by Sebastian Millbank, The Critic
Remembrance risks becomes a state ritual for an untrusted and despised establishment
November has arrived, and in Britain this means a ubiquitous tide of poppies, adorning press and politicians across the airwaves, as Remembrance Day marches gravely into view for another year. Even though the last veteran of the Great War died over a decade ago, and it will not be long before the last WWII veteran joins them, there has been no debate or proposal that the nature of commemoration changes. It can seem at times like Britain is a country out of history, its heritage fixed in place by law and sentiment, its civic rituals gliding on no matter the crisis and anger of day to day politics.
But that placid surface may be boiling over. In 2023, a famous image of worried and exasperated Royal British Legion poppy sellers surrounded by chanting Palestine protestors went viral. The staid rhythms of British statecraft had been disrupted by history still happening in the Middle East, as Israel violently retaliated in Gaza in response to the massacres of October 7. Protests surged, largely uncontrolled and lightly policed. It was reported that poppy sellers had been quietly withdrawn from public spaces across the country for fear of confrontations. The protestors, predominantly Muslims and left wing activists, might be inclined to see an organisation identified with the British army in a hostile light.
In the subsequent two years, the grooming gangs scandal, the riots in Southport over the mass killing of young white girls by a Rwandan teenager, and increasing tensions over “migrant hotels” housing illegal immigrants at taxpayer expense, have breached the fragile and heavily policed consensus of British politics. Almost one in five Britons is now non white, a number that is only set to grow. As the poppy sellers case demonstrates, this new, divided Britain is on a collision course with the assumptions embedded in Remembrance. Not only do many immigrant communities lack a strong sense of identification with the national story it tells, but for many angry natives on the nationalist right, it is perceived as a hollow ritual.