There were plenty of atrocities carried out by both sides of the religious divide in England over the centuries, in England just as in Ireland.

It's good that they should be remembered, as a warning about what can happen - but it is vile when they are used as a way of keeping hatred alive and building new hatred, the same hatred that gave rise to them in the first place.

But there are different ways of dealing with that, and my impression is that, while the Lewes celebration has grown out of the same kind of hostility towards "Papists" that has distorted life in Northern Ireland, and which was very widespread in England in the earlier part of theblast century, it has had its teeth drawn, in the same way as other Guy Fawkes Night celebrations have, and much of the hate has been drained away.

This is something which has only happened over the last couple of generations. It is something to be welcomed that Catholics today generally feel no worries about joining in Guy Fawkes Night celebrations, because I can remember when that wasn't necessarily true. I'm not sure whether that is as yet the case in Lewes, but if not I hope if it's far off. (Though an episode a couple of years ago when a Gypsy Caravan was burnt in the course of a Guy Fawkes celebration near Lewes does suggest that genuine bigotry may still be pretty close to the surface in that corner of England, and available to be exploited by the likes of the BNP.)

I look towards a time when the same process will have happened in the Irish counties which currently comprise Northern Ireland.