Poppies and the "Heroes Industry" ?

[french frank]

Yes, this is from the Daily Mail, and therefore to most viewers here not worth the paper it's written on, but it is by Colonel Tim Collins, who has combat experience, unlike most of the armchair commentators. And to my mind he gets right to the heart of the matter:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rstanding.html

He has the experience (no doubt) and some of the facts, but once he starts 'screaming' POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, he loses the plot. And don't quote my post as if the Mail article somehow answers that argument. I said nothing that could have been interpreted as "demands for the harshest possible sentence": merely that the law should be allowed to take its course (and without the interference of people with vested interests (the military) or political convictions - on either side, be it added).

The matter of anonymity is irrelevant, in my view: Lee Rigby wasn't singled out because either he or any other individually named combatant had committed an atrocity. We (the public) don't really need to know his name. Like every other criminal, he will serve his term and should not be punished once released. Those most likely to know him will already have had clues as to his identity.

[eighthobstruction]

Caught the last 20 minutes of the Cenotaph parade....I always get a dichotomy of feelings from the sight of these people walking by....the feeling of them being worthy of respect (do they have these patriotic and self less feelings 24 hours a day without any lull)....it certainly separates them from those of us that have not participated in the events which they commemorate....But at this time I always think of all the people who 'make the world go around'....make it function....create civilisation....(unfortunately these 'functionaries' also set up the articles and logistics and reasons for 'us' to go to war)....But at the dichotomy moment I am also thinking about the bridge builders, road builders, nurses, doctors, manufacturers of the 'cutting edge' , scientists, teachers (people who humbly 'just get on with their jobs', jobs that 'make it all go around'....I do this from the point of view of a person who was (many things) a person who looked after the mentally ill (my humble job for a while and a not very enjoyable job), but now for 15 years describing myself as an 'artist' ( feeling very strong in the lovely little existential world I have created for myself)....but not feeling worthy these days. I have never been one of those 'worthy people'....I have always been a looker on....not buying into 'IT'....and that 'IT' I suppose is what makes this country a fantasticly tolerant, productive, civilised place....but also a mighty foe....a great manipulator of facts and events....(but one has to believe us 'lookers on' do have a role to play)....

[french frank]

Decided not to post this on the War Requiem thread, but I did want to respond:

Trouble is (and this probably should be on the "other" thread)
politicians (of all flavours) have made it so that wearing a red one is seen as an endorsement of all sorts of things done in our name that many of us profoundly disagree with.

I've given up hope of separating the 'political' posts from the musical ones, since there wouldn't be many 'musical' ones left.

However, it might be added that the white poppy is also seen as an endorsement of opinions that 'many people' disagree with. Britten chose to set the words of Wilfred Owen who may have been a 'pacifist' before the war, and have hated what he felt he had to do during the war. The citation which accompanied the award of his MC read:

"He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly."

My reading of the poems (those that I know - hastily added in case others suggest the contrary) is that his 'pacifism' - and perhaps pacifism in general, involves raising one's voice against War, its ugliness. That does not preclude anyone feeling that, in any given war, one has a duty to fight. That doesn't mean that one feels that there is anything 'Dulce et dulcorum' about it, or that it isn't a pitiful waste of humanity. If that was what the military, British Legion &c thought the white poppy was supposed to mean, many would no doubt agree with the underlying sentiment. But we all insist on labelling, placing our own interpretations on other people's motives.

[MrGongGong]

I nearly put that in here myself

Surely a work like the War Requiem can't be separated from it's "politics" ?

as is true for many other pieces of music / art

[french frank]

I nearly put that in here myself

Surely a work like the War Requiem can't be separated from it's "politics" ?

as is true for many other pieces of music / art

I think the complaint was that the politics seemed to be all that people wanted to talk about; which is to say the music IS its politics and nothing more ...

Anyway, it was jean's comment about giving up wearing a white poppy because it implied something about other people wearing the red one that prompted my thought. But endlessly, endlessly, people have to divide themselves up into opposing camps.

[Beef Oven!]

Your final sentence doesn't make sense as it stands.

It means that we do rather well by the country we were born into, or adopted, and despite the sometimes invasion of our privacy, and the odd tussle with those charming DWP/ATOS people, our glass is actually at least half-full and we might be positive about the place.

If we have an issue with an aspect of British life, or a British institution, we should seek to positively improve or change it. Gratuitously attacking our country, its people and its way of life at every opportunity, is really the domain of ignorant unhappy people who like to destroy things that they feel don't work for them.

There are two types of people in this life, builders and destroyers. The destroyers always seem to suffer from low self-esteem. Maybe we can do something about that and we will all be happier.

It's tough, and there's no easy answer. But together we can make it.

[MrGongGong]

If we have an issue with an aspect of British life, or a British institution, we should seek to positively improve or change it. Gratuitously attacking our country, its people and its way of life at every opportunity, is really the domain of ignorant unhappy people who like to destroy things that they feel don't work for them..

Indeed
So I guess you part company with the peester then , (phew)

Its interesting that in reading about the whole poppy thing in several newspapers (and not even the Guardian so before you start that tedious riff !!) that the view that it has BECOME (not what it was BUT what it has turned into !) something that many ex forces folks will have nothing to do with, that there are also many who fought in WW1 & 2 who also found it objectionable in the way that it glorifies death and war. To read what some might say , this view is only the province of a handful of teenage Marxists BUT that's not true at all.

TO go back to Britten for a moment, the way in which it appears that the choir in the War Requiem were instructed to either wear a red poppy or none would seem to fly in the face of the spirit of the piece and of it's composer. Which is not (though the Pees of this world will never understand this as they seem to have "special" understanding as a result of playing Nimrod in the rain !) to say that it's an infringement of "freedom" of the same magnitude as Stalin or any of the other Godwin/non-Godwin's Law folks that you care to mention. BUT that it's missing the point somewhat.

TO simply do the "Us / Them" thing strikes me as very foolish and sometimes dangerous..........

Our "way of life" is to be tolerant of difference and to respect those who might disagree with us NOT to make everyone wear the same thing or have to remember things in the same official version.

[eighthobstruction]

A good R4 You and Yours phone in at mo' about Rememberance Day........(particularly good points from woman 5 minutes in)

[Beef Oven!]

Surely a work like the War Requiem can't be separated from it's "politics" ?

as is true for many other pieces of music / art

Agreed. But it's not about separation of politics from music, it's about the degree, or salience, we want to afford to it at any given moment/performance/discussion.

There are not many things in life that are extricable from politics (and Marxists will tell you nothing is outside of the dialectic dynamic, or conflict dynamic of life).

It is actually possible to listen to Eddie's War Requiem without insisting on having the politics as the main issue.

[ahinton]

It means that we do rather well by the country we were born into, or adopted, and despite the sometimes invasion of our privacy, and the odd tussle with those charming DWP/ATOS people, our glass is actually at least half-full and we might be positive about the place.

I'm sure that there are plenty of people who harbour at least some positive thoughts about Britain but who nevertheless deplore jingoism in all its forms, the despatch of taxpayer-funded armed forces into countries with which Britain is not officially at war in orer to interfere in those countries' affairs and the promotion of that dangerously nonsensical "my country, right or wrong" idea when seeking dogmatically to persuade people that red poppies mean this, white poppies mean that and wearing neither is some kind of national disgrace, so it's by no means all about disgruntled Britain-bashing for its own sake at all times.

As to the invasions of personal privacy and tussles with DWP/ATOS/you-name-it, it is surely a citizen's duty to question why any of these occur. The invasions usually occur when authorities empowered to conduct them overstep their brief and, since they're likewise taxpayer funded, they're wasting taxpayers' money when doing so; the tussles that you mention arise more often than not as a consequence of an unpalatable cocktail of the various authorities' administrative incompetence and the over-complex law within whose confines they are obliged to function.

If we have an issue with an aspect of British life, or a British institution, we should seek to positively improve or change it.

But how does anyone even try to go about that without risking uproar and affray, causing friction and aggravating conflicts of interest? Yes, if it's government activity, one can vote for a diffeent political party to that/those in office but not until the next General Election. If an individual or group of individuals has no control over the conduct of a British institution and cannot be directly empowered to seize such control, how in any case could they "seek positively to improve or change it"? There's lobbying, of course, there's the spreading of adverse publicity and the like, but thee's no guaantgee whatsoever that this will make the slightest difference.

Gratuitously attacking our country, its people and its way of life at every opportunity, is really the domain of ignorant unhappy people who like to destroy things that they feel don't work for them.

Whilst I do not disagree in principle with this, I do not see that those who express their various different views on poppy wearing at and around the time of the annual so-called "festival of remembrance" are doing so merely by expressing them.

together we can make it.

"We're all in it together"; yes, I have a vague recollection of having heard that somewhere previously...

[Beef Oven!]

Indeed
So I guess you part company with the peester then , (phew)

Why do the posts from you and your bum-chum and have references to MrPee? Has he got under your skin that much!!?

Going back to Eddie's Requiem with you, the Red Poppy/White Poppy thing is pretty straight forward. It's about tact.

Not allowing white poppies is about tact. It might raise the antibodies of a small number of people who want to hi-jack it and tell us how clever and 'right-on' they, but it means the thing can go ahead.

We need to be more sophistacted in our tactics. There will be only one outcome if you have the whitepoppies. Perceived insult and a bun fight. YOU may be happy with that, I'M NOT.

I would like to see how a more up to date, modern pacifist imbued message can be finessed into rememberence day(s).

It's about making things better, making them work. Not destroying them because we don't like them, even if we are 'technically' right in our argument.

[MrGongGong]

Going back to Eddie's Requiem with you, the Red Poppy/White Poppy thing is pretty straight forward. It's about tact.

It is indeed
and it's tactless to make rules forbidding the wearing of a pacifist symbol in a performance of a piece of art with a pacifist intent and written by a pacifist....

The R4 'phone in' was interesting

[ahinton]

Going back to Eddie's Requiem with you, the Red Poppy/White Poppy thing is pretty straight forward. It's about tact.

Not allowing white poppies is about tact. It might raise the antibodies of a small number of people who want to hi-jack it and tell us how clever and 'right-on' they, but it means the thing can go ahead.

We need to be more sophistacted in our tactics. There will be only one outcome if you have the whitepoppies. Perceived insult and a bun fight. YOU may be happy with that, I'M NOT.

Why so? No one can realistically expect everyone to share identical views on the ways in which remembrance of war dead should be done - still less about the wearing or meaning of red or white poppies. It has to be accepted that there are inevitable differences of viewpoint as well as differences and changes in interpretation and that not everyone has a friend or family member who has suffered the misfortune of losing his/her life on active service in a war in any case. This isn't therefore about "tactics"; it's about tolerance and understanding - or at least it should be...

I would like to see how a more up to date, modern pacifist imbued message can be finessed into rememberence day(s).

By that, do you mean that you would really like to see this or that you suspect that it couldn't realistically be achieved? Why would or should a pacifist imbued message (and why a "modern" one in any case? - pacifism is hardly a modern phenomenon!) be regarded as somehow contrary in spirit to the act of remembrance? In fact, to me, I'd say that such a message is a vital component of such remembrance if that remembrance is to have real meaning and constructive impact.

It's about making things better, making them work. Not destroying them because we don't like them, even if we are 'technically' right in our argument.

Who are "we", to what specific what "argument" do you refer here and on what grounds might it be deemed "technically right"? If your argument is about not destroying the things that one doesn't like simply because one doesn't like them, then the attitude of tolerance and understanding of differences of emphasis, experience, interpretation et al to which I refer above would surely be a good start towards achieveing such a goal, wouldn't it?! Perhaps you agree - I'm not entirely certain - but to state that an unspecifried "we" are 'technically right' in our argument rather risks sailng dangerously close to that "my country, right or wrong" sentiment in implying a degree of arrogance over the claim of "being right", however unintentional that might be...

[ahinton]

It is indeed
and it's tactless to make rules forbidding the wearing of a pacifist symbol in a performance of a piece of art with a pacifist intent and written by a pacifist....

Quite - and the composer of A Child of our Time was also a pacifist and, unlike that of the War Requiem but like that of Border Boyhood (commissioned for and premièred at Aldeburgh by Peter Pears), was imprisoned for it; should the works of known pacifists be sidelined on the grounds of alleged incompatibility with the act of remembering those who died on active service in, or otherwise as victims of, a war?

[Beef Oven!]

It is indeed
and it's tactless to make rules forbidding the wearing of a pacifist symbol in a performance of a piece of art with a pacifist intent and written by a pacifist....

What did I say about 'no matter how technically right' we may be?

Are you deliberately being difficult, or do you just not understand the issue?