The Biggest and Prettiest Poppy

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I saw the Poppy display at the Tower Of London on the 26th October, I thought that I should leave writing the blog until nearer the 11th November to make it more pertinent to the date of the memorial. Nevertheless, on the 10th of November, I feel like I have nothing new to say. There has been a national navel gazing about the concept of the installation, the notion of ‘hero’, why there are so many charities for soldiers and why the money goes to them all, whether the display should stay… I could go on.

When I actually saw the poppies it was 8.00 in the morning and there was me and my husband and the road sweeper – we had managed to avoid the hordes of people, we just happened to be staying at the Tower Bridge Hotel. My instinct was, that as art installations go, this was visual, easy to interpret – you didn’t need an explanation, if you had a relative who had died in WW1, you could definitely appreciate the poignancy of this display. But – I did start to recognise one issue that has also been highlighted in the press – the poppy’s original choice as a symbol, and the slogan – ‘Lest we Forget’ is supposed to be a reminder of the horrors of war – NOT a celebration of war, and wearing a poppy is by choice, not a necessity.

I have my own personal reason to commemorate the 11th November – it was my Granddad’s Birthday. Not an easy day to have a celebration on!
I was relatively young when Granddad died, but his legacy lives on and is a reminder to me within the context of the current issues related to the Labour movement and the oncoming issues related to work and education.

My Granddad passed his 11 plus, he was a very clever man – BUT, his family couldn’t afford for him to go to grammar school, they couldn’t afford the uniform or the books, so at 14 years old he went ‘down the pits’. A man who was over six foot mining a 19 inch seam for 12 hours – at least- a day. The legacy of his mining career was a lifelong lung condition that killed him in the end, and a lifelong hatred of Churchill, and of the Bowes Lyons. He was too young for the First World War, and too old for the Second World War – and as a miner had to stay at home anyway. There are no war ‘heroes’ in my family, they were all down the pits. Nevertheless, he would have been extremely proud that I was the first member of our family to go to university, and the things that he had fought for benefitted his future generations. Unfortunately, the recent research claiming that poorer families struggle to buy uniforms and provide the basics for their children’s education sounds the alarm bells of the past where poverty is a barrier to accessing education.

My Granddad hated Churchill, despite the image of him as the saviour of the British in the Second World War because when the miners were fighting for better pay, and better conditions and became involved in the General Strike of 1926, Churchill’s rumoured response to their plight was to ‘tell the rats to get back down their holes’. He never forgave him, and who can blame him?

On April 26th 1923 day of the Royal Wedding of Prince Albert, Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes – Lyon (The Queen’s Mother) almost everyone was given the day off as a holiday to celebrate. The Bowes Lyons owned the mine where my Granddad worked. They were made to work! The combination of the horrific conditions and terrible pay, was then compounded by not receiving a holiday on a day when the whole country were allowed a celebration. The result – a lifelong resentment of the Bowes Lyon family – their wealth and privilege achieved on the back of the abject misery of the workers they exploited to achieve such wealth.

My Granddad’s second career was as a butcher. He continued the labour fight for better working conditions. A set time to work – 9- 5, Sundays off, a living wage for workers. As I watch the erosion of all of these rights I truly despair – particularly the zero hour contracts. How can anyone live any kind of secure life with such a contract? At a time where it appears that Labour have lots its way, maybe they do need to reflect on the past and the needs of the workers. When the leader of the Fabian Society’s suggestion was to court big business to succeed in the next election, what hope is there for the working classes? My Granddad worked for the Co-op, I can just imagine his disgust at the conduct of the Co-op bank, how can these people even begin to claim they operate as a cooperative?

My paternal Granddad was also too young for the First World War, and too old for the Second. The war did have a profound impact on him. On seeing the ‘victory’ parades of the men returning form the First World War he saw a dejected set of wounded men with missing limbs, some blind. Men who had left Newcastle young, fit and healthy returned broken and destroyed. Mt granddad became a staunch atheist on this day, and at this sight,and he NEVER wavered in this. In fact when my aunt Nora was placed in the Catholic school by my Nana’s Catholic parents – he would go into school and physically remove her. The ‘quality’ of education was an irrelevancy – his principles and lack of religious beliefs overrode all of this.

Where is the ideology?

We are always told that the point of war is to fight for our rights, to defend the vulnerable and to maintain a position of strength.
Our current problem – there are no strong political ideologies to help us fight for a fairer society any more. We need ideology so that as a society we have something to aspire to, and something to fight against. Ideologies do have to evolve, and this is particularly necessary for Labour in a post-industrial society. Having any strong beliefs appears to be perceived as a weakness in a politician, whereas it used to be a position of strength. The horrors of war serve as a reminder that we want ideological strategies and policies that benefit society, on no account do we ever want to repeat World War One or World War Two.

Ultimately, we do need to remember the fallen, but there are still many things that we all need to continue to fight for, but never through going to war. The disaffection in America over the election and the politicians, and the apathy the British appear to have for our current batch of politicians – across all parties- gives the impression that if we want to succeed in improving society, we need to look elsewhere until the politicians can decide on where they stand, and who they represent. What is particularly sad is that Labour appear to be taking for granted the lifelong Labour voters of the post-industrial North. Nevertheless, as our political party become homogenised, and as the North’s industrial past becomes historical, if Labour is to truly represent the workers in any way, it has to create some representatives, and some policies that people can relate to. We need politicians who can at the very least be perceived to be fighting for the poor, the needy and the weakest in society. A debate about who is wearing the biggest and prettiest poppy isn’t enough!

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