Guy Fawkes festival is barbaric

4:55pm Friday 2nd November 2007

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WHEN oh when are they going to outlaw the barbaric ritual in which children celebrate as a human being is burned at the stake?

No, I'm not referring to a backward country somewhere in the third world, but to good old Blighty this weekend as the nation has a jolly knees-up to celebrate how a man was hung, drawn and quartered.

Now the traditionalists, and I'm normally one of them, will cry it's part of our heritage and our glorious past and a British festival to be proud of. And, anyhow, it was 1605 so you're hardly going to offend Guy Fawkes' friends and family.

We are, in effect, celebrating our own barbaric past. We are paying a tribute to torture and capital punishment, even though we claim our modern-day society is too civilised to embrace these forms of punishment.

We are also celebrating a Holy War of sorts, the Catholics versus the Protestants, an inglorious chapter in this country's history that we should not take any pride in.

We British sneer at other cultures' lack of humanity, and no doubt we'd be horrified if the Iraqis held a festival in which they encouraged their kids annually to dance around an effigy of Saddam Hussain swinging from a rope.

What really is the difference, though?

I'm not against official fireworks displays as such, provided they are organised sensibly. But for the next two weeks, we'll have displays going off all night long, here there and everywhere, disturbing the neighbourhood and making everyone else miserable.

If this is the best our culture can do, it makes me ashamed for once to be British.