Blushing Poppy

Published: 02/11/2006

This week Camilla stepped with her fine shoes on the hearts of millions without meaning to. On a fiendishly fraught official trip with Prince Charles to Pakistan she dressed to please the population wearing stylish but modest clothes with long scarves draped around her neck and shoulders. The poppy was hard to fix on the diaphanous material and so she appeared in public without the blood red flower. Bad move. Sections of the British media and veteran’s associations noticed, they always do, and they were not best pleased. Extending diplomatic courtesy in one direction, she inadvertently provoked a thoroughly un-diplomatic storm. That misjudgement will stalk her for a very long time and she will have to learn an important lesson. I know because I did.

In the year we went to war on Iraq, I couldn’t bear to wear the poppy. So I didn’t, not even on TV appearances when they offered them free and pleaded that to go on without one would upset viewers. I wrote a column explaining why this self-righteous defiance. Refusing the poppy was a way of showing my disgust, I said, with our mendacious politicians and their hypocritical chants and postures as they took this country into reckless combat in Iraq. Come November, those who made that decision ritualistically paraded their respect for our old and dead soldiers and were, of course, always seen with the pinned flower on their lapels. I also returned my MBE, again partly to make a point, this time about the immorality of occupation. For many Britons these rebellious acts were offensive, especially coming from an immigrant. Some who objected were pompous, others bigoted, but most were genuinely perplexed and wounded that I was so dismissive of the nation’s treasured symbols. Today I still have no regrets about the medal- it was, for me the right thing to do and the right time to do it. But rejecting the poppy was wrong, impetuous and juvenile. I blush as I read my justifications. It took humiliation to being out humility in me and for that I am grateful to my traducers and to the people who lifted me out of headstrong ignorance.

I stood up to the bastards who called me a ‘Paki whore’ and threatened me with genital mutilation when they finally ruled these isles on behalf of ‘English patriots’. I survived well enough the more refined insults and perpetual punishment I expect as an immigrant who isn’t grateful enough. That is just part of the course. But I couldn’t not heed the readers and viewers I had hurt and others for whom the red memorial flower has profound resonance.

Mr Tindale wrote me a letter in black ink, the handwriting so tortuous, he must suffer from arthritis: ‘Madam, I beg you to read this letter and think about it. You have never known war, not real war. You have never seen grown men cry with fear as their comrades are blown up in front of them. You have never seen soldiers after a conflict who couldn’t sleep because they were afraid of nightmares. You have not been a young widow who danced with her soldier husband on the last night they had together on earth. I have seen all this. My family has lost men in both terrible world wars. And you may not think this, but the scars remain. And the pride too. You have insulted people you should honour and I am asking you to think again, Yours, W. Tindale.’ Anne Harvey sent an even more chastening missive. ‘ I loved Billy. He was my boyfriend who took off in 1943 and died in Italy, a young man who never got the chance to grow up or grow old. I could never love another. I knit little jumpers for children with a poppy in the middle and give them as presents every November because they must never forget what wars do. By not wearing the poppy you show that you don’t understand wars. So don’t tell me you are against war.’ They kept coming, letter after letter, each one making me feel more wretched than the last.

Four gentlemen in west London took it upon themselves to educate me so I would never repeat this act of insolence. They are war veterans I met some years ago when I wrote about Indian soldiers in the second world war. It was a piece I am still particularly proud of because it acknowledged the contribution of non-white second world war soldiers who had, then, been forgotten by this country, even though many of them won medals for bravery. They invited me to meet them in a café in Southall, two Sikhs, one Muslim and their officer, an Englishman in wheelchair. Over sweet tea with cardamom we talked gently for a long time. ‘ What were you thinking beti ( daughter)?’ asked Mr. K Singh, ‘You know that war was the most important thing, it kept the whole world safe, and so many boys had to die for it. You were making us so proud before and suddenly we were shocked, very shocked to hear your foolish choice not to remember those dead people’. Mr Khan, added his bit.’ You know when you did that you also were insulting us, and your own history. You gave us a bad name You should now say sorry to the country. That would be the best thing to do. Please do that. Yes sometimes we had to suffer prejudices, but more colour and politics does not matter when you are a soldier’ They went on and the sweet tea tasted very bitter by the end of the session. I had to show them the respect they deserved and accept the admonitions.

The poppy is a mark of collective sorrow not the glorification of war. It has nothing to do with race, class or jingoism. The oldest German and British veterans hugging this week were as anti-war as I am, but they did their duty. Dadabhai Naoroji was the first ever non-white British MP, elected in 1892. As World War 1 loomed, he said in a passionate speech that all of us, even those subjugated by the Empire, had a ‘solemn obligation’ to support the British fight against Germany. I can see that there are other solemn obligations too, including that of wearing the poppy. And I do say sorry for what was gesture politics at its worst.

Published in Evening Standard