Guy Fawkes was a Catholic from York in the north of England. He and others sought to overthrow the London-centric Protestant movement that had swept England and to assassinate King James (the first). Fawkes' father was a protestant clergyman. His mother was secretly a Catholic. After being widowed, his mother married another Catholic and Fawkes was in today's terms, radicalised by his stepfather. When he was 21 he went to join the Spanish who were trying to defeat the growth of Protestantism in Holland.

Fawkes was in Spain a long time and it was 13 years later, in 1604, that he was approached by Thomas Wintour who was recruiting for an English rebel group led by Robert Catesby. Encouraged by stories of the oppression of Catholics and the intolerance of James I, whose own mother had been Catholic, Fawkes readiy agreed to return to England.

Cateby had a plan: if he blew up the Houses of Parliament on 5th November, the government adn the King and all the Lords would all be there. In one fell swoop the Catholics would regain power. Or so the plan went.

It didn't go according to plan.

One story has it that Government agents infiltrated the group and another that someone made an anonymous tip-off. The logistics wer in place: 36 barrels of gunpowder had been ferried up the Thames and hidden in the cellars. They were discovered by searching guards. Fawkes, as the group's only explosives expert, was found preparing fuses.

Interrogation followed and the King authorised the use of increasing levels of torture in order to gain the identity of other conspirators. Fawkes had readily admitted his own actions and intent. Three days later, the remaining conspirators were challenged some 120 miles from London. Some were shot, some were tried and executed.

Fawkes has become a symbol of resistance against oppression by governments and companies yet the moves against Catholics in England arose because of the restrictions placed on e.g. English Kings by the Catholic Church. And the celebrations in which, traditionally, a dummy "Guy" is burned on a bonfire are a historically a celebration of the defeat of terrorism, not of the fame of a folk hero.

That point is lost on many.