Where I come from, in the north east of England, Bonfire Night (or 'Bommey Night' as we often call it) is more for children. The Fire Brigade and Hospital Services tend to frown upon the occasion, for obvious reasons, as do adults in general, as pets are usually upset by all the noise, and people often get up on November 6th to discover that their plastic wheelybins have been set ablaze and melted, or stolen to collect firewood in. By 'firewood', I mean tree branches, garden gates - anything flammable that isn't nailed down, basically. Kids often collect things to burn for weeks in advance of Bonfire Night, and stash the hoard somewhere deserted. If not, rival mobs pinch it, unless it's too heavy to shift discreetly, in which case they normally just set it all on fire, there and then. Needless to say, this has virtually led to gang warfare on a number of occasions - boys beating the crap out of each other because of a pile of old wood! Madness. I'm amazed that adults don't do more to clampdown on the proceedings, as allowing the nation's children to arm themselves with fireworks isn't a very clever idea - and there are those inventive individuals who do things like throw pressurized aerosol cans onto the bonfire, so you have to duck to avoid flying shards of metal when the thing explodes. It's anarchy for a week or so, not just Bonfire Night, although I do get the impression that the tradition is slowly dying out - today's sophisticated youngsters are more interested in games consoles and DVDs than playing outside, which is probably a good thing.
I don't know where the burning of effigies comes from - I imagine it was probably an exercise in royalist propoganda, although those who disagreed with the monarchy where hardly likely to have been burning dummies of Guy Fawkes. I come from a part of England that backed Oliver Cromwell in overthrowing King Charles I, so I often ponder how history would have turned out if the Catesby plotters had used a shorter fuse.
