Whatever happened to Guy Fawkes Night?

Whatever happened to Guy Fawkes Day? Reports this weekend are of council killjoys cancelling at least one municipal bonfire for fear of pollution. Others have banned properly organised public firework displays for fear of injuries or frightening children or animals. Sweet!

But something deeper has been going on. Bonfire Night is already swamped by its bigger, wilder, more aggressive, money-with-menaces trick or treating, American substitute: Halloween. Much as the lovely little red squirrel has been swamped by its bigger more thuggish and generally less attractive grey cousin.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Atlanticist. I love the States. But we do have an unerring ability to import the least attractive aspects of Americana.

In my youth there were three great festive days for kids. Christmas Day, Boat Race Day and Fireworks Day. Christmas Day remains of course. Boat Race Day, when – amazingly – young working class London sported light or dark blue colours and cheered “their” crews on from miles away, has sunk without trace. (Heaven knows how we decided which of the two great universities to support.) All that remains of the glorious November the Fifth are carefully controlled municipal fireworks in some dreary park on the nearest Saturday. And even they are now endangered. An evening, back-garden family celebration for the kids, complete with unsupervised fireworks, an unlicensed bonfire with unhealthy burned sausages on sticks? Street chaos for teenagers and young adults, which often ended in drunken, banger-chucking brawls? And all happening during the working week? What would the Council, the Police and Health and Safety say?

Add to that the fact that Guy Fawkes was the leader of the failed Papist Plot to blow up Parliament, kill Protestant King James 1st and replace him with a Roman Catholic in 1605. Guy Fawkes was arrested, brutally tortured, found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered in public. He had just enough strength left to throw himself to his death from the scaffold and so escape the Protestant noose. November Fifth actually became a Government sponsored, statutory day of Anglican prayer and celebration for the defeat of the dastardly Catholic plot. (It was not until 1859 that the Act was repealed.) Effigies of the Pope were burned for many decades. The shift to burning poor old Guy came later. So there was more than an undertow of anti-Catholicism about the Day. It had however almost vanished by 1945 when the celebrations were resumed after the War. Even so the powers that be became increasingly uneasy as The Troubles erupted in Ulster. Would Guy Fawkes Day celebrations start to ape the anti Catholic marches, massive bonfires with Old Red Socks perched on top, ending in religious riots like those of strife torn Belfast? Never happened of course. But the Great and the Good really did come to see the Day as divisive and potentially hurtful to Catholic sensibilities. How convenient that Halloween was emerging to attract popular excitement. So domestic bonfires were effectively forbidden and the sale of fireworks to youngsters curbed.

So what was the Guy Fawkes Day I miss, really like? Above all it was a great, unorganised, bottom up, folk festival. Weeks before the fifth we started to make guys. Old pillows for bodies and heads. Torn clothes. A pipe perhaps. Then if you had a broken dolls pram you sat your guy in it and trundled off to the nearest Tube station or bustling street corner and settled down to yell “Penny for the guy, mister.” People actually gave you money. But you had to earn it. There was plenty of competition and the punters were pretty sniffy. You didn’t make much if you were exhibiting a collection of old rags rather than the artfully made models on show just up the road. You counted up the pennies, night after night. The loot eventually enabled you to trundle off to the newsagent and pick through trays of bangers, jumping jacks, sparklers, rockets and the rest. The old bloke sold you anything however dangerous, whatever your age. Back home you collected firewood, garden rubbish, household waste to build the fire in the back garden. You sat you guy on top. Stalin one year in our family. Colonel Nasser in 1956. Dad went round to the local garage to buy a can of petrol. On the night he simply poured the lot on the rubbish and lit it. Whoosh! High excitement. Then we all let off the fireworks.

The whole sky lit up as every family was indulging in the same ceremony at much the same time. Finally we stuck sausages on sticks and waved them above the flames. And shoved potatoes into the hot ashes. Glorious. The past really is another country.