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On followthethings.com āshoppingā has an important double meaning.
On the one hand, it means āto seek or examine goods, property, etc. offered for saleā.
On the other hand, it means āto behave treacherously toward; inform on; betrayā or āto give away information aboutā those goods, property, etc.
Anyone who makes trade justice activism, and anyone who visits this site, is a āshopperā.
"Whoever said money can't buy happiness, simply didn't know where to go shopping" - Bo Derek.
followthethings.com encourages another kind of shopping.
“Follow The Poppies“ Guest blog post written by Joe Thorogood, originally published on followtheblog.org here. Full text below.
‘Follow the thing’ research is sometimes undertaken to ‘pop the bubble’ of ‘them and us’ narratives. You choose a commodity that a symbol of unity for an ‘us’ defining itself in opposition to a ‘them’, and see if its supply chains cross borders, mix up those ‘us and them’ distinctions, and then argue that people have more in common… This is popular approach in the UK. There’s a famous quote by the sociologist Stuart Hall (1992) about the ‘outside histories’ that can be found ‘inside’ the histories of iconic ‘British’ things (see the BBCTV ‘Horrible Histories’ song here). Banksy tried to make this point about Union Jack bunting (Made in India) in 2012 (see our page on this art-activism here). This guest post was written by a former ‘Geographies of material culture’ student who went on to undertake a Masters thesis on the ‘symbolism and alter-geopolitics of the remembrance poppy’ (Thorogood 2018, p.78). Part way through his research, we published what he had found. The focus of your ‘follow the thing’ research should, ideally, be something that’s not been researched before, and something whose supply chains you know little or nothing about (see our ‘who made my stuff?’ detective work advice here). You’re not looking to illustrate a conclusion that you already have in mind. You’re looking to be surprised. That’s why red Remembrance Day poppies were such a fascinating choice for Joe. This couldn’t be a straightforward ‘pop the bubble’ narrative. Poppies are worn on ‘Armistice Day’ (also called ‘Remembrance Day’) which takes place in 11 November each year to mark the ending of the First World War in 1918. Poppies were chosen as a symbol of Remembrance because they had grown spontaneously in the churned-up fields where soldiers had fought and died on the Western Front (see Imperial War Museum nd, np). The Royal British Legion – which makes Remembrance Day poppies in the UK and sells them throughout the British Commonwealth and to British migrant (a.k.a. ‘expat’) communities – says that wearing one today honours everyone who serves to ‘defend our democratic freedoms and way of life’ from the UK and its Commonwealth countries. It doesn’t ‘glorify war’ – they say – but signals ‘Remembrance and hope for a peaceful future’. More than that, it ‘unites people of all faiths, cultures, and backgrounds’ (Royal British Legion nd, np) and recognises that ‘our democratic freedoms’ have been fought for by the diverse peoples of the British Empire, and the Commonwealth of nations that followed. There’s a diverse and inclusive ‘us’ here. But what if some of these poppies are made by former British and Commonwealth armed forces personnel now in prison? What if they – at least in part – contain materials sourced from ‘our’ former enemies? And what if wearing a poppy on Remembrance Day offends them because it symbolises other historical, poppy-related conflict and pain inflicted by ‘us’? This example of ‘follow the thing’ detective work is full of surprises. See what you think!
Page reference: Joe Thorogood (2014) Follow The Poppies. followthethings.com/follow-the-poppies.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.
Original
The Remembrance poppy is a symbol of memorial. In the couple of weeks before November 11th ā Remembrance Day ā these poppies are available in exchange for a charitable donation to the Royal British Legion, a UK charity that provides services for ex-military personnel and their dependents. It is worn in the UK in memory of service personnel who died in the First World War and in wars since then. Itās a symbol for personal grief and reflection, but also of national loss. Many countries have poppies shipped out to expatriates and families who have relatives who fought on behalf of the British Empire and British army in campaigns abroad.
Iām researching Remembrance poppies for my PhD, using a methodology that studies the lives and issues that are connected through their travels and transformations as things.
It wasnāt hard to find out about how and where Remembrance poppies are made. You could do it yourself by simply visiting the Poppy Factory in Richmond, Surrey, where they make about 500,000 of the poppies the public wear. Ex-service personnel and their dependents are crucial to this effort, as they often work in the factory or are supported by factory to find employment after leaving the armed forces.
Poppy Factory, Richmond UK.
Poppy-manufacture, Aylesford UK.
This factory is more symbolic than anything. Most poppies are now made in another factory in Aylesford, Kent which has specialised machinery that can produce the 50 million poppies needed every year (Graham, 2010). As ever, the switch to mechanised production was deemed to save the costs of manual labour, allowing more money to directly fund the charitable work of the Royal British Legion.
The Remembrance poppy is a fairly simple affair. Itās comprised of four parts. The red paper flower and green leaf are designed and produced by James Cropper plc, a bespoke manufacturer of paper and textiles working for the Royal British Legion since 1978 (White 2014). Itās not just normal paper they produce. It has to be waterproof to stop the colours running into peopleās clothes. It has to be biodegradable, since after
November 11th nobody wants the floors littered with poppies. Itās no longer legal to cast wreaths into rivers due to pollution. This affects naval remembrance ceremonies. The materialities of these objects speak back to and influence remembrance practices.
The plastic parts are where it gets really interesting. The black plastic centre and the green plastic stem are produced by injection moulding. The load is split between 2 companies, SB Weston Ltd who produce over a million parts for the RBL each week, and HMP Ford, a former military base now a prison that pays inmates to produce injection moulded plastic stems.
HMP Ford Prison, West Sussex, UK.
In what is dubbed the āRehabilitation Revolutionā (Ministry of Justice, 2013) around 10,000 prisoners are now employed to do jobs in textiles, laundry and printing in the UK. The Ministry of Justice hopes to see up to 20,000 prisoners working up to 40 hour weeks (Whitehead, 2012) and has launched ONE3ONE solutions, an organisation charged with increasing the amount of prisoners in paid employment.
It is argued that the growth of work prisons will reduce re-offending and provide prisoners with useful skills for employment upon release. Penal labour is not without its critics, as the Campaign against Prison Slavery argues that inmates are paid as little as Ā£10 for a 40 hour week, are not allowed to unionise or strike. Black & Bros (2010, p.7) see penal labour as āostensibly the same as that of Victorian reformists ā¦ but ever growing prison population helps provide a steady and compliant workforceā. Whatās interesting is that, in 2012, 20 of HMP Fordās 521 inmates were believed to be military veterans (NHS Sussex 2012), some of whom may have made those poppy parts.
For me, whatās most important in all of this are the relations between nationalism, remembrance and the logics of economic production. The blending of the symbolic and material. The Daily Mail newspaper often reports on the work undertaken at the poppy factory, helping cement the poppy further into the British psyche. The factory has been visited royalty on numerous occasions (Tweedy, 2012). In these stories, British poppies are handmade by British service personnel for national British remembrance services. Itās Marxās commodity fetish masking the conditions of labour and contributing to an imagined community of the British nation.
But there are alternative stories of the poppy to tell about the UKās nationalistic heritage and geopolitics? What about [British Prime Minister] David Cameron being asked to remove his Poppy on a visit to China because it was a reminder of the British humiliation of China during the Opium Wars (Chapman, 2010)? Where does the plastic for the injection moulding come from? Could it be China? Possibly. And what about the opium trade, then and now, following the āreal poppiesā?
Is Cameronās visit to China the only time and place where those histories and connections crossed eachotherās paths? We will see.
Page originally published as a guest post on followtheblog.org. Edited by Ian Cook et al (last updated October 2025). To update this 2014 ‘follow the poppies’ story, check the 2014-date online search results here.
Sources
Black, J. & Bros, B.(2010) The Prison Works: Occasional Texts on The The Roles of Prison and Prison Labour. Brighton: Campaign against Prison Slavery.
Ministry of Justice (2013) Transforming Rehabilitation: A revolution in the way we manage offenders. Consultation paper CP1/2013, The Stationary Office, London.
Header: Remembrance Day Poppies (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Remembrance_Day_poppies_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3731560.jpg) by Philip Halling (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Richmond poppy factory: Poppy Factory, Richmond (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poppy_Factory,_Richmond_-_geograph.org.uk_-_884679.jpg) by Ian Paterson (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Aylesford poppy manufacture: Joe Thorogood (used with permission)
HMP Ford Prison: Ford Prison (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_Prison.jpg) by Grim23 (C BY-SA 3.0)
