Why Guy Fawkes?

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33373, 3 November 1973, Page 14

Why Guy Fawkes?

Injuries from fireworks each year begin well before Guy Fawkes Day. This year, on Monday night, the hazards of Guy Fawkes will be compounded by the very dry conditions in Canterbury. Random rockets, some of them still burning, have been landing in suburban gardens for some time now; on Monday night it will hardly be safe to venture out of doors. The celebration of Guy Fawkes’s failure to destroy the House of Commons is meaningless 370 years later; if the English people are looking for a threat to their most profound institution they might do better to celebrate the relative failures of Peter Hain or Tariq Ali to bring “the revolution ”, into the streets of England in the last few years. In New Zealand, when the risks of fireworks are measured against the occasion of their indiscriminate use—traditional as it might be—there is no justification for their sale. Parliament this year decided that from 1974 fireworks will be sold only for 10 days before November 5. A total ban should be the next step, and it should not be long delayed. Exceptions might be made for members of the Chinese community who want to celebrate their New Year in the traditional way; controlled public displays—of which the opening of the Sydney Opera House last month provided a spectacular examplemight still be held if appropriate occasions arise. But the increasingly irresponsible use of what are, in fact, dangerous explosives — and the general hooliganism that has grown up around Guy Fawkes night—suggest that this is one pointless festival which should be proscribed.