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Comment by jv22222 | Hacker News Reader

Bonfire night in the UK is a very communal event with thousands of people gathering together in public parks to watch the spectacle of the bonfire and fireworks.

It feels quite harmonious, even though it is a celebration of murdeous treachery with loud explosions and hot burning fire.

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Isn't it a celebration of the government foiling a religiously motivated terrorist plot, thanks to superior intelligence gathering and the torture of some of the conspirators, and subsequently used as an excuse to grant the government more powers to crack down on the religious group? That seems like the kind of thing the people could get behind today.

There’s also the fact that it was pretty much a setup, the group having been infiltrated some time before.

Since 2006 it has been illegal in the UK to "glorify an act of terrorism".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2006

However, as per the article, it's been law since 1606 to "glorify" this particular act; especially because it was foiled.

The terrorism act, of course, doesn't apply to any act of terrorism either sanctioned by or approved of by the government.

That law was repealed some time ago.

https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/guy-fawkes-...

A good read for paranoid types comparing the gunpowder 'plot' to September 11 2001 in the USA and resulting crackdowns...

'Fawkes was not apprehended in a basement room but rather a ground floor room, one remarkably easily rented by the plotters. There was, accordingly, no tunnel. The authorship of the letter by which the King learned of the plot is murky. It was turned over to the King by the Royal Chancellor, Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury.

Sir Cecil I would characterize as the Dick Cheney of his day....' etc etc

The Cecils where the equivalent of the DCI or the heads of MI5 and MI6 - the BBC has a series on them currently airing

Thanks, I'll have to find that

watching first episode, are the commentators actors or people who have specialized in this? somewhat odd format...also dark/deep state parallels are interesting...

Hacker News readers may be amused to hear of this modern twist on proceedings - burning an effigy of the local broadband provider: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-41876557

Village my mother in law lived in until very recently still has no broadband. 768k would be a dream.

Not to mention the anti - catholic bigotry that is still evident in some parts of the uk on bonfire night.

Really? Where do you see anti-catholic bigotry on Guy Fawkes night, the religious aspect of it is long forgotten and people dont really understand or care why it is a celebration, its just a bit of fun in the winter nights.

In Northern Ireland, they literally put posters of Catholic politicians on the bonfires.

That's the 12th July not November 5th and Northern Ireland is not representative of the rest of the UK in this instance.

I suspect parts of Northern Ireland and Glasgow

In Lewes for example (one of the biggest celebrations in the UK) they still burn an effigy of the pope every year. These days they burn Trump too, but the anti-Catholic traditions continue.

A particular quirk of British people is that we're very bad at stopping things that are considered traditions. We carry on with them long past the time they were relevant, maybe because none of us wants to be the one to question them. I doubt there's any anti-Catholic feeling in Lewes at all, but a lot of people who go along with burning an effigy of the pope because that's what they've always done.

As a more obvious example, Lewes bonfire society only agreed to stop blacking up for Nov. 5th this year. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/05/lewes-b...

I didn't even know that there was an anti-Catholic element to it, until I went to Lewes one year. It was eye-opening.

For example, the Cliffe bonfire society refused to join the main parade because it meant giving up their "No Popery" traditions.

http://www.cliffebonfire.com/history.html

I have been to bonfire night in many places in the UK and never saw anything other than the guy being burned. Lewes is not representative of the UK as a whole.

Seconded. Lewes is a huge outlier.

> evident in some parts

When I was in the scouts (80s Britain), our local Catholic group organised a bonfire for November 5th, same as everybody else. We all knew about the origins of the tradition and the gunpowder plot, but I never caught any anti-catholic prejudice at all; unlike a few exceptions (Lewes, Northern Ireland), there didn't seem to be much heavy historical consciousness about protestantism and catholicism. And if anything, I'd say that's even more true today; guys on bonfires are rarer, some events go off without a bonfire at all (just having the fireworks as entertainment), and so on.

One great thing about it is that we don’t have people letting off fireworks all year round for no reason at all. Unlike some of our close neighbors.

It's illegal to set off fireworks after 11pm except on 4 dates, Bonfire Night being one of them (the others are Chinese New Year, New Year's Eve and Diwali).

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