Actually Lizzie, I admire your anger but something made me pause the other day and it was a voice that said, 'Penny for the Guy?'. I turned and noticed a lone Asian youth with his hand out. Later that day I had a similar experience but the young man was black. Now this is interesting because throughout the lead up to Nov 5th I had no such encounter with what has been termed (idiotically) the 'indigenous English'. The point I'm trying to make is that here was one of your English traditions being kept alive by members of the minorities. I found it refreshing (I'm not a great fan of Guy Fawkes night by the way - he was a fellow Yorkshireman who wanted to blow up the government:-) that the so called multi-cultural society was working in favour of Englishness.
In my day to day life I live and work in a place where multi-culturalsm is non-existent and where the young people are voting for the BNP. I deplore it but you are right - they do so because they are completely ignorant of what it means to be English - fairness, defender of the right to say what you think (even if others don't agree), tolerance, kindness to strangers etc. I meet and speak to over 450 young people every week and they do not know about Wilberforce, they do not even understand (in many cases) why we have Rememberance Day in November (my school allows poppies but thats as far as it goes). Most of these youngsters do not know where their roots lie and, as stated above they reach 18 and vote for BNP in increasing numbers.