Happy Brexit Guy Fawkes

Well, it’s that time of year again. Guy Fawkes Day. When we Brits bring our kids out to celebrate the torturing to death of a seventeenth-century dissident.

We build big bonfires and burn him in effigy on top. Everyone stands around eating sausages and having a wonderful time. Then we let off fireworks to celebrate his death.

Guy Fawkes:
the celebration of torture the whole family can enjoy

His crime was to have tried to blow up Parliament. He was caught, in the night of 5 November 1605, checking out the barrels of gunpowder ready to be set off the next day. Burning, which is how he ended, was just the culmination of the things that were done to him during the short remainder of his life.

Interestingly, I imagine a lot of people, particularly amongst those supporting Brexit – British departure from the European Union – will be inclined to remember him fondly. They would like Parliament blown up, especially following Wednesday’s decision of the High Court that Parliament should be consulted about the launching of the Brexit process.

Supporters feel that this is an unnecessary delay in the process that they want completed as quickly as possible. They know Theresa May, as head of government, would ensure that happened; Parliamentary scrutiny would only be an obstacle to her and should, therefore, be avoided.

There’s a curious paradox there. Most of these Brexiters see the delay as a denial of democracy, because it seems to conflict with the referendum which came down on the side of leaving the EU. So, in the name of democracy, they oppose the parliamentary oversight of the behaviour of Ministers for which democrats in Britain have battled for centuries. That’s how casually people can opt to discard rights, in the name of other rights they think matter more. They forget that, in or out of the EU, Britain needs to keep the same tight rein on government as any other nation that wishes to act democratically.

In that respect, Brexiters are right to see Guy Fawkes day as their kind of celebration. After all, where the United States and France hold their national days – in July rather than November, which is already a sensible move for an outdoor celebration – to commemorate acts of the people against oppression, in Britain we celebrate the crushing of a rebellion and the upholding of executive power.

Consciously or unconsciously, Brexiters are also keen backers of the executive over the representatives of the people.

In another sense, though, Guy Fawkes isn’t entirely their champion. The aim of his plot was to blow up the King with his Parliament. In other words, the chief executive of the nation as well as its legislators. The target wasn’t just the bridle on government, but government itself. And it’s the power of government that Brexiters proclaim.

Besides, the conspiracy was one of Catholics. They wanted to end the power of a national, Protestant regime and see Britain re-enter the greater union of Christendom embracing most of Europe and with its heart in Rome. Imagine: Brexiters find Brussels bad enough, so one can picture their abhorrence at rule from nasty, southern, hot and sweaty Rome. Why, even Northern Italians say that Africa starts at Rome.

So maybe Brexiters should be a little ambivalent about today’s feast. It may not be as entirely favourable to their point of view as they think.

Even so. Brexiters or Remainers, I wish you all a great firework display. Enjoy the sausages. I raise my metaphorical glass of mulled wine your good health.

Happy Guy Fawkes!

The trouble with Halloween...

For a long time, I found Halloween attractive in a slightly perverse way. 

It provided me with an annual opportunity to be terribly British and tediously older generation.

“What?” I would say, “when I was a kid, the thing we celebrated at this time of year was Guy Fawkes Day. What is this Yank custom we’ve imported? Do we have to do everything they do in the States?”

Then I’d go all misty-eyed and nostalgic as my audience wondered how to vanish, or shut me up, without actually being openly rude.

It’s true that Guy Fawkes celebrations of my youth were special. We’d make Guys, of course. Well, those of us who could bother would. Misshapen effigies of a human being made of straw, old clothes and a balloon as a head, with a hat glued on top. Get it done on time, and you could wheel it out on the street for a few days beforehand and ask for a “penny for the Guy” from all the passersby. That wasn’t begging because it was tradition.

I never could be bothered to make my own Guy, so instead I went to other people’s Guy Fawkes parties. They were wonderful. Huge bonfires with someone else’s Guy perched on top. This was an uplifting allusion to the burning to death of the original Guy Fawkes, who’d had the shocking idea of wanting to blow up Parliament, with all the politicians in it. That’s an idea which no one today could contemplate with anything but horror.

The nice thing about the bonfire is that, if it burned fiercely enough, it would make the rain drops evaporate around it. So if you could stand getting close enough, you kept reasonably dry, only getting soaked when you stepped away to eat one of the burned sausages which people carbonised for you in the flames.

Ah, the joy of the Guy Fawkes bonfire!
Great for getting one side of you burned while the other froze

The other great benefit of the fire was that it meant only one side of you was cold (the festivities take place on 5 November, after all). The other side could get itself toasted. When you couldn’t bear the first degree burning of your face any more, you could turn around and get your back seared while your nose froze off.

Oh, wonderful times, wonderful times.

These days, instead of this time-honoured and cherished tradition, we get Halloween. I’m given to understand that in the States this is managed in quite a civilised way: it happens in daylight, with kids up to about 8 or 10, and they only call on houses of people who have set up a pumpkin in their windows. This indicates that they’re happy to be “trick or treated”, a curious notion, since treating to avoid the threat of a trick sounds pretty much like the text book definition of extortion.

Britain has a long tradition of enjoying extortion. As in “nice little country you have here. How about giving us monopoly access to your markets? You wouldn’t want my Royal Navy here to do anything nasty to it, and I have trouble controlling its commanders, in the face of uncooperative behaviour.” 

So when we introduced Halloween, it took rather a nastier edge to it than the kids’ party in the States. Why, this year there was a regular riot leaving four policemen injured, over a Halloween “scum party” in London, which sounds altogether less gentle than the US model.

Of course, it doesn’t help that that the celebrations start when it’s dark over here. The clocks go back a week or two before, so it’s pitch black by 5:30. That makes it a little harder to conjure up a family atmosphere.

Still, I have to admit that round here, it’s become nicer over the last few years. Little kids go out in witches’ costumes or dressed as cartoon zombies, and they knock politely on the door to ask us to chuck some terribly sugar-rich, nutrition-low sweetmeat into their baskets. The whole thing takes place under the watchful eyes of their mothers, so the threat level stays agreeably low.

As a result, Danielle and I have been adapting to the occasion. Getting into the spirit. We buy lots of tooth-rotting produce in the run-up to the 31 October. I’ve become less curmudgeonly and actually welcome the arrival of the kids. I hand out largesse with gusto and enjoy the pleasure of the children in response.

Why, I even apologise for the behaviour of our assault poodle Luci, who likes to go flying out making a terrible racket and looking as awe-inspiring as a dog six inches tall can. It doesn’t seem to matter, as the mothers like to stroke her anyway, describing her as cute, while I concentrate on the kids’ baskets.

Indeed, such was our enjoyment of this event, that we were disappointed last year when we ran out of goodies by about 8:00. To make sure that it didn’t happen again, we got extra stocks in this year.

And then – the unimaginable happened. We only had three parties of kids coming to our door. We were left with a large quantity of unclaimed merchandise. I’ve had to give it away to the grandmother next door, who assured me “it won’t go to waste.”

I can’t believe it. What’s happened? Aren’t people taking Halloween seriously any more? Where’s their sense of tradition? Don’t they see the importance of maintaining links with the culture their ancestors formed for them?

I’m sure it wasn’t like that in my young day.

Blowing up parliament, occupying the White House

407 years ago today, Guy Fawkes was arrested as he prepared to blow up the British Parliament during its official opening by the King.

The flower of the Kingdom would have been wiped out, if by ‘flower’ we understand a bunch of characters who owed their position to (a) descent from characters who had proved themselves quite good at killing other people and not being killed themselves, (b) had made sure they’d curried favour with a fairly unpleasant king, or (c) had made a lot of money from something holy like helping convert heathens by forcibly transporting them to lives of slavery in the New World.

Fortunately, Fawkes was stopped and London was saved from a major act of terrorism. He was also tortured and eventually burned, giving rise to the gentle tradition by which in Britain we all, and especially families with young children, foregather every 5 November to watch a bonfire blaze with a ‘guy’ – a human effigy of Fawkes – on top, all enriched by a glorious firework display.

‘Remember, remember, the fifth of november,’ we like to say, ‘gunpowder, treason and plot.’

Well, today the wheel has turned. The face of Guy Fawkes, or a face purporting to represent him, has become the symbol of the ‘Occupy’ movement, today’s challengers of the wastrels who inherited the privileges of James I’s courtiers and with it the power to dictate and undermine all our destinies.

Guy relives

Besides, this year the fifth of November falls on the eve of the US elections. An election in which one of the more egregious representatives of privilege and power unconstrained by morality (a man who likes to be able to fire the people who serve him) is trying to seize the White House from an incumbent who, for all his failings, has at least attempted to do something to lighten the burden that privilege lays on the most vulnerable.

A more interesting Guy Fawkes night than many, then.

‘Remember, remember,’ I’m inclined to say to my American cousins, ‘the sixth of November: a good day to help stop the rot.’



Postscript: The 5th is also the member of one of my charming daughters-out-law. Happy birthday Nicola, and still more success in the coming year with your great purses, cushion covers and other pieces of great embroidery at Cover Stories.

Saying no to joylessness

Yesterday was the night that Luton council selected for iur great national  celebration of the torture and execution, by burning, of a seventeenth-century dissident. This, as I’ve pointed out before, is one of the great family events in the annual calendar of this quaint and traditional nation.

Fun for all the family

The commemoration is actually on the fifth of November, but the British are pragmatic people: we don’t feel obliged to commemorate anniversaries on the exact date but prefer to go for a convenient day close to it, and yesterday was a Saturday.

The dissident was Guy Fawkes, a Catholic, caught in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster with rather a lot of barrels of gunpowder (more than he could really pass of as needing for his personal consumption). The King and both houses of Parliament were due to meet the following day just above, and detonating the powder at that time would have had a very poor effect on the health of the assembled great and good. As well as being distinctly career-limiting.

So Fawkes got tortured and eventually burned, as did a number of fellow conspirators, giving rise to this delightful celebration where we light bonfires and let off fireworks.

Just what was he? A dissident, certainly. A martyr – to the Catholics, no doubt. A traitor – to the king and ministers undeniably. Maybe today we’d call him an insurgent, which is a bad thing if you’re with Nato in Afghanistan, a good thing if you’re with the Taliban. Overall, perhaps we can just say that he was a brilliant illustration that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.

In any case, what he’s become since is a pretext for a good party, and this year was no exception. Generally, Luton is not a physically attractive town, but it does have some very good parks. Yesterday, Pope’s meadow, which is sandwiched between Wardown Park and the splendidly named People’s Park, was the site of a breathtaking firework display. We took our places in the crowd which must have been several thousand strong, and I think being there with them was part of the pleasure: the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of the kids have to be one great contributory factors to enjoying fireworks.

But the best thing about the display was that fireworks serve absolutely no useful purpose at all. They cost a lot of money, and they’re gone in an instant, actually destroyed by the very thing that makes them a source of joy. Glorious, extravagant, pure pleasure.

That appeals to me more than ever in today’s atmosphere. The financiers are running Britain today. Though they precipitated today's crisis, and got the rest of us to pay for their failures with bank bale-outs, they've shown they know how to look after themselves: executive pay has risen by 23% in twelve months and bankers' bonuses remain at indefensible levels (which doesn't stop them trying to defend them). In between their trips to the Maldives or St Moritz, they keep telling us that the State has to spend less on things like schools and hospitals and libraries and public transport and decent policing. And jobs. And a government drawn from the same people has decided to do their bidding.

So congratulations to Luton Council for braving all that misery and spending the money on a few moments of pure pleasure in spite of the overpaid cheapskates. That’s just what the people who gave its name to People’s Park need right now, to give us a break from the bleakness ahead.

Besides, it was a great display.