Leading Article: Repay the debt with dignity

The poppy season has begun. The Royal British Legion's annual campaign has been launched; veterans and others are selling the red paper flowers in high streets and on station concourses; politicians and broadcasters are wearing them on television with studied diligence. A week from today many of us will observe Remembrance Sunday, some in church and others - more, probably - by watching the ceremonies, the silence and the march past on television. And that will be that. Except that it will not. For on Monday week, 11 November, there will be another silence. Fifty years after the two-minute silence was moved from Armistice Day to Remembrance Sunday, it has been decided that we should have it on both. So, it may be expected, shops and banks and offices will fall silent and the babble of television and radio will cease. This, you may say, is the least that the country should do in memory of its war dead. But it is not so simple.

If this year's silence has won widespread acceptance among employers and broadcasters, it is because of what happened last year. The Legion, eager to raise both its profile and its revenues, had recruited the services of Brian Basham, public relations consultant at various times to Robert Maxwell, Ernest Saunders, Mohamed al-Fayed, the beef industry and British Airways. The idea emerged of reintroducing the Armistice Day silence, formally abandoned in 1945. The Legion argued that the second silence, falling usually during a working day, would broaden the act of remembrance, giving people who do not go to church or who lie in bed on Sunday mornings an opportunity to show their respect. The proposal did not receive official blessing; in keeping with modern public relations practice, it was blessed by the tabloids, which embarked on an obscene competition to see which could support the silence more abrasively. Anyone who failed to live up to their high standards of remembrance was subjected to the full, front- page righteous indignation treatment. The Post Office was insufficiently helpful; York Minster was denounced for ringing its bells; London traffic wardens were criticised for plying their trade through the silence. Such people, it was said, "insulted" the war dead. The principal victim of this hysteria, pilloried on the day for its failure to fall silent, proved to be the BBC - the same BBC which for so many years had televised the rituals of remembrance so loyally and tastefully. It was a shabby episode.

The traditional ritual of remembrance expresses collective grief, respect, regret and gratitude, and it does so with dignity and without chauvinism. With its Cenotaph, its hymns, its prayers and its "We will remember them", it is one of the finest things this country has created this century. And the Legion's poppy campaign, which raises funds to assist former service people, has been a perfect complement. Today, it is clear, the Legion needs to increase its income. In the past year 200,000 people have needed its help and the number is unlikely to fall in the near future. They include not only veterans of world war, but of lesser conflicts including the Falklands and Northern Ireland - people to whom the country indisputably owes a debt. In turning to the modern machinery of fund-raising to ensure that the debt is paid the Legion has done the obvious and the natural thing, and some of the extra pounds 1.2m it raised last year may be attributed to that initiative (although the echoes of the anniversaries of 1945 played their part). Some of the consequences of employing this machinery, however, have been unfortunate. Besides last year's tabloid bullying there is this year's poster campaign, featuring a bullet-pocked wall splashed with blood in the shape of a poppy. There are also car-grille poppies, reminiscent of Comic Relief's red noses. They strike a false note, out of tune with remembrance.

Many people this year will observe the silence on Armistice Day with pride, just as they will wear their poppies with pride; that is their privilege and few would dispute that it does them credit. The Royal British Legion's research indicates that there is strong popular support for the second silence and if that is true then it was a good idea. But let us hope that the mood of intimidation evident last year is not repeated. Every poppy should be freely bought and every silence should be personal and voluntary. Moral blackmail should have no part in it.