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British House of Commons evacuated in security drill Is Guy Fawkes back to finish the job? Parliament evacuated days before Bonfire Night
(about 1 hour later)
The House of Commons was evacuated on Monday morning in what appears to have been a pre-arranged security drill. Were British police preparing for a second gunpowder plot when they evacuated Parliament on Monday morning?
BBC News journalist Vicki Young said staff in the Commons were ordered to leave the Parliamentary estate. Metropolitan Police officers evacuated all staff from the House of Commons in what appears to have been a pre-arranged security drill.
A bystander outside the historic Palace of Westminster tweeted a photo of a long line of Commons staff waiting outside Parliament. Bystanders and political journalists tweeted photos of hundreds of people waiting outside the historic Palace of Westminster in the autumn sunshine.
Daily Mirror reporter Dan Bloom tweeted that Portcullis House – a parliamentary building adjacent to the Palace of Westminster – remained open. Given the security exercise comes five days before Bonfire Night, it begs the question: are Britain’s security chiefs on standby for the return of Guy Fawkes?
Bloom said police told him the evacuation was just a drill. “Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot,” so goes the popular nursery rhyme in honor of Guy Fawkes Night, the unique British holiday marked every autumn.
The evacuation was over within 20 minutes, according to Young, who claims police had organized the drill to check how quickly they could get everyone out of Parliament. Also known as Bonfire Night, the festival is an annual commemoration of the failed attempt by Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators to blow up Parliament and kill King James I, a devoutly Protestant monarch who persecuted English Catholics.
Had it been successful, the Gunpowder Plot would have destroyed the entire House of Lords, killing everyone in the building.
Fawkes, an English Catholic and military veteran, was apprehended along with his fellow plotters at the last minute, found guilty of treason and hung, drawn and quartered.
The story provided the inspiration for the comic novel and blockbuster ‘V for Vendetta’, about an anarchist freedom fighter’s attempt to take down a fascist British government.
Are British police anticipating a similar plot?