Gunpowder featured the most violent and visceral scenes of execution ever screened on primetime television.
This star- studded BBC1 drama about the November 5 plot was not so much brutal as psychotic in its quest for historical accuracy.
It might seem hard to understand the need for this exceptionally graphic, nine-minute sequence… until you realise that the writer, Northern Irish novelist Ronan Bennett, is a Left-winger from a Catholic family, once wrongly jailed for the murder of a policeman during an IRA bank robbery. [Conviction ‘unsafe’]
(You might not be completely amazed, by the way, to learn that Bennett is a dedicated disciple of Jeremy Corbyn and worked for him as a researcher in the Eighties.)
Describing Bennett’s politics, respected US radio giant NPR says that in his work: ‘Ireland’s centuries of struggle against British rule are always there as a subtext.’ Now the ultra-violent executions take on their real context.
The king’s Protestant thugs are the oppressive English state, while the Gunpowder plotters led by arch-Catholic Robert Catesby (Kit Harington from Game Of Thrones) are the Republican freedom fighters.
His 1999 novel, The Catastrophist, takes place in post-colonial Congo, but is an allegory of the situation in Northern Ireland, Bennett tells Renee Montagne as part of a series of conversations on war and literature.
“I was thinking very strongly of Ireland,” the author says. “I was thinking, how can I write about what the wider responsibilities of the artist in general are to the society he or she comes from? And how do you express that … role without the politics taking over the art?”
The BBC getting two for the price of one…normally they use the Gunpowder Plot, and the Fire of London, to warn us of the dangers of falling prey to ‘fake news’ demonising the ‘other’, false stories circulated by the Daily Mail and its like telling us about Muslim terrorism, radicalism and the failure, the wilful failure, to integrate….it’s all just not true just as the Catholic threat to Britain wasn’t true….it’s all dangerous black propaganda by sinister, powerful forces with malign intent. This time they’ve doubled up getting a pro-IRA message in there as well apparently.
Trouble is of course the Catholic threat to Britain and its Protestant rulers was all too real just as the threat to British democracy, society and culture comes from those who not only preach against it but actively work to undermine it, the most extreme opting to use violence in order to force the breakdown of this society.
Aye for some years now the term Guy Fawkes night has been araised from the BBC’s vocabulary now it’s called fire works display or something or another!
No British tradition is safe from BBC reinterpretation which inevitably ends up with the British, particularly the English, being shown to be vile , cruel , racist exploiters of the whole world. All just part of the BBC goal of destroying our culture , history and sense of who we are. It was these very issues , I might say virtues, that led to Brexit and so they must be stamped out by the BBC. It makes you sick that millions are forced to,pay for the piles of offensive crap that the BBC pumps out every week.
Absolutely everything the BBC produce is filtered through a deeply biased, distorting left wing prism.
By the time it reaches us, the unsuspecting and gullible audience, it bears little similarity to the actual events.
We’ve had the Norman Invasion of 1066 being led by William the Conqueror’s black lieutenant. You think WTF?! Those of us above the age of 10 were sitting there with our heads in our hands. But they continue to get away with it.
I’ve watched classic dramas, written hundreds of years ago, where a black actor is ludicrously shoehorned into a part. And they’re getting worse. What the Beeb are doing in distorting our history is the modern equivalent of book burning.
They interviewed one of the actors in this latest shambles on breakfast TV the other morning. He was asked “Are you one of the goodies (Catholic terrorists) or baddies?” (Protestants who captured them).
So, Guy Fawkes and his henchmen, who attempted to murder the king and most of parliament were “goodies” and those that stopped them were “baddies.”
I just wonder how our state broadcaster will depict ISIS in a few years. Perhaps our grandchildren will be sitting there watching tear jerking tributes to that misunderstood lad, Jihadi John.
The BBC is dangerous, dishonest and rabidly anti British.
And we’re paying them…
‘The BBC is dangerous, dishonest and rabidly anti British.’ -Agreed.
…..and still the Tories do nothing to stop it.
Damian Collins and Karen Bradley need to be sacked and deselected.
I doubt if they even watch television.
Replace parliament with Brighton’s Grand Hotel and the circle is complete.
Jeff,
No need to wonder how the BBC will depict ISIS terrorists in a few years time, you just have to watch the news to see that the BBC considers that these maniacs have a valid point and that the West and particularly the awful British in some vague way deserve what they are getting. The only thing that will change over the years is that the vagueness will disappear and the ISIS criminals will be portrayed as freedom fighters and the Brits as an imperialist bunch of racist criminals.
For decades Catholic schools have held Bonfire Night festivals alongside other schools without a thought . We are all British , English , Scottish , Welsh now regardless of any religion . Well we would be , if our immigration policy was not so frenzied over the last decade .
Won’t be long before Guy Fawkes bonfires are totally banned when Khan or some other jumped up beaurocrats decidethey are polluting the atmosphere..They discourage families and groups from getting together any way they can .They hate it when like minded people meet up and talk about stuff they don’t like.
The prominence given to Halloween seems to be the “in ” thing these days .The shops are full of tacky masks and costumes . Personally I can’t abide it .I was always taught All Hallows’ Eve was not a good time according to our pagan past. Trick or treat is pretty nasty in its design ,extortion with menaces ……It didnt exist inthis country when I was growing up.
“Won’t be long before Guy Fawkes bonfires are totally banned when Khan”
Can’t see it! Only way bo0nfires will be outlawed is when some gay councillor or some radical feminist objects to his/her rainbow flag getting slightly discoloured by that howwible smoke from a bonfire in the field next to his house.
I remember being irritated by the mini-series Rebel Heart (about the Easter Rising and Irish Civil War) shown by the BBC back in 2001, and written by Bennett. I thought, WTF is this doing on as a Sunday evening serial? Must be a long-term project of the Beeb to demoralise us all.
I’d compare it to the irritation I still feel when C5 (or whoever) persist in filling a hole in their schedule with Emmerich/Gibson’s The Patriot and I accidentally catch a bit of it. Both seemed to be on about the same level.