Britons light 400th Fawkes Day bonfire

LONDON -- Comparisons with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States were invoked yesterday as Britons marked the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, in which Roman Catholics tried to blow up the Parliament.

Every Nov. 5, the British set off fireworks, light bonfires, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, to celebrate the foiling of the 1605 plot aimed at killing King James I, an Anglican, and hundreds of dignitaries.

But this year's fourth centenary has led to an outpouring of articles and documentaries. Some commentators have likened the plotters to Al Qaeda, which has been accused in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States.

Others, however, have suggested that now is the time to end the ritual ''bonfire night" burning of Fawkes's effigies.

''The repercussions of the massive explosion [in 1605] would have been even more devastating than the attacks on the Twin Towers in September 2001," said a historian, Antonia Fraser.

''The Gunpowder Plotters were driven by the exactly the same motivation that drove Mohamed Atta and his fellow hijackers to fly the planes and their terrified passengers into the World Trade Center," Fraser wrote in the Daily Mail.

The plotters had an Osama bin Laden figure in Robert Catesby, who provided money and organization work for the conspirators, commentator Philip Johnston said in the Daily Telegraph.

The Gunpowder Plotters were Catholic militants in an age when theirs was a persecuted minority faith in England.

Fawkes was caught on the night of Nov. 4, 1605, with 36 barrels of gunpowder in a vault under the Houses of Parliament. He was preparing to detonate them the next day, when King James I was due to open Parliament.

He was tortured on the rack for several days in the Tower of London, on orders of the king, before confessing. The king's men later killed or captured, tortured, and executed many of the 17 others thought to have been involved.

Some have questioned whether a ritual sometimes seen as perpetuating religious differences should continue. ''Surely now, 400 years on, [Fawkes] has suffered enough?" said Fraser, a Catholic.