How net zero is ruining the Great British Bonfire Night
Organisers are replacing fireworks with laser shows to save the planet. But, asks Roland White, where is the fun in that?
This should have been the night when fireworks came back with a bang – the first Bonfire Night after the scaled-down, socially distanced celebrations of lockdown. Yet in parts of the country it’s already looking like a damp squib.
Councils and charities have called off some of the biggest and most popular Guy Fawkes parties. Some are blaming the cost of living crisis (Nottingham simply said it couldn’t afford the event’s £30,000 price tag), but others say that bonfires and fireworks just aren’t compatible with net zero and the fight against climate change. Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow and Cardiff are among cities that won’t be putting on official displays tonight.
Some London boroughs have also cancelled their displays – Hammersmith and Fulham council being one such example, but it is trying to placate the locals by offering a laser light show next year instead (“less disruptive to neighbours” and “more environmentally friendly”). Penzance in Cornwall is at the vanguard; the local Rotary Club is hosting a laser show this weekend stating that the wellbeing of animals and the environment is behind their decision.
So, while cost is undoubtedly a major consideration, the pollutive nature of huge, communal burnings may help justify these polarising rulings. “We are in a position where we have to balance all our decisions against our climate emergency priorities,” says Joseph Brown, a senior official with the London borough of Southwark. The council is not hosting a Bonfire Night this year and, as yet, there are no plans for its return.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that lighting thousands of bonfires across the country doesn’t do much for our air quality. In 2016 and 2017, a team from Leeds University carried out tests on Guy Fawkes night – and discovered that soot in the atmosphere was at 100 times its normal level. Benjamin Murray, professor of atmospheric science at Leeds, said at the time: “Bonfire Night is a massive pollution event across the UK. People with existing health problems, such as heart and lung conditions, are at increased risk.”
So it looks like more people will be celebrating at home this year, with fireworks sales booming, if not rocketing. Steve Raper, chairman of the British Firework Association, says sales at his own company, Bright Star Fireworks, are 50 per cent higher than last year.
Or you might be lucky enough to live in a part of the country where Bonfire Night has traditionally been celebrated with particular enthusiasm, and where cancellation this year would be unthinkable.
In the Devon village of Ottery St Mary, about 10,000 people turn out each year to watch villagers sprint down the street carrying flaming barrels of tar. It used to be enough simply to roll these barrels of fire down the street, but about 200 years ago some villagers decided that rolling was for softies. They hauled the barrels up on their shoulders, and have carried them ever since.
At Edenbridge in Kent, they hold a torchlit parade before burning some unfortunate figure in effigy. This year it is Liz Truss.
But perhaps nowhere goes bigger on Bonfire Night than Lewes in Sussex, whose celebrations have attracted crowds in past years of up to 80,000. Frankly, you are nobody if you haven’t been burned in effigy in Lewes. Guy Fawkes and Paul V – who was Pope in 1605 – are annual victims, but effigies have also been made of David Cameron, Sepp Blatter, Donald Trump, President Putin, Boris Johnson and Theresa May. Even companies do not escape unscathed. In 2018, Lewes burned a ghost train, chosen to represent Govia Thameslink, the local rail company whose service had been disrupted by an industrial dispute.
The town has had to shrug off criticism down the years – a Brighton councillor once called on the Equality and Human Rights Commission to investigate the event’s anti-catholic “bigotry” – but it is unapologetic and has no plans to “modernise”.
“We are specifically a society that celebrates Bonfire Night and the foiling of the 1605 gunpowder plot. We just don’t feel laser or light shows would be the same as what we do – it’s a completely different form of entertainment and it can’t be replaced,” says Mick Symes, vice-chairman of the Lewes Borough Bonfire Society. “People come to us expecting a spectacular display, which is what we try to give them.”
And so starts a new division rippling through our society: the communities that believe bonfires and fireworks are dangerous pollutants, and those who think one night’s fiery celebration can surely be endured by non-revellers.
And yet as history tells us, celebrating Bonfire Night is a contrivance anyway.
We all know the story of the gunpowder plot, and how conspirator Guido Fawkes was discovered in a
cellar underneath the House of Lords, guarding barrels of explosives.
The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend, a 2005 documentary presented by Richard Hammond, set out to discover what would have happened had the plot succeeded.
Blowing up a replica of the 17thcentury Parliament, he discovered that everybody within 100 metres of the blast would have been killed instantly. A mannequin representing King James had its head blown off and thrown some distance from the site of the explosion.
There were widespread celebrations at the failure of the 1605 plot, but these were not exactly a spontaneous outburst of relief. They were ordered by an act of Parliament.
The Observance of The Fifth of November Act made it compulsory for morning prayers to be said across the land on every November 5. All citizens were required to attend, and in a sober state. What’s more, members of the clergy were required to remind parishioners of their duty on the Sunday before the big day. That act remained law until it was repealed in 1859, by which time Bonfire Night celebrations were in full swing and the forced nature of them long forgotten.
But before we light the blue touch paper and retire to enjoy our mulled wine, let us spare a thought for those who still find the whole event rather too loud. Children, particularly those who are neurodivergent, can find the noise unsettling to say the least.
There is a growing trend for lownoise fireworks that focus more on unusual effects and pretty colours.
Or perhaps a more exciting noiseless, environmentally friendly option is a drone display: no noise, less pollution, and no spent rockets littering the neighbourhood. What you get instead is a spectacular lights display, as we saw when 400 drones lit up the sky over London for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
And then there are animals, which are particularly susceptible to firework noise. “Many animals find fireworks scary,” says the RSPCA. “Owners will often see their pets struggling, either frozen with fear or, in the most dangerous circumstances – bolting, rearing up or charging fences”.
According to the RSPCA, one way of calming pets is to play them some classical music. Classic FM is broadcasting a programme of soothing music this evening, and suggests that animals will particularly enjoy Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and Reverie, by cat lover Claude Debussy. I suppose Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks is right out of the question.
‘People come to us expecting a spectacular display, which is what we try to give them’