Once more with feeling

Britain is in bloom. Our unseasonable October may be over, but London hasn’t been this floral since the Chelsea Flower Show ended. This year’s Remembrance poppies have ignited an unusual amount of controversy – on the football pitch and in Whitehall.

This is the time of year we come together to remember – firstly the eminent folly of Catholicism, and then, a few days later, something much more important: the millions upon millions, millions whose totality will never be fully reckoned, who laid down their lives in the two great wars of the twentieth century.

The associations of that remembering are different for everybody. The pacifist sees Armistice Day as a sober reminder of the brutal price of war. Many of them will consequently choose to wear a white poppy  - and it’s worth remembering how many veterans share this sentiment. Those who knew Britain’s war years may remember individuals, individual lives lost and tragedies borne. Many use Remembrance Sunday as a wider commemoration of our armed forces – a thanksgiving for the sacrifices they have made, and continue to make, on our behalf. Each to his own. Remembrance should never be a diktat.

But herein lies the problem. Poppies have moved from a voluntary gesture to a PR necessity, and I’m not sure their new ubiquity has been matched by a concomitant increase in remembering. There is a new cult of the poppy, as Jon Snow observed in decrying ‘poppy fascism’. Laurie Penny wrote illuminatingly on it in the New Statesman a few days ago. Whether you agree with her pacifistic position or not, the thrust of her argument – that poppies are losing their meaning - resonates.

If wearing a poppy becomes non-negotiable, are poppy wearers still doing it because they care, or because they are told to? Aren’t we in danger of paying lip service to this most serious of causes?

 

Lip service

Talking of lip service, it is ‘Movember’, and millions of British men are paying literal lip service to charity. Movember, if you have been living under a rock (or, perhaps, in Turkish Dalston), is an attempt to galvanise men behind men’s health issues, most prominently prostate cancer, the third-biggest killer of British men. Men are encouraged to grow a moustache, and to solicit sponsorship for their efforts.

Well, amen to that. Just like The Heart Truth and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Movember (or, as I prefer, ‘Novembeard’) is a laudable attempt to increase disease awareness and raise money for deserving charities. Nevertheless, these efforts are problematic.

Many men I know who are taking part in Movember have only a vague understanding of its meaning. A friend I quizzed today (who is fundraising) did not realise that the Movember appeal fund dealt with diseases other than prostate cancer. Many, too, are not actually fundraising. One might argue that their contribution is still valuable: another moustache on the street means a little more awareness, and a key objective of the Movember campaign is encouraging more men to have prostate examinations (though it is worth noting that the NHS does not run a national screening programme for prostate cancer, since men at high risk are generally in close contact with their GPs).

But when does this just become tokenism? And if that tokenism pushes other charitable causes out of people minds, is this desirable? Cancer research, which takes the lion’s share of the Movember harvest, is an astonishingly well-funded disease area. Suicide, usually associated with depression, is the second-biggest killer of 15-24-year-olds. How many young men, currently cultivating their moustaches, know that? And of course, casting further afield, one could consider how charities delivering foreign aid or fighting climate change are impacted. Movember is reaping the benefits of choosing a powerful symbol, but is it too powerful?

It may seem as though I’m pouring cold water on a harmless bit of fun, but I have encountered a certain self-righteousness when it comes to Movember. It is a much milder equivalent of what has derailed the Poppy Appeal: when a symbol outgrows its message, that message risks becoming lost.