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Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot!

It's a rhyme that every generation of British school children have been reciting for over 400 years and it refers to the plot by Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament in 1605. It was the big terrorism event of the 17th Century.

Brits don't really celebrate Halloween. All Souls Day (October 31st) seems vaguely religious and Popish to the English, who prefer to celebrate Guy Fawkes night, or Bonfire Night as it is sometimes called, when an effigy of Guy Fawkes is ritually burnt on a bonfire on November 5th, and fireworks are set off.

Even if you haven't heard Fawkes, you will recognise his image in the mask, above, which is used by anarchists everywhere when they are challenging authority, most recently by the hacker group, Anonymous.

Who was Guy Fawkes?

Guy Fawkes was actually a mercenary who had been hired by angry English Catholics to kill the King.

Now various kings had been murdered from time to time in struggles for the throne for centuries. What was new about Guy Fawkes' plot was that he intended to blow up Westminster on the day of the opening of Parliament - when not only the King was present, but all the Lords and Bishops (who sit in the House of Lords) and all the MPs who sit in the House of Commons were on the premises.

In other words, this was a spectacular plot to get rid of all of the establishment and all the government at once. Killing the King was one thing - but killing MPs, Lords and Bishops was unheard of.

Why were the Catholics angry? Well the island had been catholic for about 700 years. But that started to change. England had gone through a traumatic reformation thanks to Henry VIII wanting to divorce his wives. Catholics in England had been pinning their hopes on the Scots intervening and restoring the old order.

However, while England had been made Protestant out of expediency due to Henry VIII's love life, in Scotland a genuine Protestant reformation movement was taking place led by the Calvanists and John Knox. As a result, while Mary Queen of Scots remained Catholic to her death, her son James whom she'd been parted from in infancy had been raised by a hardline Scottish Protestant establishment more reformist than anything in England.

And then in 1603 the moderate English queen Elizabeth I died.

Elizabeth had a policy of "I do not look into men's souls" which was euphemism for "worship who you like in private as long as you pay lip service to the crown's laws in public". James I of Scotland inherited the English throne, and he took a harder line. It seemed like the end of all the hopes of the Catholics. So a plot was laid to kill James I and replace him with one of his daughters who had Catholic sympathies.

The chief instigator of the plot was a nobleman called Robert Catesby - Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were merely hired hands.

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Word of the plot reached Robert Cecil, who was James I's chief of staff, weeks in advance, but he thought it was something to do with invasion (the usual way threats to the king manifested) and it didn't occur to him that it was a terror plot instead.

Unfortunately Guy Fawkes and his conspirators weren't very bright - they were just hired chancers. Some of the conspirators were nervous about killing Catholic Members of Parliament, and sent coded warnings to "retyre youre self into yowre contee whence yow maye expect the event in safti for ... they shall receyve a terrible blowe this parleament" but those who received the note were not quite sure what the plot was, only that there was a danger to Parliament, and showed the letter to James I's men.

James I ordered the cellars of Parliament to be searched - whereupon the barrels of gunpowder were discovered - enough it was said to "blow the King back to Scotland".

Guy Fawkes was arrested and tortured on the rack - he held out for three days before caving and giving the names of his conspirators not realizing that they were either already dead or had already been caught. He was then tried for treason and killed by being drawn backwards by a horse and cart, after which he was quartered and the bits of the body were hung out in the main squares for everyone to see.

The plot had a secondary effect - just as after 9/11 Islamophobia surged up, the English turned hardline against Catholics after November 5th 1605 - within a generation, Elizabeth I's tolerant accommodation of all sorts of faith was a distant memory and hardline Puritanism took its place with dreadful consequences for Catholics, till that too burned itself out.

It's only now, centuries later in secular Britain, that people joke about sending Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament when the government does something stupid. With the distance of time, Guy Fawkes has turned into an anti-establishment figure who may have had a point about how badly the catholics were treated, while at the same time the cause of a good night out on November 5th.

The image above is a drawing made of Guy Fawkes when he was in captivity just before he was tried. To my eyes it looks like a picture of a not very bright man who doesn't quite realise the trouble he is in.

Guy Fawkes Celebrations

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Most Guy Fawkes celebrations take the form of a "Guy" stuffed full of hay being burnt on a bonfire, and most towns in Britain will put on an official bonfire which is just an excuse for people to go out on a cold drizzly November night and laugh and drink and have fun around a bonfire. There's usually a fireworks display as well to signify the gunpowder going off.

Some towns however have a tradition of turning Guy Fawkes night into a huge spectacle. The small town of Lewes in East Sussex has been staging spectaculars on Guy Fawkes night for centuries. They even got banned by Oliver Cromwell for their celebrations being too close to riots, and in the 19th century police has to be drafted in from all over the country to control the Lewes "Bonfire Boys".

They usually have processions through the high street with the various clubs who have put on the show wearing smugglers costumes (another symbol of anarchy) and they usually take enormous trouble to to make the effigy they burn topical. In 2001 just two months after 9/11, they ritualistically burned an effigy of Osama Bin Laden - and they've had other controversial effigies such as gypsies when travelling groups were annoying the people of East Sussex. They also have some rituals particular to them - such as rolling a flaming tar barrel into the river to symbolise the way the people of Lewes threw the magistrate into the river in 1847 after the Riot Act was read to the Bonfire Boys.

The Lewes spectaculars are a mix of sympathy for Guy Fawkes and his conspirators (the anarchy smugglers costumes and crosses carried for all those executed) plus sharp political letting off steam in the burning of effigies of contemporary figures who are annoying the public, or to mock politicians - as you can see from the effigy above, a naked David Cameron was paraded with a pig's head. Below is Putin in a mankini:

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Meanwhile poor old Lewes council tries hard to make sure everyone stays safe during the bonfires and festivities and tries to cope with the massive influx into the town of tourists and others wanting to see the spectaculars.

As you can see Guy Fawkes Night has a completely different feel to Halloween. It's not cute or commercial, but sharply political as the Brits remember how a terror plot was foiled and celebrate by burning effigies of those they perceive as enemies of the Kingdom, combined with some wintery late-night revelry.