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The celebrations to mark Bonfire Night on November 5 will have added force this year, for it will be exactly 400 years since Guy Fawkes and his fellow Catholic conspirators were foiled in their treacherous attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. No doubt many of the events across the country will include the customary burning of an effigy of Fawkes.
Yet this incendiary tradition is based on a historical inaccuracy. Fawkes, a Yorkshire mercenary who had fought for the Spaniards in Holland, was not burnt at the stake. Instead he suffered a far more gruesome fate. Tortured on the rack for six days he was then dragged to the gallows where he was hung, castrated, disembowelled and finally decapitated. His head was placed on a pike outside Parliament as a warning to others.
We have gone to the opposite extreme 400
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| He would be granted full legal aid and the services of a high-powered lawyer, perhaps even the Prime Minister’s wife |
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years later, since treason no longer exists in Britain as a concept. If Guy Fawkes were around today, he would experience a very different outcome. When captured, a finger would not be laid upon him because of the Human Rights Act. He would be granted full legal aid and provided with the services of a high-powered lawyer, perhaps even the Prime Minister's wife.
A support group would be formed to campaign for his release; a large section of the audience on BBC Question Time would work itself into a frenzy of indignation about his imprisonment. He would be made the honorary president of Leeds University Students Union. George Galloway would argue that it is the Government, not Fawkes, which should be in the dock.
After many delays his trial would collapse in farce over a procedural technicality about the collection of evidence by MI5. Released, he would be made a columnist on the Guardian and awarded an Arts Council grant to explore "issues around terrorism". 
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 31
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