Guy Fawkes Night – Then and Now

Tonight Guy Fawkes Night takes over many parks and public spaces across Britain, as people build bonfires and create impressive firework displays.

Nigel Francis/Robert Harding

Although now it’s pretty much just fun, its roots are, of course, deeply political – originating as a celebration of the foiling of the 1605 plot to blow up parliament, in which the Catholic revolutionary My Fawkes was arrested while guarding huge amounts of gunpowder. Had the explosives ignited, the building would have been reduced to rubble.

This aquatint shows the festivities during a Guy Fawkes Night at Windsor Castle, published in September 1776:

British Library/Public Domain

Until recently it was common for children to build effigies representing Fawkes which they wheeled through the streets on wheelbarrows, asking for a ‘penny for the Guy’, before burning them ceremonially on the bonfires.

Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

Now the face of Guy Fawkes has again come to symbolise political revolt, used by the Occupy Movement, Anonymous and other anti-establishment groups. They adopted the image from the comic book and film, V for Vendetta, in which the guise is used by a vigilante trying to destroy an authoritarian government in a dystopian Britain. The iconic Guy Fawkes, dubbed by some as ‘the last man to enter parliament with honest intentions’ continues to have a hold over the popular imagination, not just in the UK, but across the world.

Godong/Robert Harding

Protestors wearing Guy Fawkes masks, trademark of the Anonymous movement, Paris, France

Related articles

• VIDEO: Why do we celebrate Guy Fawkes? (bbc.co.uk)
• “G” for Guy: Guy Fawkes and his Vendetta (curiousrambler.com)