Gunpowder plot can teach us all a lesson A

HARRY Potter is in residence until Christmas at Huddersfield Library in a small exhibition called A History of Magic.

It includes copies of drafts and drawings by J K Rowling and illustrator Jim Kay, and local connections to magic and folklore.

Which allows me to recall when I met Patricia Crowther, who is probably Britain’s most famous white witch, in Sheffield more than 40 years ago.

Her home was alongside a cemetery with a black cauldron by the back door and a real black cat in the garden.

Pat was a delightful lady with a great sense of humour.

Her husband, who died many years ago, was a warlock and children’s magician called Arnold.

They met when they were both entertainers: she was a singer, magician and puppeteer.

Pat was initiated into Wicca by the legendary Gerald Crowther, who is known as the father of modern witchcraft.

Our meeting started with me full of nerves.

I was in my early 30s and she was an attractive lady in her 40s.

How did I ask about ceremonies in the nude? She laughed a lot and explained all the intricacies of her beliefs. Being nude, by the way, is known as being skyclad.

Pat’s titles these days are High Priestess of the Goddess, and Grand Mother of the Craft, and I shall always remember the morning I spent in her company. It was magic. S a youngster, I attended a Catholic primary school in Leeds and, at this time of the year, we were warned against celebrating bonfire night.

This, we were told, was when wicked Protestants killed brave Catholic Guy Fawkes.

Of course, none of us took the slightest bit of notice, saved our pocket money for fireworks, helped build the bonfire and looked forward to watching the “guy” burn.

He was only made of straw and, on one occasion, was wearing my dad’s old coat.

The history had got lost over the centuries, and November 5 had become a community event.

In the 400 years since Fawkes was arrested beneath Parliament, the plot has often been reduced to myth and a jolly caper.

The last time I thought about it was when I had a business lunch in York at the Guy Fawkes Inn, the house where he was born. Brilliant pub and brilliant food, by the way.

And each generation since 1605 has undoubtedly commented in jest, over a pint or three, that the best thing to do with the useless collection of Honourable Members in Westminster would be to blow them up.

Fawkes and his compatriots almost did in an attempt to start a religious civil war with an act of outrageous violence.

Kit Harington, hero of Game of Thrones, is currently starring in Gunpowder on the BBC, that takes a gory but realistic look at the persecution that motivated the plot.

He plays his real-life ancestor Robert Catesby, the leader of the conspirators.

It has attracted criticism for its violence but our history has always been far more full of violence than pageantry and fair damsels, just as our days of empire were built on trade, conquest and subjugation rather than bringing cricket and peace to the natives.

Gunpowder is a reminder of a time when intolerance and violence was a hopeless spiral from which there was no escape.

Our present levels of freedom and fairness have been achieved through the long and arduous process of learning from the past, and these days we have the ballot box rather than a broadsword to settle political differences.

Even so, society continues to suffer from terrorist acts of outrageous violence in the hope of starting wars of religious persecution.

Let us remember history, and make sure they don’t.