Remember the Fifth

It’s Bonfire Night!  This is an event celebrated every year in England on 5 November. It’s a night of fires and fireworks, of bangers and bangers! Now, least those who are not English misunderstand me here, a banger is just a type of firework and a banger is a sausage, really quite delicious when cooked over a fire in the open air.

So, yes, November 5 is our firework night, just as July 4 is firework night in the States. But whereas the one celebrates rebellion the other celebrates loyalty, loyalty to the crown. It celebrates the frustration of the most significant terrorist conspiracy in English history, perhaps in the history of any nation - the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

The commemoration now is all great fun, the political connotations having been wiped smooth by the hand of time. Still, it’s important not to lose all sight of the fact that if the Plot had succeeded it would have eclipsed even the historical significance of 9/11.

I feel sure that’s bound to raise a few American eyebrows but just imagine a 9/11 that had, at one stroke, killed the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, every member of the government, every member of any alternative government, and just about every member of the Senate and the House, then you might begin to appreciate the full significance of the Gunpowder Plot.

In 2005 a reconstruction by one of the English television companies, using the same amount of gunpowder planted under a replica of the seventeenth century House of Lords, showed that the ensuing explosion would have left no survivors; that it would have been seen and heard many miles away from London. It’s difficult to imagine the political chaos that would have followed.

The conspirators were headed by one Robin Catesby, though the whole enterprise is now more closely associated with Guy Fawkes, a soldier and explosives expert. You will probably know his face, or a caricature of his face, from the grinningly inane V for Vendetta mask, one of those cultural artefacts that I absolutely loath! Fawkes and all of his co-conspirators were Catholics, frustrated by the failure of the Protestant government of James I to raise some of the more irksome restrictions on their religion.

The discovery of the plot was the cause of an immediate anti-Catholic reaction, recalled in a traditional rhyme;

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God's providence he was catched
With a dark lantern and burning match
Holloa boys, holloa boys
God save the King!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!

A penny loaf to feed ol' Pope
A farthing cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him
Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray! 

It was Parliament itself that originally decided that the Plot should be remembered in an annual act of thanksgiving for the safe delivery of the King.  For years after it was known officially as Gunpowder Treason Day, with strong sectarian and anti-Catholic overtones, clearly captured in the rhyme.  This was hardly fair, given that the conspiracy was roundly condemned by the Vatican and most English Catholics remained loyal to the crown, fully demonstrated in the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century.

By the following century anti-Catholic sentiment started to die away.  In popular parlance the 5th was no longer referred to as Gunpowder Treason Day but as Guy Fawkes Day.  Latterly it’s more often referred to as Fireworks Night or simply Bonfire Night, after the traditional fires to which an effigy of ‘the Guy’ – any guy really - was consigned. 

In these days of ‘elf n safety’ there has been an increasingly nannyish approach to the whole spectacle by public authorities, anxious to corral the masses into sanitised official events.  There is also a tut tutting disapproval of residual anti-Catholic overtones, so residual that it they are only brought to mind by politically correct moral arbiters!  As I noted on a previous occasion, the event isn't even celebrated in Northern Ireland, a place where sectarianism has an abiding presence.  

The simple truth is that Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night or whatever you want to call it was transformed from a state-sanctioned holiday into a genuine popular fiesta, the very thing that fills the authorities with fear and trepidation.  If you like it’s anarchy in action, by the people, for the people, of the people.  Long may it remain so; long may the killjoy guys be placed on top of the fires.  

Yes, it’s all about fun, and I had fun, watching the rockets illuminate the night sky, dancing around the fire in the best pagan tradition, seeing the encroaching darkness of winter lift just a little. I will always remember.  In future my children, if I have any, will remember also.  

Bonfire of the absurdities

Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, so said Sir Isaac Newton. He forgot to add that this is a general principle, applying to far more than the laws of physics. I mentioned in a recent blog that Dominic Sandbrook was in favour of scrapping Halloween in favour of the more ‘traditional’ English festival of Bonfire Night. Now Frank Skinner, a comedian of sorts (the principle here being that humour and wit have virtually nothing to do with comedy in its modern form), has called for the scrapping of Bonfire Night!

Writing in the Times on Friday (Let’s not remember the Fifth of November), Skinner comes out with the usual po-faced garbage, from concerns over elf ‘n’ safety to how awful it must be for Catholics to witness this appalling outburst of Protestant ‘hysteria.’

Let me just repeat, for those not familiar with the basic facts, that Bonfire Night recalls the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an act of potential terrorism in English history not paralleled even in the present day, in which a group of Catholic conspirators planned to blow up Parliament during the state-opening, thereby in the process killing the king and most of the governing classes of England. The political chaos that would have resulted is almost unimaginable.

The conspirators were headed by one Robin Catesby though the enterprise has long been associated with Guy Fawkes, a soldier and explosives expert. The discovery of the plot was the cause of an immediate anti-Catholic reaction, recalled in a traditional rhyme;

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God's providence he was catched
With a dark lantern and burning match
Holloa boys, holloa boys
God save the King!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!

A penny loaf to feed ol' Pope
A farthing cheese to choke him
A pint of beer to rinse it down
A faggot of sticks to burn him
Burn him in a tub of tar
Burn him like a blazing star
Burn his body from his head
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!

Now most people, if they know this rhyme at all, will be unable to proceed beyond the first few lines, almost certainly no further than To blow up the King and the Parliament. The inclusion of the Pope, and by implication all Catholics, is quite unfair, as the pontiff of the day, Paul V, was quick to express his disapproval. Acting on his instructions, the Archpriest George Blackwell issued a statement denouncing the Plot as “intolerable, scandalous and desperate”, going on to say that “private violent attempts could never be justified. Catholics must not support them in any way.”

No matter; Catholics were established in popular imagination as potential traitors, liable to all sorts of nefarious schemes, a suspicion that was to emerge later in the century in the Popish Plot. Even today, in the great bonfire held every year at Lewes in East Sussex, an effigy of Pope Paul is burned alongside that of Guy Fawkes.

Does this matter? No, of course it doesn’t; the Guy is burnt, the Pope is burnt, but so, too, is all residual passion. I have no way of penetrating the consciousness of other people but I think it fairly reasonable to deduce that those who attend the Lewes festival, or any other bonfire celebration across the land, harbour little in the way of anti-Catholic sentiment. I’m sure a great many Catholics also take part because – and this is the point completely missed by Skinner – the whole thing is about fun, not bigotry. In Northern Ireland, where such feelings might still rest, Bonfire Night isn’t even celebrated.

I’m so tired of political correctness, the modern disease, a disease of limited imaginations. Modern, I say, but it’s really another residue of seventeenth century Puritanism, with the ghastly Skinners of this world coming along, fingers wagging, saying thou shall not, because thou may very well upset some geek or other. Sandbrook, as I say, wants to displace Halloween in favour of Bonfire Night. And what about Skinner, what’s his alternative offering? Why, it’s Valentine’s Day;

Maybe we could broaden out Valentine’s Day as a replacement. It might be a nice change to celebrate love – romantic, parental, interfaith –instead of a 400 year old hate.

This, for me, brings on a distinct sick bucket moment. Let’s all be lovey-dovey, drape ourselves in pink and sentiment, reciting machine-written, saccharine verse while tucking in to a tofu casserole; or let’s have danger, excitement and tradition: fires and bangers; bangers and mash. I know which way I go. Even now I’m planning to burn an effigy of Frank Skinner on my bonfire of all the absurdities.