SINCE 1933, people have been trading the red poppy for the white  — or worn them side by side — as an act of commitment to peace, to challenge any attempt to justify war and to remember all victims of war, including those whose histories are systematically erased. 

Victims of colonial wars are seldom acknowledged during mainstream remembrance, but this Remembrance Sunday the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) is launching a new initiative, Decolonising Remembrance, which is aimed at highlighting how the history of British warfare is inseparable from the history of empire.

During the first world war, millions of colonial troops were mobilised, with Britain recruiting extensively from India and the West Indies, while France enlisted soldiers from west Africa, Algeria, Indochina and beyond.