Madam, - My late father served in the British army in the second World War. He never wore a poppy and anyone I knew who served with him never wore a poppy.
They regarded it, and the British Legion, as symbolising all that was worst, most jingoistic and reactionary in the British establishment.
I suspect that this was the attitude of most second World War veterans, because it was the votes of three million servicemen that put Churchill out of office in 1945 and Clement Attlee's Labour government in.
I appreciate that times change and the poppy means different things to different people.
But I think it is important not to impose contemporary views of the significance of wearing, or not wearing a poppy, on past generations.
It would certainly be wrong to assume the poppy had, or has, the same significance for all British veterans and their families. - Yours, etc,
PÁDRAIG YEATES, Howth.