The Gunpowder Plot

This is the script of my 2 minute broadcast on BBC Radio Humberside on Sunday 7th November 2010:

Good Morning. Remember, remember the fifth of November. I’m sure that most of you heard or saw some fireworks on Friday night. Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night is of course the annual celebration to mark the failure of the Gunpowder plot on the 5th of November 1605 when Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The gunpowder plot was an example of religiously inspired terrorism, something that has made an unwelcome return to these shores in the twenty-first century. The conspirators were Roman Catholics and their plan was to assassinate King James I and restore Catholicism to England. Until 1859 it was compulsory to celebrate the deliverance of the King on the 5th of November as the result of an Act of Parliament called “The Thanksgiving Act”. Prolonged war and bloodshed as a direct result of religious disagreements was a constant feature of life in the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, not to mention the English civil wars. Thanks to the enlightenment and the rise of secularism in the Eighteenth century, religious conflict has declined significantly, though conflict between Protestants and Catholics has continued in to modern times in places like Northern Ireland where traditional religion has remained a potent force. Religiously inspired violence in places such as India and Somalia is even worse. Today our society faces new threats from those bent on usurping our hard fought secular traditions, for example by advocating the introduction of religious laws such as the sharia which would inevitably come to rival the one secular law we live under at present. Bonfire night remains a perennial reminder that we should never again allow the explosive mix of religion and politics to dominate our society. To do so is playing with fire.