36 barrels of gunpowder ..... that horrendous act .... and a noisy night of fireworks

Now there is a pernicious and pervasive way of thinking which looks for conspiracy everywhere.

Mutterings and secret plans, 1604

As a way of looking at the world it isn’t new, and can be traced back to those who wile away the wasted hours seeking to disprove that there ever was a moon landing, to the sinister Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a fabricated antisemitic text, and runs back into the mists of time.

All that is needed is an event which someone will seek to deny, or bend to their own political purposes.

And we are all familiar with the assertion that the Covid virus was not real, but when challenged with the evidence, advocates often switch tack and argue that it is in the interests of “them” to manufacture the scare, thereby to increase the powers of State surveillance, or manipulate the international markets.

Attempting to refute them is like counting the grains of sand in a bucket or pushing water up hill.

More recently I have followed the line of that radical 18th century writer Thomas Paine who wrote “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, ….. is like administering medicine to the dead”.  

It a powerful guide to how to treat the outlandish arguments of those who have travelled beyond the borders of reason and reminds me of Deborah Lipstadt’s often referenced explanation for why she doesn’t debate with Holocaust Deniers because it is as pointless as discussing with “flat-Earthers or the Elvis-is-alive people”.*

All of that said there is a fine line between conspiracy theories and reinterpretations of past events. **

And as this is November 5th it neatly leads into the failed Gunpowder Plot, that awful act of planned terrorism which was so horrendous that its failure continues to be celebrated every year since Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were caught and executed.

In recent years the celebrations have been eclipsed by Halloween, so while the fireworks will burst on either side of November 5th and continue like a damp squib for perhaps a week few kids now take to the street asking for “a penny for the Guy” and heaps will not even know the historical significance of burning the guy and setting off fireworks.

Plotting the unthinkable 1604

Suffice to say the story goes that a group of “Catholic gentlemen” in the face of continued official hostility to Catholics chose to stage a coup by blowing up the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament on November 5th.  

If it had succeeded the entire political establishment would have been killed, the State left leaderless and in the vacuum the plotters would have placed the King’s daughter on the throne and manipulated her to run the country.

So far so good, but it failed. 

The ringleaders were captured, tried, and executed and things got a lot worse for Catholics.

But even at the time some questioned elements of the plot, citing the King’s chief advisor as implicated in a “set up”.

Conspiracies and disasters, 1970s

In the 1890s and since some historians have revisited the story, deconstructed the events and the evidence, discrediting the official version.

All of which offered some of us a fine set of history lessons where we presented the traditional account, offered up suspected flaws and led our year 8 history students to draw their own conclusions.

In 1996 the historian Antonia Fraser presented her interpretation which while it accepted that there was a plot challenged bits of the narrative. ***

And over the next few days I shall revisit her book, reading it as the last fireworks burst into the night and reflect that while there are and have always been real conspiracies, the default line of many is to see conspiracies where they don’t exist, and trade on assertions and half-truths.

Pictures; a contemporary drawing of the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, and a popular badge from the 1970s

Guy Fawkes, Catesby and Winter, 1604

*Thomas Paine US History, https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-05.htm

**“administering medicine to the dead” ……. The American War of Independence ..... and Thomas Paine, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/11/administering-medicine-to-dead-american.html

*** The Gunpowder Plot, Terror & Faith in 1605, Antonia Fraser, 1996

Scary moments in St Ann’s Square …………. on a Sunday

Now I can’t quite remember when Halloween assumed a degree of importance in our family.

It certainly wasn’t there when I was growing up in South East London.

Back then and well into the 1960s, the big event was Bonfire Night, which began in the month before with kids collecting for fireworks money on street corners and outside shops.

The amount of effort that was involved, ranged from elaborate effigies of a Guy, usually sitting in an old pram, to a handful of kids with nothing more than a hastily made sign and a cheeky smile.

How much money ever went on fireworks is debatable, and given the amount that might be collected, I suspect the sweet shop made a better choice for the money.

And mother was always most emphatic that this was just a form of begging, which while it was harsh, pretty much deterred me from engaging in the practice ……….. that and the simple fact that on the odd occasion I did try it on with friends we made nothing.

The kids were still in evidence in the late 1970s, but pretty much seem to have died out by the end of the decade, and the passing of that tradition seems to coincide with the elevation of the visitation of trick or treat at the front door.

I have to say I absorbed mother’s approach and didn’t encourage our lads from knocking on, and by and large they didn’t do much of it, judging that they had more chance of eating the sweets I left out at the front door, than braving the cold and dark and uncertain response from the people behind the doors.

But that said we did go in for the pumpkins, and at one stage had four, all artistically altered with scary faces and candles, which for a while were done by the boys, but latterly fell to me.

Putting them outside was less successful, and more than one was stolen.

All of which I reflected on this weekend in town, when along with the Halloween signs, paper pumpkins, and vendors offering up plastic skeletons which glowed in the dark, we came across the ghostly procession and the “creepy trail across the city, [from] the Strolling Bones and the poisonous maze”.*

I chose to decline the poisonous maze in St Ann’s Square, but took plenty of pictures of the Strolling Bones, as it wound its way through the square.

The grumpy side of me continues to wonder about both these autumnal activities which if I am being fair brighten up cold and dark nights.

But Bonfire Night, remains a celebration of when a group of 17th century conspirators, plotted an act of terrorism, justified by the increasingly harsh persecution of Catholics by successive governments during the Tudor, and early Stuart period.

The event is made all the more questionable, given the arguments of some revisionist historians that the Gunpowder Plot may well have owed much to an unpopular Government seeking to turn a vague and outlandish plan by a group of known Catholic dissidents into an act of horrific terrorism which when discovered left the authorities looking very much like the “good guys”

As for Halloween, I have never taken to the idea of witches, dislike pumpkins, and can leave those Hollywood scary movies, which usually involve much loud noise, plenty of screams and the sacrifice of lots of innocent people.

But I concede that Halloween has a long tradition, going back beyond the Christian tradition to one rooted in folk customs and beliefs common  amongst Celtic people's.

And my own family still make much of the Day of The Dead, which is celebrated in Naples, and have over the years returned to the city of their birth to take part in the event.

Leaving me to make sure we have the bags of sweets by the front door, on the night of Halloween, and try look out for the fireworks in the sky, a few days later.

As for the carved pumpkins, they have long been consigned to history, while I still wonder about the Catholic conspiracy, remembering that down the ages, Governments have fastened on groups or ideas which if exploited can be turned to the advantage of the establishment, whether it be The Protocols Of Zion, the Zinoviev letter, or the destruction of the Reichstag.

Location; Manchester







Pictures; Halloween visitations in Manchester, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson