Another Remembrance Sunday has been and gone. The Queen led the nation in mourning the war dead at the traditional wreath-laying at the Cenotaph, as She has done year after year. As ever, Her Majesty was flanked by her loyal husband, the Duke of Edinburgh (himself a naval veteran of World War II, mentioned in dispatches at the Battle of Cape Matapan) and other members of the Royal Family. The Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, former PMs (though not Baroness Thatcher, who is increasingly absent from such national ceremonies), religious leaders, diplomats and military chiefs were also all in attendance. All in all, around 7,500 ex-servicemen and women marched past the Cenotaph followed by civilians (among them around 60 war widows). The whole country ground to a halt as Big Ben chimed the two-minute silence.

As ever, much of the ceremony was marshalled by the Royal British Legion, who have reported the most successful Poppy Appeal ever. The Legion’s National President, Lieutenant-General Sir John Kiszely, said, “Today, with troops on duty in Afghanistan and other trouble spots around the world, remembrance, and the two-minute silence, are as important as ever”. I agree with General Kiszely but I must confess, this year perhaps more than any other, I have found myself worrying about the increased politicisation of the poppy; what those Left-leaning liberal ‘anti-war’ types have always contemptuously (and, I always thought, contemptibly) called “poppy fascism” – a truly odious term.

I should first insert the caveat that I am a strong supporter of the Poppy Appeal and always have been. My dear sainted grandmother was, at the time of her death three years ago aged 98, the oldest active member of her local branch. She lived through two world wars, serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during the second. I also attend a regular club that meets at our local RBL hall, so I meet a lot of veterans there over a pint. So I want to make it absolutely clear that my beef is not with the Legion or the Poppy Appeal. My real gripe is simply with the culture we have allowed to develop around the wearing (or non-wearing) of the poppy.

The wearing of poppies has been around since the 1920s. It actually started in the US to commemorate those killed in World War I, inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields by Canadian surgeon, Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. It derives from the red poppies that grew over the churned-up earth on the battlefields. Colonel McCrae wrote the poem in 1915, after witnessing the death of a comrade in the Second Battle of Ypres. It is mainly confined to the UK and the Commonwealth nowadays, however.

The Remembrance Poppy was adopted in Britain on the initiative of Field Marshal Earl Haig, one of the founders of the British Legion. Indeed, to this day poppies are sold in England and Wales by the Legion and by the Earl Haig Fund. Each poppy used to have ‘Haig Fund’ printed in the centre but this was changed to ‘Poppy Appeal’, thanks largely to the character assassination Lord Haig suffered over the years. Notwithstanding recent attempts to rehabilitate his legacy and reputation, charities he founded are still keen to avoid association with him. This is, perhaps, an early instance of the politicisation of the poppy.

There has always been a sort of glorious snobbery attached to poppy-wearing. I must hold my hands up. I have indulged in it myself. I have criticised those who wear it on the right lapel instead of the left (which I insist is correct, as it’s over the heart and also the side military medals are worn) and have derided those who wear specially-augmented ones, enamel pins or otherwise differenced versions (except the Queen, whose rosette of clustered poppies is specially made for Her at the RBL’s poppy factory in Richmond). There is an urban myth that only the Queen and the Royal Family can wear their poppies on the right. There is also a school of thought that men should wear theirs on the left and women on the right (as is traditionally the custom with brooches). The Legion, typically, cop out and say there is no right or wrong “other than wear it with pride”. Yeah. Thanks, guys.

There has always been feverish debate over precisely when the poppy should be worn. In the early years, it was only worn on Armistice Day but is now worn for several weeks. The exact etiquette remains hotly debated. Some say from 1st November until Armistice Day on the 11th. Others only pin theirs on the week running up to Remembrance Sunday. The launch date for the Poppy Appeal changes but some seem to go by that. Others choose equally random dates. A friend of mine starts wearing his whenever the BBC presenters do (the Beeb choose a date for presenters to start wearing them). Yet, if there are some who criticise the lack of a uniform date, just as many criticise the introduction of one. Newly-appointed Defence Secretary Philip Hammond took some stick in the press when he sent out a memo advising MoD staff when they should start wearing theirs (nice to see the MoD is still leaking like a sieve).

For my own part, I have always subscribed to the concept of ‘Remembrancetide’, which is said to start on All Souls’ Day (2nd November), the date in the Christian liturgical calendar that commemorates the faithful departed, and ends on Remembrance Sunday. Whatever your position, some people take any deviation from what they personally consider correct with severe umbrage. It is treated with the same casually patronising knowing-looks certain people give each other when they encounter someone who has failed to take down their Christmas decorations before Twelfth Night. Just as many get annoyed by companies broadcasting Christmas adverts on TV or shops that start stocking Christmas merchandise too early, so a precipitate Remembrancetide is looked upon with scorn and annoyance. The worst offenders are MPs, with special opprobrium reserved for the MP who starts wearing theirs in the Commons chamber first. A few years ago the then Labour MP for Livingstone, Jim Devine, won chiding mockery from parliamentary sketch-writers for wearing his poppy from mid-October. One acid wit speculated he has simply left it on from the previous year.

Whatever the particular perceived poppy faux pas, you can guarantee it will result in a flurry of outraged missives to The Times and the Daily Mail and lead to a running debate on the letters page. I have usually been a participant. A particular pet-hate of mine has always been ‘white poppies’ and the Left-wing pacifist ninnies who wear them. Even worse than these self-righteous peaceniks are those, of a similar ilk, who refuse to wear any poppy. I must say, I have less gripe with those who do not wear one out of fecklessness or disinterest than I do those twits who make a big song and dance of not wearing one. They half-baked tweps announce their non-compliance as if it is some kind of ‘grand gesture’ of defiance. Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow is the poster-child for this arrogant tendency. It was he who coined the noxious phrase “poppy fascism” (a more inappropriate phrase could hardly be imagined).

The last couple of years have generated more poppy-related controversy than most. Last year, David Cameron was on an official visit to China and had to dodge a diplomatic incident when Peking officials asked him to remove his poppy, as they associate it with the 19th-Century Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars. The PM politely rebuffed them and they, in turn, diplomatically denied the incident had occurred. That year, a Moslem group also burned poppies and chanted ‘anti-crusader’ slogans during the two-minute silence in protest at British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, the poppy has always been controversial in Northern Ireland, where choosing whether or not to wear one is split down predictable sectarian lines (though last year Margaret Ritchie of the SDLP became the first nationalist leader to wear one).

This year produced the ‘Great Poppy Footie Brouhaha of 2011′, when FIFA declined to allow football teams to wear poppies during matches on grounds that “political statements and symbols” are prohibited. This decision produced the customary cries of “disgrace”. I was just as outraged as the next guy but, amongst the media furore, I could not help feeling it was all a bit ‘overblown’. I mean; it was obviously a dumb decision but, seriously, just get-over it and move on. But, alas, no. The Football Association felt it necessary to get their president, the Duke of Cambridge no less, to write a letter demanding they reverse their decision. FIFA duly backed down and footballers were allowed to don poppies on black armbands. Honestly, though, why do we feel the need to manufacture indignation in this way? Who would have ever thought a decade ago that ‘poppifying’ a football jersey was anything other than crass and tacky? When the PM felt it necessary to comment on it, it really created a watershed for me.

Call me a cynic, but I think it is increasingly difficult to claim – as many did while attempting to browbeat FIFA – that there is nothing political about the poppy. It does seem, unfortunately, that it is increasingly the case that wearing (or not wearing) the poppy has become cheapened and politicised. You get them on cars, lorries, aeroplanes, buses, trams… they are now so ubiquitous that not having one on display is as good as wearing a giant target instead. The Internet age has now introduced the spectre of poppy-themed Facebook profile pics. The pics are invariably accompanied by status updates, copied and pasted from one person to another, expressing disgust at – for example – a chain of pound shops’ decision to ban staff wearing poppies and other stories of insufficiently respectful Remembrancetide controversies for Facebookers to whip themselves into a frenzy over that can then be vented through the medium of the ‘status bar’.

My fear is that the poppy has become, to quote journalist Robert Fisk, a seasonal “fashion accessory”. They are worn ostentatiously for work or social reasons as a vainglorious opportunity to exhibit one’s ‘caring’ and ‘patriotic’ credentials. As attached as I am to the Poppy Appeal and Remembrance Sunday (the closest we have, really, to anything approaching a ‘Britishness Day’), there is something incredibly vulgar and depressing in the way this potent national symbol has been hijacked and debased by a certain creed of holier-than-thou busibodies. I still detest the phrase “poppy fascism”, and think Jon Snow and his kind moronic, but at the same time I find it difficult to suppress the innate dislike this officious “poppy policing” engenders in me. The subsequent excoriation of all those whom the self-appointed ‘poppy police’ judge to have ‘disrespected’ the poppy is becoming an increasingly tedious feature of an otherwise noble and dignified occasion. Frankly, the magnitude of the debt of honour we owe to our men and women in uniform deserves better than this self-indulgent, self-aggrandising, faux outrage.

The strength and longevity of the Poppy Appeal has always been that the vast majority of sensible people in this country choose voluntarily to don a symbol of remembrance, in silent, dignified (and very English) recognition to those people since the First World War who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of Queen and country. Seeing poppy after poppy as you walk down the high street is made all the more profound because you know each individual has chosen to make a donation and express solidarity with our Armed Forces. It is a perfect mesh of personal reflection and communal remembrance. If we turn it into mere social propriety and attach stigma to non-conformists, we render the act of buying a poppy less meaningful. Buying one becomes a perfunctory and hollow ritual, executed to keep the baying mob of spittle-flecked armchair majors off our backs rather than out of a deep-seated cultural recognition of the well-deserved pride we all feel toward the Forces.

We lose the sentiment if we turn it into simple sentimentality and replace spontaneity with compulsion. Next year, how about we all agree to wear our poppy with pride but just quietly ignore those that choose not to?