Residents are reported to have been sickened and shocked, and the Commission for Racial Equality has called for the organizers to be prosecuted. Trevor Phillips, the CRE’s chairman said:
This is clearly an example of incitement to racial hatred. You couldn't really get more provocative than this. The police have to take it seriously. If we are asked at the CRE, we will say this case should be pursued and the people involved should be punished - which can lead to seven years in prison.Sounds about right to me.
But I can’t help thinking that the condemnation involves a fair amount of hypocrisy, seeing as how the whole nation is gearing up for Bonfire Night on November 5. In the coming weeks, well-attended parties will take place all over the country, there will be firework displays and an effigy of Guy Fawkes will be ritually burnt.
Fawkes was the central figure in a Catholic conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament during the reign of King James I. The plot was foiled and Fawkes was captured and executed. Fawkes wasn’t burnt at the stake, he was hung for treason. But a grateful King declared November 5 a public holiday, both to commemorate the event and to promote anti-Catholic feeling. Bonfire Night is, in origin, a specifically anti-Catholic ritual and it still persists in that form today, particularly in parts of Sussex.
I don’t know if it’s old prejudices at work, but most people see nothing wrong with celebrating November 5. When I ask my friends about it, they either profess to having no idea what I’m talking about, or they admit the ritual has sectarian roots but “that was all a long time ago” or “most people don’t know about all that”, so it’s okay.
I just don’t get it. Why is it okay to do it to Catholics but not okay to do it to Gypsies?
Bonfire Night in Lewes is a particularly ugly affair. The BBC knows this, yet it still promotes the event.
Lewes, East Sussex: liberal Middle England, a nice quiet place. Except on 05 November that is, when the town immerses itself in a night of booze, political sloganeering and pyromania.I imagine that’s how the Klan might like to describe its gatherings these days, “Hate-fest? Hell, no! Sure, we’re renacting a lynching, and we’ve got all those banners saying “White Power” and stuff, but really it’s just an excuse to party.”
Ostensibly, the members of the town’s five bonfire societies march in memory of the Protestant martyrs of 1556. Hence the “No Popery” and “Death To Rome” banners. But this is no sectarian hate-fest, more an excuse for a thoroughly hazardous knees-up.
The BBC reported on the situation in Lewes back in 1997, acknowledging the history of the event and the way it is used to stoke hatred of Catholics. But the CRE was nowhere to be seen, and the BBC seems to think that what goes on in Sussex year after year is only a problem for the Catholic Church.
Tonight 3,000 people will parade through the town in what has become one of Britain's wildest nights out. For most of the thousands of people who line the streets every year it's a party - with banners, flaming torches and singing. But for the Catholic Church as long as the Cliff society continues to burn its effigies - which last year included the current Catholic bishop - it's an anti-Catholic ritual that's got to stop.You’d think the recognition that burning Gypsies in effigy is wrong, might lead to the realization that doing the same thing to Catholics is equally worthy of condemnation.
Regarding the burning of the caravan and dummy occupants, I think the authorities should act immediately to prevent it happening again. Not least because, if it becomes a popular annual event, after a few hundred years people won’t see anything wrong with it at all.
