NOVEMBER'S LITTLE BANG
Digby Anderson rues the
disappearance of fireworks worth setting off
AT FIRST SIGHT, it is a social phe- nomenon only explained by the Combe Florey school of sociology. Our young people (though more is spent on their education than ever before, perhaps be- cause more is spent on their education than- ever before) are too stupid to be allowed to let off fireworks. The Government through its Minister for Corporate and Consumer Affairs and Fireworks, Mr Michael Ho- ward, is urging them not to try. Instead they should passively attend socialist-style mass rallies: 'It is much easier to let the experts handle the fireworks and the orga- nised displays are far more spectacular than anything that could be mounted at home.' This is what is meant, presumably, by the Conservative ethic of individualism, risk-taking and personal responsibility.
The fireworks our young people are too stupid to let off are not, of course, any fireworks. They are not the rockets the Siamese used — ten foot long on poles of 40 foot. They are not even the thunder flashes of the Fifties. From the late Fifties, all the best fireworks, chaps' fireworks, the sort which make you jump or are fun to let off, have been progressively withdrawn from sale, at least counter sale. No more jumping jacks, torpedo type fireworks, bangers with more than 40 grains of gun- powder, flying saucers, helicopters and things which make you turn round sudden- ly. Now it's all girls' fireworks, ones ideally suited to mass moronic displays in which activity is limited to oohing in unison at the pretty lights.
And the safety warnings which are given also support the theories of the Combe Florey school. Young people after years of expensive education cannot manage to work out, without the help of state prop- aganda, that instructions on fireworks should be read with the aid of a torch not a flame. This year, they are not trusted to let off a sparkler without first sitting through a `Firework Software Program [sic] for Schools' distributed by the same Minister for Fireworks-as-long-as-they-are-Girls'- Fireworks-let-off-at-Organised-Mass-Ral- lies.
It has 'challenging graphics and class- room exercises [and] has been extensively tried out in the Cambridge area'. It will be introduced by the slogan, 'NEVER BE FLASH WITH FIREWORKS'. This is the year's slogan which is also printed on T-shirts sent out to leading disc-jockeys. Should anyone be scornful, we are told that it has already appeared on the set of EastEnders.
The reason, of course, is accidents, which have risen over the last five years from 555 to 968, proof of the astounding success of the firework education campaign conducted during those years. In fact it is not that simple. Accidents had gone down from 2026 in 1969. And it is difficult to make simple sense of the figures. As usual the relationship between government in- tervention and intended effect is unpredict- able rather than straighforwardly inverse. Are the current figures high? The vast majority of the 968 were not detained in hospital. Only 53 spent more than one night there. The number of those seriously injured is less than .001 per cent of the 10 million people who bought fireworks and .0001 per cent of the 100 million fireworks bought. And indeed these are unreliable because we do not know the population at risk, the number handling fireworks which
'He failed to blow up Parliament, so every year he's burned in effigy.' may change, especially if the advice of the Minister for (or against) Fireworks is heeded and there are less active firewor- kers and more organised mass displays. But even if the figures could be estab- lished, judgment on them is a matter of opinion. There are those, particularly those whose child has been hurt, for whom `one injury is too much': a line of reasoning which threatens everything from so-called `safety pins' to motorbikes.
Against the Combe Florey school — in fact it's a refinement not a correction one might note that the statistics suggest that most young persons, perhaps up to 99.99 per cent, are not chronically stupid. And, indeed, a growing view is that stupid- ity or even carelessness is not the main cause of accidents. The police report more cases of firework hooliganism, young peo- ple throwing fireworks at each other in the street. The figures show clearly that by far the biggest jump in accidents, from 229 to 435, is in this street category. If this is the trouble, then it has little to do with fireworks and much more to do with the increasing number of delinquent young people. Again, if correct, it means the advice of the Minister against Chaps' Fire- works is based on a fallacy. It is not small, private, often family-based firework nights which must be abandoned in favour of mass displays but street delinquents who need hounding. And it is no use hounding them to attend compulsory mass displays. It has been noticed that they are already doing so but become so bored at standing and dutifully oohing that they start putting bangers in the other spectators' pockets, producing some of the 117 injuries which occur at these 'properly organised dis- plays'.
None of these hesitations would wash with the Campaign for Firework Reform (CFR) which wants to ban counter sales altogether. It sees family and private fire- works as inventions of a 'dangerous amateur mentality'. Fireworks are 'for professionals'. Fireworks must only be let off at mass rallies under local authorities' supervision and by professionals who have been trained with the aid of state training facilities and then state-licensed to let off fireworks 'properly'. It is greatly to the credit of the Minister for Fireworks that he has resisted this pressure. Though he de- scribes it as growing, he does not make it clear whether more people want sales banned or the same few people are shout- ing more loudly. Whichever it is, he knows that bans can be counter-productive.
Those states in the US which ban fire- works report 37 fatalities during the years in which the UK had one. All occurred during illegal firework manufacture. But what the Minister-less-for-Fireworks- than-the-ten-million-people-who-buy-them patently does not understand is that mass displayes are a completely different thing from setting off your own bangers and, better still, those forbidden jumping jacks. He is proposing more than a change of site.
Yet there is something odd in this sociology of pyrotechnics. Everyone is terribly nice. The charming press lady in the minister's department, the firework manufacturers, even the CFR. What it needs to liven it up is a few loonies. When they come, it will be to ignore the reaction- ary rumblings of the Combe Florey school, and to pooh-pooh both the Minister's line that it is essentially an educational problem or even the CFR's view that it's a problem for regulation. Firework injuries are, of course, 'basically' the result of unemploy- ment. One can see it now, reports reveal- ing how there were more banger burns in Liverpool than Reigate, analyses explain- ing how the dole sends youngsters search- ing for kicks with rockets, exposures show- ing how the mass displays are a device to divert and pacify the natural revolutionary inclination of the masses, and tomes dis- cussing how young people act out in the theatrical violence of street pyrotechnics the real violence of oppressive social struc- tures and Star Wars. Now, that's the sort of sociology one can respect.
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