18 October, 2022

This year for the first time we’ll be celebrating Bonfire Night with a special Campfire Club, with the intent to reignite and reflect on the importance of dissent in society. In the political climate we find ourselves in, we invite people to consider the power that dissent and protest has as a shaper of community, politics, history and the future.

The night will feature poet, producer, songwriter, MC, multi-instrumentalist and raconteur Dizraeli, so in the spirit of the evening we asked him a few questions about rebellion, activism, and tradition.

How did you celebrate Bonfire Night growing up?

I grew up in Bristol in a street with a big communal garden, and we had a massive Bonfire Night celebration every year, with a bonfire, guys that we burned, fireworks that everyone chipped in for. It was joyful and exciting.

Is there a figure in history you admire for their rebellious spirit?

I’m just starting to learn about Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers movement. He was advocating for equal access to healthcare, for shared ownership, for a deep connection to the land… in 1649. The Diggers established super radical communities (‘colonies’) who planted and farmed on common land, and had communal houses and decision making processes… They were chased from place to place by militias and the law.

The level of courage it took to do what they do in the context of that time blows my mind. I admire anyone who defies the norms of their time like that, for what they know to be right and true.

Do you think there’s a role for tradition in bringing about change?

I think there can be, if shared traditions support spaces and culture through which strong communities can congregate, share ideas, educate each other and organise for change (either by creating new structures themselves or challenging or tearing down the ones which are harming them).

Tradition can also be the structure that stops us getting anywhere though can’t it? In England I feel like it’s become traditional, a part of our national identity, to not make too much fuss, to not question the way things are.

And so Liz Truss is Prime Minister, and her government seems to be getting away with policies that will cause stress and pain to human bodies and minds, and destruction to our ecosystems, because we believe that traditionally, we don’t rise up and fight. I think we badly need new traditions. This is the time for new traditions.

Is there a particular song or artist that for you captures the spirit of rebellion?

Rage Against The Machine’s first album is one I keep coming back to. And I admire what they did in standing up for people and causes they believed worth defending. They once shut down Wall Street!

Do you think there is a poignancy to this year’s Bonfire Night in light of where we are politically?

I think there could be, if we tuned in to its potential as a focus point for a spirit of explosive rebellion. But I think it’s more likely to be used by people as a way to forget, which is ironic given the rhyme that we use to remember the date :

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

The Gunpowder Treason and plot 

I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

And in case we do forget, the second verse of that rhyme :

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,

‘Twas his intent.

To blow up the King and the Parliament.

Three score barrels of powder below.

Poor old England to overthrow.

By God’s providence he was catch’d,

With a dark lantern and burning match

At the end, the rebel baddie is caught and the status quo is safe from harm… to celebrate, we set fire to an effigy of a man who wanted to improve things for Catholics, then we eat our toffee apples, watch the fireworks and go home.

If we used the 5th of November as a moment to remember the rebels of our history, and the movements for change that won us the progress we benefit from now… that would be something. Maybe that’s what we’ll do at Campfire Club.

What do you rebel against the most?

On one level, as an artist, I try to embody a joyful rebellion against the dehumanisation of the human species, which is one of the phenomena we’re seeing at the moment. I do my best to bring more compassion and connection to the world, and a celebration of what’s real, what we can hold and squeeze in our hands.

What else?

I’m involved (but not involved enough) in climate activism as well, through Extinction Rebellion and the Climate Justice Coalition… offering my skills as an entertainer, broadcaster and communicator where it’s useful. Rebelling against the insane, blind idiocy of the system of capitalism that is currently dragging us into collapse and chaos, and more pain and struggle for the people and creatures of the earth.

Who are your activist heroes?

In terms of thinkers, adrienne maree brown is one: I love her book Emergent Strategy which looks to our kin in nature (I borrow that term from another thinker I love, Donna Haraway) for models for generative, whole ways of organising ourselves and birthing change. Audré Lorde and bell hooks too.

In direct action, Green New Deal Rising, they’re doing excellent work directly taking politicians and businesspeople to task on their ecocidal decisions.

Anyone who dares to D lock themselves to railings by the neck, to force people to stop and ask questions. I admire Just Stop Oil. They’re showing the fuck up, however unpopular it makes them.

Is there someone who represents a modern day Guy Fawkes to you?

Hm, I think that’s not necessarily the right question for me… Guy Fawkes was in his way resisting oppression (religious oppression), but his goal was just to replace the King (who was violently anti-Catholic) with a different monarch (Princess Elizabeth, James’s daughter).

He wasn’t for anything progressive or egalitarian, which is what I believe we need.

In his time there were some other frickin amazing, brave uprisings happening that we (unsurprisingly) don’t learn about at all: the Midland Revolt in 1607 for example, which began as riots against the Enclosures where protestors pulled down hedges and filled in ditches that were being used to keep them off the common land, which was being sectioned off and converted by landowning gentry for profit. That revolt ended with 50 villagers being murdered and the leaders being tortured, hung, drawn and quartered.

And later on the same century, the Levellers who were a massive, national movement with offices all around the country, who were organising for extending the vote, for more equality, and for religious tolerance…

And then there was the movement I already mentioned that split off from the Levellers, the Diggers…

So I don’t see a lot of Guy Fawkses around and I don’t particularly want to, but I do see people who are doing the work that the Levellers and Diggers began; people who are questioning the way we think about money and property, who are living in ways that defy the norms of individualism that are a part of what is killing us.

I see Jay Jordan from the Laboratory for Insurrectionary Imagination, and everyone else at the ZAD in Brittany, who defied the French government and braved the brutality of the French police to defend a huge area of countryside and forest that was destined to become a giant international airport. Now they’ve won the right to stay on the land, and they’ve changed the course of history in their corner of the world. It gives me so much hope.