The Strange Death Of Bonfire Night (Here's To The Burgundy Lido Part 2)

 

Perhaps somewhat unusually for a Catholic family, we used to absolutely love bonfire night when I was wee. My Dad and my older brother were right into it too and I always remember the feeling of excitement in the run up to those dark, cold clear skied autumnal evenings, spent out the back green, marveling at our wee fireworks display.

Dad would get a box of Brocks, plus a few sparklers too and my Mum would make hot chocolate. Good old days!

Yet, I’m not sure how our society has manged to shift from our dads setting off a few catherine wheels, roman candles and mini rockets out our back gardens in the 1980s…

…To riot police defending themselves from huge gangs of masked youths in towns and cities across Scotland, using fireworks as missiles to attack them .

Meanwhile, Police chiefs now spend every Guy Fawkes night at national control centre, coordinating tactical response teams throughout the night, like Wellington at Waterloo.

How this shift has taken place within such a short timescale is anyone's guess but I suspect it’s possibly to do with the restriction on the public sale of fireworks. This change seems to have resulted in all sorts of criminals getting into the trade in illicit fireworks. 

Indeed, I’ve even heard some suggestion that dealers are selling black market fireworks directly to feral kids on estates, hence the annual riots.

However, one last glimmer of the old ways still clings on in the form of community bonfires which used to take place in most streets and communities, back in the old days.

There are a still a few of these gatherings on the go but perhaps unwisely, this year a number of housing associations across various local authorities, took to social media to firmly upbraid and remind tenants of just how environmentally damaging, unsafe and antisocial, unauthorised bonfires are.

Unsurprisingly, the backlash from the community was quite overwhelminging, with very many angry tenants pointing out the irony of the poor standard of property maintenance and the state of disrepair of homes, surrounding the waste ground, where the annual community bonfires are held.

Other residents took issue with some housing association claims that the bonfires were unsafe and disorganised. Commenting that there were no toxic chemicals or plastics on the fire, only wood, with locals providing their own stewarding, insuring everyone kept a safe distance.

And in the morning, locals even organised a community clean up too, with volunteer drivers taking away all the left over rubbish. 

Some argued that the holding of these communal bonfires is a much loved, long-standing and well established tradition which brings the community together, pre-dating the creation of most housing associations. Talking places on common land which once belonged to the community.

Certainly, this claim is very true, I recall two fine bonfires in Gourock - the Midton one which was organised by the Mitchell boys across the street from my Gran's house when I was very young, and another brilliant one I used to love going to, down the front of Gourock each year, organised by my old school mates Paul Cassidy and his pal Stevie Watts, during our happy teenage years.

Residents also pointed to the fact that neither their councils nor the housing associations organised firework displays this year, due to funding cuts. 

On reflection, most Housing Associations might now possibly agree that the chastising and paternalistic tone directed towards those holding and organising communal bonfires, perhaps wasn’t a great way to do communications.

It’s clear that the criticisms directed towards their tenants was perceived as being too top-down, and was construed as simply saying ‘we don't trust people’.

From the responses on social media, it was also clear that tenants and residents were made to feel disconnected from their own HAs, which they felt were increasingly being run like commercial profit making businesses, with tenants being treated more like customers than members.

Indeed, in the 80s housing associations started off life, somewhat akin to housing coops, credit unions or mutual associations. Existing as democratic, not for profit, community led institutions, established to provide decent affordable housing for all.

And tbf most HAs still carry out that good work under very difficult economic circumstances, all across Scotland. Ultimately social housing represents a moral good in our society and the HAs seemed to be mostly concerned about safety a damage. 

Yet, the reason so many reacted so badly was because of the suggestion that communities shouldn’t self organise their own events. This felt like another occasion whereby people were made to disinherited and disenfranchised in their own communities.

They were made to feel like their common spaces and common life together was being hijacked and taken over by people who didn't build those communities in the first place and are ‘not of them’.

What I think we often fail to see in situations like these, is not how anarchistic or reckless autonomous communities can be, by holding unofficial bonfires on waste ground. 

But rather, how essentially (small c) conservative ordinary working class people can often be.

That is to say, they’re suspicion of change, they prefer to trust in local institutions. 

They think things like bonfires are best run at the most local level and they uphold the values of family, solidarity, the importance of place, autonomy and having at least some agency over their own lives.

Sadly, it seems that yet again the exploiting free marketeering spivs and crooks who always thrive during periods of both privation and deregulation. Alongside an over-regulating  state, have corroded our common life together. You can read more about how this happens in part one of this blog from 2021 here 

https://bremenbod.blogspot.com/2021/03/heres-to-burgundy-lido.html