter.