Article
Attention
Comment
War & peace
5 min read

Put poppy politics in the past and give Remembrance a hopeful future

Memory without hope will lead us to a dead-end.

Mark is a research mathematician who writes on ethics, human identity and the nature of intelligence.

A woman walls along a war memorial wall covered in red poppies.
War memorial in Canberra.
Raelle Gann-Owens on Unsplash.

Remembrance Day is complicated. A nation shows its gratitude for the service and sacrifice of its armed forces and tries to connect to its history. Never far away, are poppy politics, along with anxiety about identity and forgetting, and fears about nationalism and militarism. Is this the way to remember? 

Last November, protests in solidarity with Gaza dominated the headlines. On Armistice Day, hundreds of thousands of people marched through central London to demand a ceasefire. In the preceding weeks, there was vigorous debate about whether the march should be cancelled. There were several motivations for this: there were genuine fears of violence and extremism, and of disruption at the Cenotaph, but also questions of whether marching on Armistice Day was inappropriate or disrespectful. 

The march itself was organised to minimise the risk of disrupting public commemorations of Remembrance. It started several hours after the two-minute silence and followed a route several miles from the cenotaph. It was mostly peaceful, although there were arrests for anti-Semitism, open support for terrorism and violent attacks on police officers. Armistice Day did see violence around the cenotaph, but this was from the self-described ‘Cenotaph Defenders’ who had organised a counter-demonstration against the Gaza march. The group of football hooligans and far-right EDL members gathered with poppy emblazoned banners declaring ‘Have some respect for British Heroes’. Within a few hours, the calls for respect had degenerated into violent attacks on serving uniformed officers, in this case the police. 

The far-right’s adoption of remembrance symbolism can be seen as an extreme form of a wider entanglement of poppies and politics. The red paper poppy is a symbol of remembrance, but it has other connotations. For some it invokes patriotism and feelings of pride in their country, for others it represents conformity and militarism. Whether television news presenters are wearing them attracts disproportionate attention. In 2019, one Australian TV network had a very tasteless segment denouncing a rival station whose newscasters failed to wear poppies. The non-poppy wearing hosts were accused of failing in their duty to respect their country and to help preserve its culture and traditions. Regardless of the presenters’ actual reasons, this feels like a lot of baggage to load onto the delicate poppy, a symbol of quiet remembrance and gratitude. 

Unsurprisingly, this has led many to question whether Remembrance Day has become detached from its original purposes. Twelve years after the death of the last British First World War veteran, there is little living connection to either of the two world wars. With this passage of time, there is a growing danger of mistaking the symbols of ceremonial Remembrance for the thing itself.  

The focus of remembrance can shift away from the sheer horrors of war, from awe at the sacrifice of our forebears, and from the resolved ‘never again’ to fixing our gaze on the processed goods: the ceremonial silence, the poppies themselves and even the quality of our own emotional response. 

Some commentators have suggested that organised Remembrance has served its purpose and is best forgotten, and that too much remembering is a bad thing, fuelling grudges and sectarian conflicts. Personally, I’m not convinced, but I do think our current Remembrance is missing something. 

With a strong grounding in a shared past and a common hope, we would talk frankly about the times our country has fallen short without a sense of betraying our history or identity. 

Reflecting on the importance and difficulty of memory, the writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel emphasised the importance of hope. Despite the horrific experiences of the twentieth century, for Wiesel it is hope that “summons the future”. Memory without hope would lead us to a dead-end, where we grip onto the past while feeling it slip like sand through our fingers. Many of the anxieties around Remembrance point to a hope deficit. 

How can we remember with hope?  

We need to broaden our perspective and engage better with our shared national story. We need to be grounded in our history, stories and myths but we also need to be drawn forward by the good things we have and will have. If this story is big enough then it will be a large tapestry of interwoven strands, and we will be able to generously incorporate new strands, other cultures with their own relationship to the past into it. We will also be better prepared for our remembering to deal with difficult questions about our nation’s history. With a strong grounding in a shared past and a common hope, we would talk frankly about the times our country has fallen short without a sense of betraying our history or identity. Hope would connect us better to our neighbours overseas and to the men and women who risk their lives to serve their country. 

Last Remembrance Sunday, I helped our church’s under-7s make big paper poppies out of red paint and paper plates. The older children made origami peace cranes, and both the big red poppies and the peace cranes were placed by the altar. Here the focus is on remembering, but not just on our own memory. For me and countless other Christians, God’s memory is the real focus. God remembers us in our broken and war-torn world, and as Jesus, chose to join us in it, experiencing the worst of suffering while dying a painful death. All our personal and collective stories of pain, loss and sadness are met in this sacrifice. More than this, in the promises of restoration Jesus gave when He rose from the dead, they find a concrete hope. 

What does Remembrance look like when it’s really grounded in hope? I think there would be a few noticeable signs. It would be less precious about itself. It would be more open to different emphases of remembrance such as the Peace Pledge Union and the white poppy, and excited about new creative expressions of remembrance like the ‘poppy walks’ organised by the Royal British Legion. More patient to the concerns of those who find the religious elements of Remembrance difficult. More integrated into our attitudes to current and ongoing conflict around the world. Most of all I hope it would make us really hungry for both peace and for righteousness. 

Article
Comment
Death & life
Justice
Sport
4 min read

Diogo Jota, Thomas Partey, and the right to privacy

Distressing stories show that publicity hinders grief but enables justice
A couple hold each other as they look at floral tributes on the ground
Liverpool manager Arne Slot and his wife at a shrine to Dioga Jota.
Liverpool FC.

Content warning: rape and sexual abuse allegations are discussed in this article. 

It’s Thursday 3rd July 2025 and a friend has just sent a message. “Have you heard the news about Diogo Jota?” 

I love Diogo Jota. Love him. So I assume the worst. The club have sold him. He’s got another of the horrific injuries that have plagued his career. But the news is worse than the worst. 

“He and his brother died in a car accident in Spain,” the message continues. What? Surely not. But shortly afterwards the BBC News notification comes in. Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva have died in a car accident in Spain. 

It is unimaginably tragic news. The incident occurred just two weeks after Jota married his childhood sweetheart. He leaves behind three young children. His brother, André Silva, also recently married his partner in June. It is heartbreaking beyond words and seeing the tributes pour in from colleagues – no: friends – of the players only cements how upsetting a loss this is.  

It’s now Friday 4th July 2025. The day after Jota’s death. Another BBC News notification comes in. Now-ex-Arsenal player Thomas Partey is charged five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. 

Jota’s death was an utter shock. The news about Partey is anything but. It was the worst-kept secret in football. Everyone knew that he was under investigation for rape. In 2023, the BBC reported that two Premier League footballers continued to be selected by clubs, even “while knowing they [were] under police investigation for sexual or domestic violence.” In January 2025, the BBC subsequently reported that the Crown Prosecution Service had been given “a full evidence file about a Premier League footballer accused of rape.” 

As The Athletic reports, Partey was first arrested in 2022. Between then and being charged in July 2025, he was arrested, questioned by police and then bailed again, seven times. Seven times. All while continuing to play for Arsenal.  

Again: everyone knew that Partey was one of the players in question. Everyone knew. But no-one could say anything.  

And the juxtaposition between the news about Jota and Partey has led me to reflect on the ways in which both stories have (or have not) been reported. I’m almost loathed to mention Jota and Partey in the same breath to be honest. But then that’s the tension underlying all this, isn’t it? Who is given privacy, and who isn’t? 

One man is arrested in 2022 on suspicion of rape and sexual assault. He is afforded over three years of privacy and is permitted to continue in his high-profile, six-figure-a-week-paying job. Another is killed in a tragic accident, and, in the immediate aftermath, his family’s privacy is invaded at every turn.  

Despite Jota’s family clearly and publicly asking for privacy, the media coverage of the tragedy was deeply invasive. The Daily Mail posted pictures of his recently wed wife outside of the morgue having just identified the bodies of her husband and brother-in-law. The BBC – in one of the most tone-deaf acts of journalism I can recall – covered Jota’s funeral. They wrote: “The family has asked for the funeral to be private, but you can follow live pictures from outside the church by clicking watch live at the top of this page.”  

I promise that’s not a joke. Irony really is dead. But the real irony of all this is that this is a deep perversion of how things should be.  

I may grieve with support from other people, but this is fundamentally a deeply personal and private act, not one to be undertaken under the public gaze. Justice, on the other hand, is enacted with the help of a jury of peers and is an act of public peacekeeping and safeguarding.  

It is appropriate for one act to be undertaken privately while the other is conducted publicly. More than this, they are essential to those acts. Privacy enables grief, while publicity hinders it. I can only grieve effectively if given the time and space to do so. By contract publicity enables justice, while privacy hinders it. If justice is enacted in secret, public trust is eroded and the justice system is undermined.  

Grief is private; justice is public. And yet Jota’s friends and family have been forced to grieve with the eyes of the world on them while Partey has been afforded years of luxurious privacy under the auspices of ‘justice.’  

Real violence and harm are done to people when the appropriately private becomes inappropriately public, and vice versa. The news of Jota’s death and Partey’s charging with rape exposes the deeply flawed approach to privacy we have.  

There is no goodness in either of these stories. There are no redeeming angles or silver linings here. They are both deeply upsetting and distressing. But if the stark contrast between the ways they have been reported causes us to reflect on how they ought (or ought not) to be reported publicly, then that will be something, at least. 

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