Terrorist or Fall-Guy?

Seize him!: King James's men arrest Guy Fawkes in the "undercroft" directly beneath the House of Lords on 5 November 1605. Hidden beneath a screen of firewood were 36 barrels of gunpowder. Should the foiling of the most audacious "terrorist" plot in British history be attributed purely to good fortune, or was the dramatic "discovery" of "gunpowder, treason and plot" engineered by the authorities to further their own political purposes? (The Discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Painting by Henry Perronet Briggs, 1823.)

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

HAD IT COME OFF, the "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 would have ranked alongside 9/11 as one of the most audacious and world-altering terrorist attacks in human history.

To mark the 400th anniversary of the Plot, a British television network constructed a replica of the 17th Century Houses of Parliament, installed the 36 barrels of gunpowder Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators are said to have hidden in the basement, and ignited them. The resulting massive explosion completely destroyed the replica structure. Explosive experts told the programme’s producers that anyone within 100 metres of the detonation point would have been killed instantly.

So, the target of the Catholic Gunpowder Plotters – the Protestant King of Scotland and England, James Stuart – would certainly have been killed if the barrels of crude explosive had been allowed to do their job. The British Isles would have been plunged into civil war, and the plotters’ ultimate aim – the restoration of Catholic ascendancy – may even have been achieved.

What fascinates me about the Gunpowder Plot, however, is that almost from the moment the plotters were apprehended, tortured, tried and executed, their contemporaries started questioning the truth of the Government’s version of events.

From the very beginning, these "5/11 Truthers" – as they’d be called today – cast doubt upon the Government’s key assertion: that it was entirely ignorant of the plot.

According to the King’s chief minister, the first Earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil, if one of the plotters hadn’t sent a letter to a Catholic Lord, warning him to stay away from the Houses of Parliament on 5th November, not only the King, but the whole House of Lords and the entire House of Commons would have been blown to Kingdom Come.

The 17th Century "Truthers" – like their 21st Century counterparts – weren’t buying it.

Everybody in London knew that Cecil (the son of Elizabeth I’s long-serving chief minister, Sir William Cecil) had been schooled in the arts of statecraft and intelligence-gathering not only by his father, but by Elizabeth’s spymaster, and the man regarded by many as the Father of England’s "Secret State" – Sir Francis Walsingham.

Walsingham had masterminded the operation which resulted in the execution of Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. The so-called "Babington Plot" had been run almost from beginning to end by Walsingham himself, in order to snare Mary in an act of treason. The 5/11 "Truthers" argued that the Gunpowder Plot was no different.

In a capital city swarming with Cecil’s spies, they said, it simply beggared belief that the ever-increasing number of Catholic plotters (most of whom would have been under surveillance) and the constantly postponed plot (outbreaks of disease in London had led to the date of the Royal Opening of Parliament being changed several times) went entirely undetected by James’ spymasters.

Like the 9/11 Truthers, the 5/11 doubters argued that a terrible act of terrorism (or, in the case of the Gunpowder Plot, attempted terrorism) was just what the Government of the Day "needed" to further its foreign and domestic policy goals.

The case both would make is that the destruction of the Twin Towers (or the only-just-averted elimination of England’s Protestant rulers) were deliberately engineered by the "secret statesmen" of 21st Century America (or 17th Century England) to persuade their populations that "drastic measures" were necessary to protect the State from its terrorist foes.

Misdirection’s an old and dirty game – as old as politics itself. Robert Cecil learned it from his father and Walsingham, who’d simply followed the example set by Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, who had learned it in the palace corridors of Renaissance Italy, where the heirs of the Roman Empire practised the dark arts of treachery and deception with a skill only centuries of hands-on experience can impart.

And, of course, it was Walsingham’s and Cecil’s heirs who taught the Americans how to play. The Office of Strategic Services – which President Roosevelt established during the Second World War (and which later morphed into the Central Intelligence Agency) was tutored by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.

Something to think about as you set a match to the blue touch-paper this November night.

Was Guido Fawkes a terrorist – or was he simply the spymasters’ fall-guy?

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 5 November 2010.