Brian Rudman: An explosive plot more relevant to us than old Guy Fawkes

Guy Fawkes. Photo / Supplied

There's nothing like being rudely awoken by fireworks at 3 o'clock on Saturday morning to make one think that Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia could be on to something.

As I lay back in bed trying to recall where I'd buried the quotes for hush glass installation, Mrs Turia's proposal to replace Guy Fawkes night with a national day of quiet reflection "to honour peace, respect and non-violence" seemed a great idea.

Eighteen hours later as the fuses were merrily being lit on millions of dollars of hard-earned cash, it was somewhat harder to think that Aucklanders would happily trade in the pyrotechnics any day soon for street corner meetings on peace studies.

Mrs Turia was seizing the moment to point out that November 5 is not only the anniversary of a failed attempted to blow up the English Parliament, some 400 years ago. It's also the day, in 1881, that 1600 settler troops stormed the Parihaka Pa in Taranaki, to be met with passive resistance from the 2000 residents.

Mrs Turia says New Zealanders should know more about our history, and in particular, this "heroic expression of peace", and wondered how many people out celebrating Guy Fawkes night light fireworks "as a memorial to the infamous arsonist".

In recent years, an even more alien celebration, Halloween, has crept in from the United States, courtesy of retail chains like The Warehouse.

So muddled and confused has it all become, that retailers seem to be trying to merge the new "tradition" in with old Guy Fawkes.

When I was a kid, we all knew the background. An entrepreneurial few, even dragged straw-filled "guys" around the streets in trolleys, pan-handling for cash to buy fireworks.

These days the guys and the bonfires have all but gone. Instead, it's middle-class mums playing Fagin, dressing little Samantha and James in Warehouse witches outfits and sending them out to bash on doors begging for lollies for Halloween.

I'm sure mothers and kids alike have no idea of the background to this quaint behaviour.

This year the local real estate agent at the end of my street even got into the act, offering kids free "trick or treat" bags.

Like Mrs Turia, I have no idea what relevance vampires, ghosts and ghouls have to this country.

But how do you battle the might of the Warehouse, with containers of fake tradition to offload at throwaway prices?

To head off calls from traditionalists quick to point out that Guy Fawkes is indeed part of our British heritage, and thus not to be tossed aside ... of course you're right.

But as the population diversifies, so his relevance diminishes.

And since the ban on double-happy crackers and anything else that goes bang, I suspect the fun is rapidly disappearing too.

Which does leave an opening for a local substitute. But I'm not sure a day of solemnity, reflecting, like Anzac Day, on the awfulness of past events, is the sort of thing to wean us off the existing festivals.

But there is an answer.

Given the fun we had rarking up the French during the Rugby World Cup, another moment in New Zealand history to celebrate springs to mind.

It's one that marries Mrs Turia's desire to celebrate our peace-loving natures with our deep-seated instinct to want to blow things up - in a strictly peaceable way of course.

It's also a moment of recent history, perhaps the only one, that unites us all as one. That's the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in July 1985 by dastardly French Government saboteurs.

It has all the "gunpowder, treason and plot" drama of the original Guy Fawkes plot plus modern relevance. Not only did the French frogmen blow up a peace boat in Auckland Harbour, but later investigations pointed to our British and United States allies being aware of the plot as it unfolded.

The French were testing nuclear weapons just over the horizon in French Polynesian and didn't approve of Greenpeace or New Zealand Government opposition. Neither did our other "allies".

For a time we stood alone. It was a Parihaka moment complete with the villains and explosives of Guy Fawkes, along with a relevance the old gunpowder plot never really had down here in the South Pacific.