What are you going to do this Saturday, November 5th? Recover from Halloween? Practice your recipe for baking your apple, pumpkin or pecan pie? Well, if you are one of the students who happens to be studying abroad in the UK this semester, you will most likely be experiencing, to some level, Guy Fawkes Night. Also known as Bonfire Night in the UK, it is held on November 5th, and marks the day in 1605 when a plot to basically blow up King James I failed.
Guy Fawkes, was part of a group of 13 men, described in an article by the Evening Standard as “Catholic Activists'' who designed a plan to murder the reigning king at the time, James I. The story starts with Fawkes and his fellow conspirators hatching a plot to kill the king, his eldest son, and both the House of Lords and House of Commons before kidnapping James’ daughter, putting her on the throne and marrying her off to a Catholic…. Annnnnd Scene. Trouble is they got caught. Fawkes, for all his name recognition today, was not the leader of this rag tag group but rather the explosives expert. If this were Ocean’s Eleven, he’s Basher, not Danny. In the early hours of Nov. 5th 1605 he was found under the House of Lords with “a fuse, a small lamp, a box of matches and 36 poorly-hidden barrels of gunpowder,” according to this article from Historic Royal Places. Fawkes was taken to the Tower of London, interrogated, and along with his co-conspirators that had survived the failed plot, eventually executed.
And now Bonfires. Well, sort of. Following the failure to kill the king, James I was in a good mood and declared Nov. 5th a day of Thanksgiving. Bonfires, the 17th century’s go-to for a celebration, became a tradition on the 5th. Somewhere in the next century the burning of effigies in the form of Fawkes and Pope Paul V (the pope in 1605) were added to the yearly celebrations. Today you are likely to see the addition of firework displays on the 5th as well.
Originally fulfilling the role of villain in this story, Fawkes’ persona has taken on an antihero feel over the years. He became a revolutionary hero, or symbol of resistance, an anarchist’s dream. Dr. Jamie Larkin of the Center for the Creative and Cultural Industries here at Chapman notes “The mask that we see in the film “V for Vendetta” is based on Guy Fawkes as well and there you can see this inversion of now you have the anarchists as pro revolutionaries doing good by resisting. There is also a website called Guido Fawkes where they do all the hacking– a collective of people who do various hacking activities in an anarchist kind of way. So I find that to be a very intriguing thing, how something passes into the popular discourse and becomes something that once celebrated the saving of the king into something to celebrate anarchy.”
Still the rituals of November 5th have become a cultural touchstone for many in the UK. Celebrations and festivals take place in large cities and small villages across the country, and as the Evening Standard has noted, are a “quintessentially British activity.” None more so than the Lewes Bonfire Night Celebration. This iteration of Guy Fawkes Night, has been up and running for about 300 years now, and traditionally sees about 5000 people take part in the festivities, and has drawn upwards of 80,000 spectators to an area that generally only has a population of about 17,000. In addition to firework displays, the area of Sussex, where Lewes is located, is noted for celebrations that include flaming barrel runs and torch lit processionals that weave through the streets led by bonfire societies. In her story for Classic Cottages, Silvia Lowe writes that Lewes has no less than “seven societies responsible for organizing six separate firework displays and multiple processions throughout this town.” If Halloween and Mardi Gras had a baby, this would be it, as The Telegraph alludes to.
The societies, some which have been around since the 1850s, each have two different types of dress which easily identifies them. Style one is known as “a ‘smuggler uniforms’: striped pirate-style sweaters of various colors to show off their affiliations, plus white trousers, black boots and red hats or bandanas.” The second is, “historical fancy dress: expect tunic-covered masked Vikings capped with horned hats, African-style Zulu warriors with elaborate headdresses, Elizabethan ladies in huge hooped Tudor skirts, and suffragettes with signs demanding "Votes for Women," notes Lauren Keith in her First-Timer’s Guide to Bonfire Night in Lewes story for Lonely Planet. Members also march with burning crosses aloft during the procession to represent the 17 Protestant martyrs who were burned at the stake in Lewes in the 16th century. In addition the societies construct effigies not only of Guy Fawkes and Popes past and present, but contemporary figures often drawn from politics which are paraded through the winding corridors of the town before being set ablaze at their predesignated pyre location. Recent entries of note include effigies in the form of Kim Jong Un, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Angela Merkel, to name a few.
Center for CCI Director, Dr. Patrick Fuery recalled of his time living in the town of Lewes, “When I lived in Lewes, it was a beautifully affluent, lefty, alternative English village on the south coast. And once a year on Guy Fawkes night it becomes a nutso place, the center for these kinds of celebrations. And the entire village dresses up and marches through the streets with burning sticks and then light massive bonfires and the village divides into different societies and they each have their own bonfires. They have these huge effigies, originally it was of Guy Fawkes but now its political figures, usually almost always it's the Pope because of his opposition toward the LGBTQ+ community. Recently they had Trump, Putin, and Thatcher– so every year the festival keeps re-contemporizing itself by making these figures more politically-of-the-moment.”
This is a festival of history and tradition also has an air of rebellion. It has a feeling of resistance unique to the area which perhaps is why it is the largest 5th of November celebration in the world. “The cultural specificity, because it is such a specific historical political event linked directly to England, it makes me wonder if it had been an American thing, would it have spread much farther around the world? And you wonder if its political roots have stopped it from becoming popularized. I believe that It's the preservation of a cultural icon but it's also a festival that invites people to be part of it through tourism and then of course they bring their money. When culture comes into contact with the marketplace, it is in cases such as this that a special example of creative culture is engendered,” Fuery notes.
Photo by Charlie Ellis on Unsplash- Nottingham bonfire
Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash- Lewes celebration
Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash- Leed Castle firework display
Still, the celebrations in the UK, like similar ones all over the world that include fireworks, are facing new challenges as we march through the 2020s. Covid-19 saw many November 5th celebrations canceled for at least two years with 2022 set to mark the return of Bonfire Night. Yet many Guy Fawkes festivals and firework displays are being canceled across the countryside in 2022 as well, some announcing indefinitely. Budget cuts due to the current inflation and financial strain are causing many counties to cancel the traditional festivities of November 5th, including displays that were to take place in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow, Norwich, Dundee and Nottingham, according to Metro UK. Following studies like the one from University of Leeds on the amount of air contamination done on Bonfire Night, some cities are reassessing their Guy Fawkes Celebrations.
For example, in Cornwall, the Penzance Rotary which has staged the town’s Guy Fawkes firework display since 1974 released a statement that said, “"We love fireworks, but we love animals and the environment more.” The family event, held annually on Bonfire Night, will be replaced by an alternative display of laser lights according to ITV News.
So, it seems inevitable that Guy Fawkes will yet again see changes to the celebration of his epic failure. Still, this quintessentially non-British act of Guy’s, turned quintessentially British cultural celebration, will not go quietly into the night. No, not if Sussex has anything to say about it. So expect a stiff upper lip, maybe an exchange of lasers for fireworks, and a cry of Remember, remember the Fifth of November if you happen to find yourself in the UK on some crisp autumn night in the future. And if perchance it is the quaint, quiet country town of Lewes you are visiting on such a November trip, do mind the flaming barrels.