Bonfire Night is a time for the burning of effigies. Traditionally the effigy is that of Guy Fawkes, something that is historically rooted in anti-Catholic bigotry. That still exists in some parts of the UK.
In recent times the effigies tend to be of unpopular figures such as Donald Trump and Nigel Farage and it will be interesting to see what Lewes comes up with in 2026.
E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class noted that in the early 1790s the burning of effigies of Tom Paine was a popular and reactionary activity. Given current events and the reality that Paine and his book The Rights of Man (banned in the UK in the 1790s) was part of the inspiration for the French and the American revolutions it seems reasonable to recall that time.
Thompson reports numbers of Tom Paine effigy burnings on the Guy Fawkes model:
In the small Pennine town of Ripponden a prosperous lawyer noted in his diary for 7th January 1793 that he paid certain people ‘who carried about Tom Paine’s effigy and shot at it 10s 6d’…(at) Littletown a wooden image of Paine was pounded to bits with a sledgehammer..
Not all popular traditions are progressive..
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