CHAPTER 25

Guy Fawkes. Islamists, converts, and terrorism: some things never change

Up and down Britain, the fifth of November is marked each year by public bonfires and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes (or in Lewes, effigies of the pope). This piece tells the story of Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman who became radicalized by extremists into trying to murder the king of England.

It is the 5th of November once more, which can only mean it is time to burn Guy Fawkes again (and Pope Paul V, for those in Lewes marching under their traditional ‘no popery’ banners). But, as the faggots are kindled tonight, it is worth remembering who Guy ‘Guido’ Fawkes really was.

Despite a popular belief that Fawkes was an Italian extremist, the fact is he was an entirely home-grown terrorist from the Stonegate area of York. He was baptized into the Church of England in 1570 at the beautiful St Michael-le-Belfrey by York Minster, but when his mother was widowed and married into a staunchly recusant family from the West Riding, Fawkes converted to Catholicism.

In his early twenties, he sold up his land and went to fight for his new faith in Spain’s war against the Protestant Netherlands. According to a school friend, he became ‘highly skilled in matters of war’, yet remained devout, calm, ‘pleasant of approach and cheerful of manner, opposed to quarrels and strife … loyal to his friends’.

However, back in England, a group of extremists planning revolution desperately needed military skill. After careful enquiry, they made a beeline for Fawkes, whom they persuaded to lend his nerve and knowhow to their cause. The mastermind was Robert Catesby, a hothead who had grown angry at the treatment of England’s old Catholic families under Elizabeth I and had no faith that things would improve under James I. Having failed to persuade the Spanish to invade, Catesby’s new plan was simple: to bomb the Lords chamber at the opening of Parliament, kill the King and his most prominent courtiers, then stage a revolution.

However, one of the plotters sent a warning letter to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic peer: ‘I would advyse you … to devise some excuse to shift youer attendance at this parliament, for God and man hath concurred to punishe the wickedness of this tyme’. Unfortunately for the plotters, Lord Monteagle took the letter straight to court, triggering an immediate search of the vault under the Lords’ chamber. In no time, the royal guard found Fawkes, matches, a watch, and 36 kegs of explosives.

Despite Fawkes’s fortitude under torture—which left a deep impact on all—the game was up. Although he insisted he was ‘John Johnson’, they eventually found his real name. Separately, the other conspirators were rapidly unveiled, along with the enormity of their plot, which would likely have killed not only the King and his closest advisers, but everyone in the Lords that evening. Despite our obsession with burning Fawkes, he was actually sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, although he escaped the harrowing punishment by leaping off the high scaffold in Westminster’s Old Palace Yard and breaking his neck.

The story is fascinating for many reasons, not least because Fawkes was a convert to Catholicism, and it is an age-old adage that converts are often among the most militant. And there are striking parallels today, where the same dynamic is again at work. One of the murderers of Fusilier Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013 was a convert, as was the fanatic who killed a Canadian soldier earlier this month. A former Taliban recruiter in the West, who now works for the Canadian government, has also weighed in, highlighting that today’s Islamist extremists specifically target converts—they often know little about the religion and their enthusiasm can easily be subverted. No one should therefore have been surprised this summer when two jihadis from Birmingham who spent eight months fighting in Syria had bought Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies as their airport reading,

Although Guy Fawkes was a minor figure in Catesby’s bomb plot, history has made him its poster boy. King James I’s triumphant 5th of November ‘Gunpowder Plot Day’ bonfire celebrations have remained enduringly popular, and Fawkes has been promoted to the central protagonist. But when we incinerate Fawkes again tonight, it is worth seeing him in context, and reflecting on the tide of young converts of all faiths who are perennially sucked into extremism.

If I were being responsible, I would end by adding that the good people of Lewes should probably now stop burning an effigy of Pope Paul V every year and put away their ‘no popery’ banners. These are yesterday’s sentiments, and have no role in modern Britain. (If it was happening in Northern Ireland, it would doubtless be banned immediately.) But then, speaking as a deeply fuzzy and laissez-faire English Catholic, pope-burning is a colourful, historic, and faintly hilarious English tradition, and we are losing far too much of our cultural identity nowadays. So, to all of you in Lewes tonight: burn on! And let’s be thankful that these days we can laugh about it all over a mulled wine or two and a few sparklers.