A decade ago, when I first moved to Glasgow, I thought Bonfire Night was held to celebrate that Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the House of Lords. To honour someone’s efforts rather than their victory was pretty progressive for a constitutional monarchy, I thought.
My mum, who was raised in the East End in the 1960s, told me it was her favourite holiday as a child.
“We grew up in a concrete jungle and there wasn’t much around. We spent weeks collecting leaves and sticks to make the bonfire in the back garden,” she said. They would make a dummy out of the debris and scream at the flames: “Burn him!”
A lightbulb went off. Ah, I realised. The celebration is that the plan was foiled, not that it was hatched at all.
As November 5 drew nearer, I was astounded at the perpetual whizzing, cracking and roaring of fireworks through the streets. On the night of the Glasgow Green event, the restaurant I worked in was packed, the city awash with life. But those days are long gone now. And November’s pyrotechnic bursts at all hours through residential streets have intensified. A certain lawlessness has taken hold.
Bored youths armed with Moonshot Rockets come out in full force to wage antisocial chaos around the country on Bonfire Night. The violence came to an unprecedented crescendo last year when riot police were attacked with fireworks and petrol bombs by around 50 youths in the Niddrie area of Edinburgh. Around 70 officers were injured due to a lack of proper protective gear. Others suffered minor injuries responding to........