Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
White or red, wear your poppy with pride
PETER FROST opens a parcel and discoverers a bunch of flowers that need to be distributed to friends and comrades
(L to R) King George and Douglas ‘Butcher’ Haig; The Battle of the Somme, dead German soldiers in a captured German trench, near Ginchy. August 1916 [(L to R) Internet Archive Book Images/Public domain and John Warwick Brooke/CC]

A BROWN paper envelope as well stuffed as a Premier League manager’s payola dropped on to my doormat last week. Sadly, my bung wasn’t full of dosh, but actually something far more meaningful.

This was my first sight of the new recyclable white memorial poppies being introduced this year by the Peace Pledge Union (PPU).

This year the PPU have a new white poppy design, developed in line with their non-violent principles and commitment to the environment.

The first memorial white poppies were originally made in 1933 by the Co-operative Women’s Guild. Today, true to its roots, the new design is made by a workers’ co-operative in the UK.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
RITUALS: Wooden crosses with poppies and names of those being remembered at the Cenotaph in Victoria Square, St Helens, Merseyside
Features / 11 November 2025
11 November 2025

WILL DRY speaks to three former members of the armed forces about the political hypocrisy surrounding Armistice Day, how war is a function of class society, and the far right’s use of militarism and nationalism to divide working people

Members of the British Battalion, Major Attlee Company, 15th International Brigade, displaying their banner during a lull in the fighting during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939
Features / 10 July 2025
10 July 2025

LYNNE WALSH reports from last weekend’s moving remembrance of the International Brigades in London’s Jubilee Gardens where anti-fascists gathered to hear how even in the darkest of times we can build a vision of a better tomorrow, as the Brigaders fought to do 89 years ago

Nazi soldiers separate Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwi
Fascism / 10 May 2025
10 May 2025

The obfuscation of Nazism’s capitalist roots has seen imperialism redeploy fascism again and again — from the killing fields of Guatemala to the war in Ukraine, writes PAWEL WARGAN

A unit of the Bulgarian International Brigade, 1937
Features / 25 January 2025
25 January 2025
Anti-fascists from around the world will soon be travelling to Spain to commemorate the International Brigades and walk in the footsteps of the bravest of their generation, writes LYNNE WALSH