You can set your watch by it. As the clocks go back, as we move from summer to autumn, and as birds start to plan their southerly migration, a distinct call can be heard across Britain. ‘DISRESPECT!’ it shouts, ‘BETRAYAL OF OUR BRAVE WAR DEAD!’ What that noise tells us is that Britain's tabloid press has got its teeth into its latest victim, usually a left-leaning public figure or media organisation or insufficiently supportive private company that has committed some imagined slight against the Poppy Appeal, the annual fundraising collection for The Royal British Legion, the voluntary organisation for war veterans, especially focused on commemorating service during the First and Second World Wars. Despite the Royal British Legion (2015) writing very clearly on its website that:

such advice seems to struggle to enter public consciousness. ‘Veterans urge boycott of motorway services after poppy ban’, declares the Daily Express (Pilditch, 2014); ‘BBC snubs official poppy appeal song by refusing to put it on radio playlist’, contributes the Daily Mirror (Lines, 2014); and for balance, ‘Cookie Monster wears a poppy on The One Show leaving BBC viewers baffled’ (Gillett, 2016). To talk about the poppy is frequently to take a side in a culture war issue, that one side didn't realise it was fighting. People forgetting, or a broken pin, or a perfectly reasonable personal or practical choice are all held up as deep political statements, ‘bans’ and ‘boycotts’. The poppy engenders a lot of conflict: even generally hagiographic books about the poppy (for example, McNab, 2018: 7–8) dwell on the social and cultural tensions around it, taking issue with the sentimentalisation of war, the rendering of war as poetic or of those who fight it as ‘heroes’.