Remembrance is Critical for Social Cohesion – Do Not Let It Become a Pawn of Political Theatre

In Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly turned down an invitation to attend the inauguration of Irish President-elect Catherine Connolly. She had cited her attendance at a number of Remembrance Day events. Some nationalists and unionists claimed this rejection was political, rather than anything to do with Remembrance Day taking priority in a scheduling conflict. 

It cannot be said definitively one way or the other if they are correct in this assertion, but to the Deputy First Minister’s credit, Remembrance Day is perhaps one of the few remaining rituals in British public life that the majority here can collectively participate in without tensions. Unlike Remembrance Day, some motifs have faded due to their incompatibility with modern society. The Empire and its associations with racialism and violence are one. Other motifs have faded, due to their divisive nature: Protestant Christianity has drastically lost following since 1983, as has loyalty to the Crown and trust in BBC journalism.

Remembrance Day should be, at its core, a chance for most British people to stop and to devote time to reflect on the story of their ancestors losing their lives in the World Wars. It is a chance for every British person to remind themselves of their ancestral past, to recall that they are part of a larger British society, and to reaffirm their duty to care for others in that society, to engage positively with their community, and to protect social freedoms in the future. To ritualise this moment of reflection, the red corn poppy is worn every year on lapels – an allusion to those found growing on battlefields in Flanders during World War I. In this simplicity and universalism, Remembrance Day could be a wonderful source of social cohesion. 

Yet Remembrance Day has not been immune to political distortions. Irish Nationalists have regularly criticised Remembrance Day for its association with the British Armed Forces and a tacit support for British Army presence in Northern Ireland. Islamist extremists have used a similar argument, having taken it a step further by burning poppies. While there are ideological assertions built on their arguments, they have kernels of truth. Perhaps the biggest kernel is that proceeds from red poppy sales are primarily used to fund the Royal British Legion, a charity assisting British Army veterans and their families. While veteran assistance is not a bad thing, by tying Remembrance directly to a “veteran” identity and to the British Armed Forces, Remembrance begins to lose its original meaning. 

The White Poppy Movement has pointed out Remembrance is further diluted when they write: “politicians who plough billions into weapons lay wreaths at the cenotaph”. Indeed, for many, Remembrance is now synonymous with solemn images of the King, senior centrist politicians, church leaders and masses of uniformed veterans marching on the TV, rather than an event related to them or their communities. If proliferation of white poppies, black poppies, LGTBQIA+ rainbow poppies, or purple poppies indicate anything, it is that Remembrance as it stands has excluded other identities in Britain, even if this was never intentional. 

By marginalising other identities, and by prioritising veteran identities as well as a focus on the British establishment, Remembrance can unwittingly feed into the ideologies of British far right groups in Great Britain, and indeed Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. These groups can point to “outsiders” such as Irish Nationalists, Islamist extremists, or “woke leftists” to shore up support for their organisations. Both can further abuse Remembrance to foster legitimacy for their supremacist ideologies and for their tactics of violence, racial or sectarian hate speech, and even drug-trafficking.  

Remembrance should be better protected from these political distortions, especially as future iterations will lack the presence of living memory to keep Remembrance accountable. A good starting point would be to define more strongly a separation between Remembrance Sunday – more akin to a Veteran’s Day – and Remembrance Day itself. Disconnecting Remembrance Day from military themes gives it space to include more British people, including those who may not have had a family member in the Armed Forces for decades or even a century, and indeed those who may have no connection to the Armed Forces at all. An excellent next step would be to turn Remembrance Day from a brief two minutes of silence during the workday into a national holiday, on the proviso communities assemble in third spaces for a prolonged time, genuinely reflecting, reaffirming, and sharing their ancestral stories in the presence of red corn poppies. 

Remembrance could be an excellent source of social cohesion in our increasingly diversifying United Kingdom, but only if it and other British rituals can be adapted to a rapidly changing conception of Britishness. Remembrance should not exclude anyone British and instead give British people a chance to remember that, despite our many differences, we have more in common than not.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Turquis Oana

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