James W.J. Bowden is an M.A. Candidate in Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, where he is currently writing his thesis “The Making of a Constitutional Monarch: The Powers of the Crown under Responsible Government”. He blogs regularly on issues in Westminster parliamentarism at www.parliamentum.org.
The fifth of November is a day celebrated by radicals who generally do not understand its historical significance. Most of them see the Guy Fawkes masks and the Gunpowder Plot, popularized by the film V for Vendetta, as a symbol of freedom and a blow against tyranny. This is wrong.