Remembrance Day falls on 11 November, marking the hour the guns fell silent on the Western Front in 1918: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It is the most solemnly and widely observed day in the British calendar.
The silence
At 11am, two minutes of silence are kept. Shops stop serving, offices pause, station announcements cease, and traffic in some places pulls over. It is observed with genuine seriousness — even in supermarkets and railway stations, people simply stop and stand still, and it is one of the few remaining moments when the whole country does the same thing at the same time.
Remembrance Sunday, the nearest Sunday to the 11th, carries the national ceremonies: a service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall attended by the King, political leaders and veterans, with parades at war memorials in almost every town and village.
The poppy
From late October, red paper poppies appear on lapels across the country, sold by the Royal British Legion in aid of serving personnel and veterans. Almost every public figure wears one, and television presenters put them on for the season.
The flower comes from the poem In Flanders Fields, written in 1915 by the Canadian military doctor John McCrae, and from the real observation behind it: poppies flourished on ground disturbed by shelling, so devastated battlefields bloomed scarlet the following spring.
The variations
- Red — the standard poppy, remembering the armed forces dead.
- White — worn by the Peace Pledge Union since 1933, remembering all victims of war and expressing a commitment to peace. Contested by some as a slight on the red.
- Purple — for animals killed in war.
- Black — recognising the contribution of African, Black and Caribbean communities.
The debate
Britain argues about this every year. Some object to what they see as “poppy fascism” — the social pressure on public figures to wear one, and the criticism directed at anyone who does not. Others argue the observance has drifted from mourning towards something closer to a celebration of the military.
The Royal British Legion has been consistently clear that wearing a poppy is a personal choice and should never be compulsory. The annual row happens anyway, and by the 11th itself it always subsides.
The words
The Act of Remembrance, from Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen, written in September 1914, is recited at every ceremony:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
The response, spoken by everyone present, is: We will remember them.