Our love for poppy won't come unstuck

The heart of the Poppy Appeal is a little building tucked away in west London. Peter Rhodes visits the Poppy Factory.

I have seen the future and it is sticky. It is also 100 per cent safe, says Bill Kay, general manager of the Poppy Factory in Richmond upon Thames, with a weary smile.

Remembrance Day approaches and with it the usual crop of reports of Royal British Legion collectors being banned from sticking poppies on customers' coats with a pin, for fear of infringing their rights or risking a health-and-safety prosecution.

The new stickable poppy may be the answer for a 21st Century seemingly more concerned about red tape than remembrance.

"It started last year when we made 200,000 of these," says Bill showing the neat little poppy with a peel-off patch on the back. "They were very well received, so this year we have made two million."

ByÊ"we" the big Yorkshireman in shirtsleeves means the 43 employees at the Poppy Factory and the 90 homeworkers outside who, between them, turn out more than 30 million poppies, wreaths, crosses, sprays and other mementoes every single year.

No-one ever guessed that the little red poppy would become such a potent symbol of remembrance or last so long.

In the early 1920s, horrified at the plight of disabled soldiers with no jobs and no "homes fit for heroes," Major George Howson had a brainwave.

He decided to set up a factory for the old warriors. They would produce replicas of the Flanders poppies immortalised in the war poem by Canadian army doctor John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place and in the sky

The larks still bravely singing fly

Scarce heard among the guns below.

Howson did not have high hopes for his little venture. He confided in a letter: "I do not think it will be a great success but it is worth trying."

Howson raised £2,000, won the support of the wartime general Earl Haig and set up a factory in the Old Kent Road. It provided work for dozens of veterans producing the original poppies of a cloth petal fixed to a wire stem with a black pitch head.

In the 1930s the factory needed more space and moved to a new building in Richmond.

It is a striking white Art-Deco building with the word "Remembrance" inscribed on the front wall. Sadly, this little architectural gem is now hidden by the factory's own office block and museum which is visited by thousands of groups every year. As we chat in the foyer, visiting Brownies are the latest to hear the story of the poppies.

Inside the stark white-walled factory 43 workers find employment, turning plastic parts from Britain and China into symbols of remembrance.

Some are able-bodied, others have physical disabilities or learning difficulties. All have either seen military service or are the dependents of military families.

Brian Strutton, who served in the old Middlesex Regiment from 1961-64, is busy making bases for wreaths bearing the word "Lifeboat," to be laid in remembrance of men of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution who perished in two world wars.

He suffers from aÊbad chest but his hands work deftly as he flattens the sticky labels on to the bases.

At her desk, Sheila Nutbeam, the partially-sighted daughter of a soldier, aims to make up to 1,200 big decorative poppies each day.

Sitting opposite her is wheelchair-bound Iris Kellett, born into an army factory in East Africa and now making sprays of 12 poppies and leaves to be laid on servicemen's graves.

"There is a lot of job satisfaction in this," she says.

"I feel I am doing something for people who have given their lives for their country."

Stephen Sinclair has learning difficulties as a result of childhood meningitis.

It would take him an age to describe the process of making the traditional poppy from today's four standard pieces of stem, leaf, petal and button.

But from his pocket he proudly produces his docket for a recent busy day's work, 836 poppies. He finishes another one and tosses it into a cardboard box already half full.

Dave Pascall, who served with the Royal Engineers from 1964-79, talks proudly of his days as a combat engineer as he prepares a batch ofÊblack crosses for the Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

ÊHe says it is an important job and "I take pride in what I do".

Despite the frantic activity, Bill Kay and his team are not working flat out for this year's Remembrance Day. All those were finished by September. The ones we see being made are for next November's events.

Last year 38 million poppies were made and £30 million raised towards the Royal British Legion's work with injured ex-servicemen and their families.

"This year we may do all right because the credit crunch hasn't really affected people yet," says Bill. "But the year after that, who knows?"

A former GEC manager at Stafford, he was brought in to head the Richmond operation nine years ago.

He believes he has made it more efficient and improved some of the "rather old fashioned" working practices. It now has a turnover of £2 million a year.

Major Howson's experiment in creating jobs after the First World War is going strong 86 years on and, thanks to the Second World War and subsequent conflicts from Malaya to Afghanistan, shows no sign of slacking.

Plastic may have replaced wire, and stick-on poppies may suit the health-and-safety zealots, but one question remains.

Poppies are not sold. They are given in return for a donation. And in this cash-strapped times how much should we give for our poppy? "It's like the widow's mite," says Bill Kay. "It all depends how much you have to give."