We Really, Really, Didn’t Start The Fire. Honest.

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
The gunpowder, treason and plot…

So, what is it we’re remembering?

Guy Fawkes Night / Bonfire Night / Gunpowder Treason Day.

Its had various identities and is a day unique to British culture.

In 2013 I went to a gig on Bonfire Night by US band; Phosphorescent. They’d spent the evening listening to a constant barrage of fireworks and came onstage to comment that having never heard of Bonfire Night before, they had to have it explained why the city sounded like a war zone.

But they liked the wild vibe.

School is in, then. We’ll be starting off with a history lesson. Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz at the end.

It all starts well before the event we’re commemorating, back to Henry VIII. In terms of historical influence, he gets about a bit.

When he assumed the throne in 1509, (this was before the acts of union that created Great Britain / UK ) England was a Roman Catholic country with the Pope as Head of the Church. The very basic retelling is that Henry wanted to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, but Pope Clement VII refused the request.

Not one to bow to anyone else’s authority, Henry had himself installed as head of the Church of England and removed papal authority.

That set off a chain of events that resulted in anti-Catholic sentiment becoming not just prevalent – but legitimised by the state. This was actual life and death stuff with the deaths often occurring in gruesome ways.

More on that later.

By 1605, via a convoluted succession: King James I is on the throne (alternatively known as King James VI of Scotland for lovers of confusion). It was not a good time to be Catholic; persecuted and forced to practice their religion in secret with the threat of fines, imprisonment and execution.,

…The aim of which was to set off an explosion at the ceremonial State Opening of Parliament, killing James and the most important members of government, the church and judiciary who would all be present. After which they would kidnap his daughter and install her as a proxy monarch to do their bidding, and restore Catholic power.

The name associated with the plot is Guy Fawkes.

But Robert Catesby was the main player.

He assembled a group of plotters, with Guy’s primary role being to set off the explosion. Security wasn’t what it is today; the then parliament building hosted various businesses and functions. The plotters rented a storage vault and filled it with barrels of gunpowder.

There was concern amongst the group that fellow Catholics would be caught up in the explosion. An anonymous letter sent to a friend warning him against attending parliament on the day in question.

Unfortunately for the plotters, he passed the letter on, finding its way to King James. On 5th November the building was searched and Guy along with 36 barrels of gunpowder were found, sealing his place in history as the face of the plot.

The other plotters fled London. After being tortured for days, Guy gave up their details. Catesby was killed following a standoff with the king’s men. The others were captured and transported to the Tower of London to join Guy Fawkes. After interrogations and a trial, eight of them were sentenced to –

… sentenced to be hung then removed from the noose while still conscious, to have their genitals cut off and burnt before their eyes, then dissembowelled (likely still alive at this point, but if they’re lucky they’ll have passed out) and their heart removed. Finally, they would be decapitated and quartered and the dismembered parts of their body displayed.

If a jobs worth doing…

Guy managed to escape watching his gentleman’s area being hacked off and the relocation of his bowels by throwing himself from the gallows with the noose attached, to kill himself by breaking his neck.

In 1606 Parliament passed the Observance of 5th November Act requiring thanksgiving services in all churches to mark the plot’s failure.

This became known as Gunpowder Treason Day. Over the next few decades the commemoration extended to include bonfires, bellringing and fireworks and in line with the religious intolerance that brought about the plot effigies of the Pope would be burnt.

In the late 18th and early 19th century the restrictions on Catholics were finally repealed, sectarianism began to fall away and Guy took over from the Pope as the focus with the day becoming known as Guy Fawkes Day (or Night) and more recently as just Bonfire Night.

Through the 1800s, the 5th of November often seemed to have been used as a cover for violence and disorder and a chance to co-opt the rowdy celebrations to air grievances against authority. Across the country there were various restrictions placed on gatherings and the use of fireworks to dampen down any insurrection.

By the time we got to the 20th century it became more of a child oriented event.

It was common for children to collect wood to build a bonfire and to make a ‘Guy’, a representation of Guy Fawkes, out of whatever materials were to hand and this would be taken round the neighbourhood asking for ‘a penny for the guy’ before being placed on top of the bonfire. Large scale community bonfires and firework displays organised by local authorities were commonplace but it also moved into small scale celebrations in people’s gardens. 

From my own perspective as a child in the 80s Bonfire Night was a big event.

Two houses along from me was a family with four boys, all older than me and who took charge of bonfire arrangements. In front of our houses was a playing field imaginatively known as ‘The Big Green’ with football (soccer) goalposts on it. Along with some other neighbourhood kids, each year from a week or so before the 5th we would knock on doors collecting anything that people didn’t want that could be burnt.

Whether it should be burnt, or if it contained unsafe materials is another matter. But no one worried about that.

The location for the bonfire was the middle of the big green, right in the centre of the football pitch. It made for an added element to games having a large ash grey grass free circle strewn with debris to play through.

One problem was that other kids would try and spoil the big night by lighting the ever growing pile before Bonfire Night. They got a surprise one night as undercover of darkness they crept towards the bonfire with box of matches in hand only to have two of my neighbours leap out of the pile and send them running. We’d had a sofa donated to the pyre that year providing a comfy guard station to wait for just such an occurrence.

We never created our own Guy. Though on one occasion, I put on some of the rags we’d collected and sat on the shoulders of the eldest neighbour and we knocked on a few doors asking for a penny for the Guy. We got plenty of laughs but no pennies.

Parental supervision was largely absent. We were left to our own devices in organising the bonfire.

The grown ups and younger children would gradually disperse leaving us to it. At which point, anything went.

Aerosol cans which had been collected ready for the night would be thrown on. Give them a few seconds to heat up and they’d explode and be fired out in indiscriminate fashion like a missile. There may have been the odd paint tin as well which would provide a rewarding pop and send the tin flying.

We were well aware of the fireworks code and the dangers, that’s what made it more fun when you’re 10 and don’t think the consequences apply to you.

Chemistry sets were a big let down, though. We imagined explosions but there was nothing but a barely audible fizzing sound. Obviously even for the times they were never going to put in anything actually dangerous when its aimed at children but in our minds chemistry = dangerous chemicals.

Anything that produced noxious thick black smoke was good though. A car tyre for example, we’d run through the smoke alternating between laughing and coughing. Honestly, kids are idiots.

Their mistake; what can I say?

If this gives the impression we were little hooligans, we really weren’t. I was a really good kid, well behaved and very rarely in trouble at school. Bonfire Night just gave an outlet for rogue tendencies, it was all quite normal behaviour and despite our best efforts no one ever got hurt. Well, they likely did somewhere else, but not at ours.

This element was evident in some areas as Mischief Night. I’d never heard of it before I moved to Leeds, we saved all the mischief for the 5th but in Yorkshire and some places the 4th was designated for general devilment, pranks and making a nuisance of yourself to the local community.

Since my childhood, that has changed.  Leaving kids to arrange their own bonfire isn’t the done thing anymore. Perhaps importantly there isn’t much scope for consumerism in Bonfire Night other than selling fireworks. And the sale of them is increasingly restricted. In theory: in the 80s it shouldn’t have been possible for us to buy them, but there was always a shop that was happy to let any rules about not selling them to children slide.

It used to be that every evening for weeks before Bonfire Night would be accompanied by the sound of fireworks, like an extended aural tribute to the sound of World War 1 shelling. Which obviously doesn’t go down well with pets. There’s still plenty of fireworks but its nothing like as excessive as it used to be.

Halloween, though, offers a more family friendly and non dangerous experience, as well as far more scope for profit. We’re nothing like the US, but we have adopted many of the same traditions. Its grown exponentially in recent years. An article this week reported that consumer spending on Halloween has tripled in the last 10 years to nearly £700m. 

There are still places where Bonfire Night is taken very seriously.

Each year competing societies produce huge effigies of a notable public figure that has drawn particular ire that year. This results in a lot of politicians getting the treatment; Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Donald Trump, George W Bush, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad as well as other ne’er do wells like Bin Laden, Sepp Blatter and Jeremy Clarkson.

Effigies of Guy Fawkes and Pope Paul V are also produced each year. He was Pope in the 17th century when 17 Protestant martyrs were burnt to death in the town. All of the effigies are paraded through town along with flaming torches and costumed participants before being burnt.

Bonfire Night might now be far removed from the original meaning, and be second fiddle to Halloween. But it has lasted over 400 years.

Guy Fawkes might not have achieved his aim, but his place in history lives on. 

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