Some wear poppies to remember, while others drink to forget

The man and woman selling red Remembrance poppies set up a table in Charing Cross station, a busy rail hub near Trafalgar Square. They looked the part. Each wore a red coat and her grey hair was embossed with a dyed red fringe.

It was evening rush hour on Monday. A steady stream of commuters approached the volunteers, who were there on behalf of the Royal British Legion (RBL) charity that supports members and veterans of the country’s armed forces.

Those buying the poppies in exchange for donations to the RBL didn’t appear to fit neatly into any particular group. Most customers over the half an hour or so that I observed the table were white, but a handful were of other ethnicities. They were young and old, women and men. The exchanges between them and the volunteers seemed to be universally courteous. The customers immediately pinned their poppies on to their left-hand lapels, above their hearts.

A man who was clearly not living his best life approached the poppy table. He looked to be in his mid 40s. His grey tracksuit was dirty and he seemed generally unkempt. The man seemed slightly agitated and a little bit sad. He wasn’t hostile or disrespectful to the poppy volunteers, but his patter was clipped and anxious. There was an edge to the interaction.

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It became clear he wanted a poppy for free. “I just want something to show that I care,” he said, pointing to the lapel of his tattered navy jacket. His eyes darted about. The male volunteer handed him a metal poppy badge, for which larger donations are usually expected than for the flimsier paper ones.

The agitated man’s hands appeared to be shaking. He pointed to his eyebrow, around which there was a small cut and bruise. He told the volunteers that he been attacked outside the station and someone had taken his mobile phone. The woman volunteer with the dyed red fringe took the metal badge from him and gently lifted his lapel, pinning his poppy on to it. The man walked out of the station and into the evening darkness.

Remembrance Sunday doesn’t fall until the end of this week, but some people have been wearing poppies since before Halloween. The symbol is also painted on to buildings and vehicles. This week, Transport for London replaced Tube roundel signs with poppies at 15 underground stations, including Westminster. A handful of red London buses on six routes have also been repainted white with red poppies.

Wearing a poppy is widespread, but by no means universal. In the government’s administrative hub of Whitehall, for example, most of those filing out of its offices in the evenings were wearing one. Almost everyone on British live television wears one. They are also stitched on to the jerseys of footballers, except for Derryman James McClean, who is having a quieter time this year in Wrexham.

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But many people on the streets who do not appear to be tourists don’t have poppies on their lapels, or at least not yet. A six-year-old survey by Consumer Intelligence suggested a fifth of British adults do not wear a Remembrance poppy. On a hunch, that seems to be an understatement.

Most pro-Palestinian marchers certainly don’t wear poppies, and for weeks they have filled London’s streets in their hundreds of thousands. Last Saturday they staged a spontaneous sit in at Charing Cross station, thronging its concourse and prompting police to restrict entry.

The protesters were pictured surrounding the RBL poppy table, where its volunteers (not the same man and woman as Monday) sat around looking fed up. Many people online criticised the protesters, but video footage appeared to show that they weren’t specifically harassing the RBL volunteers. However, a poppy volunteer at a similar sit-in protest on Monday in Edinburgh’s Waverley station appeared to get into a row with them.

This year, the RBL has attempted to move with the times by switching to plastic-free poppies. New ones are now made using recycled paper, about half of which comes from old coffee cups. There have been some complaints that they are flimsy and fall apart easily. The Daily Mail ran a story citing “anti-plastic mania”. The symbols are made at the RBL’s poppy factory in Richmond, which offers employment to people including injured armed forces veterans.

Back at Charing Cross at evening rush hour on Monday, the agitated man in the dirty grey tracksuit could be found sitting on the ground outside, under a colonnade on the right-hand side as you face the station entrance. He was with another apparently homeless man in a sleeping bag. On the ground in front of them was a bottle of what looked like vodka.

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The man was even more agitated now. He was in an argument with a highly intoxicated woman who arrived on the scene. He shouted something at her about a mobile phone. As she begged from evening commuters, he roared at them to give her nothing. “Give it to me,” he shouted. “I’m ex-army!” Now his eagerness at the poppy table made sense.

He took a swig from the bottle, while all around him people oblivious to his situation milled into the station and home. Some people wear poppies to remember, but others, it seems, drink to forget.