ON NOVEMBER 5TH Britons up and down the
country will light bonfires and set off fireworks to mark the execution of Guy
Fawkes, a 17th-century Roman Catholic terrorist. More recently activists have
appropriated the day as one of mass protest. Anonymous, an online
"hacktivist" group, is encouraging people to march against their
governments. The London faction of the "million mask march" will
gather outside the Houses of Parliament, many of them wearing masks of a
grinning Guy Fawkes. How did he become the face of post-modern protest?
In 1605 Fawkes was part of a Roman Catholic
group that plotted to blow up the House of Lords during the state opening of
parliament. The "Gunpowder plot" was intended to kill King James I, a
Protestant, and install his nine-year-old daughter on the throne to rule as a
Roman Catholic monarch. But an anonymous letter describing the plans was sent
to the King. Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the House with 36 barrels of
gunpowder nearby. He was tortured and the conspirators were convicted of high
treason in January 1606. The government was particularly heavy-handed in its
treatment of the group in order to try to deter future terrorist attempts. The
tradition of lighting bonfires and burning effigies of Guy Fawkes began shortly
after the foiled plot, and schoolchildren still learn the ghoulish rhyme
"Remember, remember the fifth of November".
In the 1980s graphic novelists Alan Moore and
David Lloyd created a comic strip, "V for Vendetta", in which the
main protagonist is a cloaked anarchist who wears a grinning, moustachioed Guy Fawkes
mask while battling against a fascist authoritarian state. The authors wanted
to celebrate Fawkes by turning him into an anti-hero for the modern age. The
comic was made into a film in 2006, and although it deviated from the original
in a number of ways the mask of "V" was a faithful rendition of the
stylised image from the book. Plastic masks to commemorate the release of the
film were distributed to fans and could be bought online. Two years later, in
January 2008, Anonymous launched "Project Chanology"—a coordinated
attack on the Church of Scientology’s website which they deemed to be censoring
information. Rule 17 of Anonymous's code of conduct, circulated to protesters
before its "first real life public demonstration" on February 10th
2008 states: "Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from
videos taken by hostiles". For those who chose to wear masks the decision
was simple: taking inspiration from the last scene of the film, in which a
crowd of Guy Fawkeses watch the Houses of Parliament explode, the "V for
Vendetta" mask provided just the cover that Anonymous needed.
Since then the image has been adopted by the
Occupy movement, and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has also donned
a Fawkes mask. It has become a regular feature of many protests. Mr Lloyd has
called the mask a "convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny…it
seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way".
Although official masks from the film are still available online, most protesters
prefer to print or paint their own. And to this day the Yeomen of the Guard,
the English monarch's bodyguards since 1485, still search the cellars below the
Palace of Westminster before each state opening of Parliament. The spirit
of Fawkes, in many regards, lives on.