Ouch Q&A: The disabled people who make the Remembrance Day poppies

A: Absolutely. Well, about 80% of them, anyway. The remainder are made by dependents of disabled ex-servicemen.

A: It's been happening since the mid-1920s, at a little known place called, unsurprisingly, The Poppy Factory, in Richmond, Surrey. It's run by the Royal British Legion, a charity established in 1921 to protect the welfare of ex-servicemen and their dependents, and the Poppy Factory's charitable status depends on providing employment specifically for these people. The current factory was built in 1933, and it's recently undergone a big refit to make the working environment more suitable to the needs of the workforce.

A: The factory has 42 employees, 70% of whom have a disability of some kind. The British Legion also employs approximately 90 people who assemble the poppies from home, the majority of whom are dependents of disabled ex-soldiers, the remainder being widows and widowers of servicemen killed in conflict.

A: Here's where it gets confusing. The Royal British Legion Poppy Factory makes all the poppies for England, Ireland and Wales. Then there's the Lady Haig Poppy Factory in Edinburgh, supported by the Earl Haig Fund Scotland, which makes all the poppies sold north of the border. The Scottish factory is staffed by 24 disabled ex-servicemen who produce 4,000,000 poppies and 7,000 wreaths a year. The poppies they make have a completely different design to the ones made in the Richmond factory.

A: The wearing of poppies as a symbol of remembrance began in America, when university teacher Monia Michel read a poem called "In Flanders Fields" by John Macrae. A little background: Flanders Fields, in France, was the site of some of the bloodiest fighting of World War One, and in the aftermath of the destruction caused there, the only thing that was able to grow was the red poppy. Michael, inspired by the poem, began selling poppies to friends to raise money for ex-servicemen.

A: This is all down to a young infantry officer by the name of Major George Howson, who formed The Disabled Society in 1922 with the idea of helping ex-service people who had been disabled in the war.

A: Ah, well this was George's idea too. Moved by the plight of the 100,000 or so disabled ex-service personnel who were unable to find paid employment after the war, George approached the Royal British Legion and suggested that manufacturing artificial poppies might be a way for the members of his Disabled Society to earn a living. Consequently, a factory was set up in London, just off the Old Kent Road, originally employing 5 disabled ex-servicemen.

A: Originally, the poppies were made with a wire stem and a pinch-formed button, moulded by hand. Nowadays, they're made from plastic parts which are machine-made by outside suppliers, but still assembled by hand by the factory's employees.

A: For the 2006 Poppy Appeal alone, the factory has churned out a staggering 36,000,000. That's 140,000 poppies per working day.

A: No kidding. Kenny, one of the factory's employees, can make 600 poppies a day, but then again, he's had a lot of practice - he's been at it for 25 years. He used to make more, but then they started adding leaves to slow him down...

A: They make all sorts. In addition to the entire range of Remembrance Day items that you can buy from your local poppy-seller, they make crosses, wreaths (all 105,000 of them) and altar poppies for church displays which are bigger and have two different types of petal.

A: Yes. If you're going to a remembrance service at your local church this year, take a look at the altar display. You can bet that what you see up there has probably been made by Stephen - he's been doing it for 16 years. Many of the "Classic Remembrance Day" poppies - the ones you pin to your lapel - are made by another Stephen, who's the longest-serving member of staff with 29 years under his belt.

A: All sorts. In the original London factory, many of the employees would have been amputees, due to the injuries they sustained in the war. Today, the employees range from physically disabled people, deaf people, blind people to people with learning disabilities, and many of the dependents employed as home-workers are learning disabled.

A: The target this year is to beat the amount raised in 2005, which was an amazing £24.7m. Although most people associate the Royal British Legion with the first and second world wars, their work is still relevant as long as British men and women continue to serve in the Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Falklands and Afghanistan. As long as people continue to be affected by war, the British Legion pledges to be there to support them.

A: In 1933, the Women's Co-operative Guild, an organisation with pacifist principles who had spoken out strongly against the first world war, asked for an alternative symbol to express their opposition to conflict, and the result was the white poppy. The British Legion was asked to produce the poppy and refused, also refusing all proceeds from the sales, as many people saw it as an insult to the memory of the servicemen who had died in the war. In 1936, the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist organisation, took over promotion of the white poppy, and has been doing so on and off ever since.

A: Are they still sold today?

A: Yes. Approximately 45,000 are sold each year, and the proceeds go towards the work of the Peace Pledge Union. But they're made by a commercial operation - not by disabled people.

With special thanks to Bill Kay for showing us around the Richmond factory.