Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Bonfire nights
The ancient tradition of lighting bonfires in November has been a feature of my life as long as I can remember and, as a gardener, it is also a key seasonal milestone when the accumulation of twigs, prunings, some pernicious weeds and infected material, is reduced to useful ash. What I mostly remember from childhood are the fireworks and the burning of the guy while reciting the incantation “remember, remember the 5th of November, etc”.
Even when I was living in Brussels with young sons, we continued this tradition and invited our neighbours to join us – explaining of course that the anti-Catholic theme that was attached to the bonfire custom after 1605 had been thoroughly displaced by a more general condemnation of terrorist violence. Nowadays we burn Guy Fawkes not because he was a Catholic but because he tried to blow up Parliament. Some of our friendly Belgian neighbours may have been aware that Guy Fawkes himself gained his practical experience of explosives while serving in the army of the Spanish Netherlands (of which Belgium is the southern part).
This knowledge has thankfully retreated into obscurity along with religious and national prejudice and, since the 20th century wars, Brussels has developed a distinctly anglophile atmosphere which is made explicit in the existence of Avenue Winston Churchill, a statue of General Montgomery and a statue of Edith Cavell plus a street and a hospital named after her. Also, there is the annual re-enactment of the battle of Waterloo.
In recent years, we have taken to burning effigies not of Guy Fawkes but of some more contemporary opprobrious figure. This new approach started with Jimmy Savill who was, of course, already dead but we continued with mostly prominent living individuals, although we did once burn the Covid virus – suggested by a grandson. Our rogue’s gallery included Kim Jong Un (after he had his uncle executed by anti-aircraft gun). Recent events here in London seem to vindicate our action last year when we consigned an effigy of Elon Musk to the flames. Interestingly, we had a German visitor with us at the time and she was slightly shocked to see a human effigy thrown onto the fire – and with children present! Germans might have stopped doing this but some of their neighbours are still keen – mostly burning effigies of witches.
I told her that this tradition serves to remind us all of the dark forces that are latent in the British and which are kept in check by a thin veneer of civilisation upon which we place a very high value.
Any suggestions as to whom we should immolate this year would be gratefully received.
Tags for Forum Posts: Bonfire nights, Guy Fawkes
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Cornwell on
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Bob Vylan
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Permalink Reply by Niall on
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Am thinking a request for suggestions on who should (figuratively) be thrown on a bonfire might not be met with the spirit of jest that I’m assuming was intended Dick. As evidenced by the first suggestion of a black musical artist that one member of HoL dislikes and thinks should be consumed by flames.
As an Irish man, I am of course long aware of the Loyalist tradition of 12th July when bonfires have been used to intimidate the minority nationalist population. This normally focussed on (figuatively) burning their political opponents, but this year, true to form, they expanded their hatred by burning a boatload of refugees…
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Permalink Reply by Iris Allan on
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I'll save people some time and effort.
If you're of the Left, Far Left or Extreme Far Left you might suggest the following:
- Mr Trump, Mr Farage, Mr Netanyahu, Mr Robinson, His Majesty etc etc
- middle aged English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish men who hold different opinions to them
- anyone who owns a car
- anyone who went to or sends their child to an independent school (unless convenient to ignore this for political advantage)
If you're centre ground or just right you might suggest the following:
- Mr Starmer (unless his three young Ukrainian male model friends have already burned all the available effigies)
- Bob Vylan (real name Pascal Robinson-Foster)
- Mr Khan
- Ricky Jones of throat-slitting fame
- Mr Rudikabana
- The lovely brothers who bashed an innocent Muslim family man and several female police officers at Luton airport
- The not so lovely network of men who have been preying on vulnerable young girls in our Northern towns (as well as those who protected them)
- Peter Mandelson
- Greta Thunberg and David Milliband (together to minimise carbon emissions of course)
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I'll make a note to bring my clean washing in before that lot goes up!
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Lol. Very good.
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The moped delivery drivers who drive down the middle of Green Lanes.
And the people who park their cars on the double yellow lines right on the corner of Glenwood and St Anns roads.
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Permalink Reply by Christina Davis on
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This reminds me of a letter I saw in the Enfield Independent years and years ago from a woman who was very cross about fireworks and bonfires etc. She finished her letter by saying: " And I don't know why we celebrate it anyway because he didn't even succeed in blowing up the Houses of Parliament!" A new reading of that historical episode which made me laugh a lot.
PS If you do have a bonfire please make sure there are no hedgehogs in it before you light it. I know, I know there are probably none around here at all but still...
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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Thanks Christina for highlighting your concern for hedgehogs which I share. You are also right to suspect that they are rare. In the mid 1980s, I did find a pair of dead hedgehogs wedged under the boiler in an outside boiler room. They may have crawled there for warmth. Since then, I have not seen one despite a long list of other fauna appearing. I suppose that what killed them off is the use of chemicals to control slugs which I believe are a popular food source for hedgehogs. I intend to devise some way of helping hedgehogs to reappear and survive in my garden although I suspect that the succeeding in this might mean suppressing foxes. In any event, I shall take steps to avoid burning one if it is hiding under among the bonfire fuel.
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Thanks for the responses.
Given current sensibilities, I suppose I should make clear that we don't regard burning an effigy of a living person as encouraging anyone to do harm to the real person. The action is entirely symbolic and intended more as an expression of shared disgust that might give us a frisson of pleasure and relief without the target being even aware of it.
Hitherto, the targets selected were cases so famously controversial that nothing less than the ultimate penalty would do. In the case of a living person, it is the career that is to be expunged not the human life.
Considered against this prescription, I would say that Bob Vylan (which is the name of a musical duo not an individual) doesn't come close to justifying the ultimate penalty. Aside from the fact that I had never heard of them before their recent notoriety, I discover that they hail from Ipswich so they are my fellow East Anglians. In any event, I rather sympathise with the sentiment of their better know song "We live here" even if their aggressive type of rap is not to my taste.
The same type of analysis can be applied to the names suggested by Iris Allan although, in fact, some of them have already received the treatment. For example, when we had Ihor, a Ukrainian refugee, living with us, we burned an effigy of Vladimir Vladimirovich much to Ihor's delight. Generally speaking however, there is a risk in casting the net too wide, that the targets are given an exaggerated importance or become a minority of the kind that Liam was concerned about. Much better to stick to individuals and not those who are simply hard working politicians doing their best. Having said that, I can't deny my own prejudices and I was happy to inflict the ultimate expression of ignominy on certain leading proponents of Brexit. We even named and burned a principal culprit and four lesser demons at once. No prizes for guessing who they were.
If I were to choose a motorist to revile it would be one who has tinkered with the tuning and/or the exhaust system so as to make the engine sound loud and aggressive. This practice seems to be spreading but I don't think the culprits are important. Just silly.
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