Government of the Dead (MPs expenses fraud), Parliament - pictures

Don't like all this promo for Guy Fawkes. He was the sort of violent far-right psycho who'd have been chucked out of the BNP for insisting on wearing a green bomber jacket rather than changing into a suit. More Combat 18 than BNP, in fact.

To locate him a bit more precisely, the niche in living memory he'd have fitted like a glove would have been General Franco's chief torturer and executioner.

He was brought back here by the recusant conspirators as they needed a military hard man and explosives expert. Not only were they were a bit too posh for that sort of thing, but they were known and suspected faces. Fawkes, on the other hand, wouldn't have been recognised in the days before interpol and databases shared between states. Yorkshire origins he may have had, but most of his adult life had been spent as a mercenary assassin, torturer, military trainer and organiser of spies and infiltration in the employ of some of the most oppressive and blood-soaked regimes in Europe. The sort of enterprising chap the CIA likes to encourage with lavish subsidies.

He had, in fact, not set foot on this island for many a long year before 1605 and so could walk around London organising gunpowder etc. as a "clean skin".

I'm not saying James I, who he was specifically trying to blow up to catalyse a catholic coup, was a nice man or anything. The others at risk were drawn from the peerage and land-owning gentry, for whom I hold no brief at all. But Guy Fawkes was an even nastier piece of shit than all of them put together and it does annoy me to see him adopted as some sort of revolutionary hero. He was a reactionary far-right terrorist.

How would you feel if Oswald Mosley or Nick Griffin were lauded in this way in 400 years time? Actually, Guy Fawkes isn't quite their equivalent. Not an up-front leader, more a man of blood in the shadows. David Copeland, the fascist who placed nail bombs in Brixton, Brick Lane and a gay pub in Soho 10 years ago is much more in the Guy Fawkes tradition.

It's not a tradition I want to identify with at all. Do you?

I think, Mr Stroppy Old Git, You don't want to be associated with anything. As the majority of your postings testify too.

This world is in danger of passing you by completely.

I'm strongly associated with quite a bit of stuff which appears on here (as in actually doing things) and support a lot of other actions and campaigns there isn't time to be actively involved in. The charge of not wanting to be associated with anything just doesn't stick. Over-association might be more accurate.

One thing I do want to be associated with is an accurate view of our history. You may see that as a theoretical abstraction, but getting it wrong does have a way of misdirecting our present efforts and skewing the history we're making now.