On November 5 the ancient streets of Lewes throng with one of the oldest bonfire celebrations in England.

It is a stirring commemoration of the 16 men and women burnt at the stake in the town for their Protestant faith in Mary Tudor's time.

Through the streets march the be-costumed Bonfire Society members, with flaming crosses and torches raised.

Ten days before this year's festival in the neighbouring village of Firle, the local Bonfire Society held its own celebration.

A caravan with effigies of a gypsy mother and children in the windows, daubed with the numberplate "PIKEY", was ceremonially burnt.

Only weeks before that, on high Whitehawk Hill, Brighton, next to the racecourse where gypsies have camped for hundreds of years, Brighton and Hove City Council oversaw the eviction of three groups of Irish travellers at three hours' notice.

Despite the presence of many small children, the travellers were evicted using a Section 61 Order under the Criminal Justice Act.

Within two hours, the council had blocked off the two car parks on the top of Race Hill (which the travellers had used for access) with huge piles of chalk, ignoring their lawful need for planning permission.

For several years our local group, The Friends of Whitehawk Hill, had supported the closure of these same car parks to protect the last breeding sites of Meadow Pipit and Skylark on the Hill.

Yet when the council wished to evict travellers it did in hours what we had failed to do in years.

Walking through the happy crowds at Lewes Bonfire, it was striking how apolitical it was. Few of the effigies touched on current politics, and then only by humorous allusion.

Gorgeous and delightful costume and historical reconstruction could not disguise the peculiar absence of political controversy.

What was really going on then?

Was this really a kind of rural heritage which excludes the poor and marginalised and refuses to face the real political choices in our world?

Perhaps it is more a celebration of Lewes as Shangri-La for the university lecturers and City commuters who occupy its tasteful and expensive homes.

Prosperous Lewes, at the heart of the proposed South Downs National Park, and Brighton, with its 12,000 acres of Downland, cannot find it in their hearts to embrace the needs of travelling people who have roamed these lanes and Downs since the days of the Tudors.

Lewes' 16 Protestant martyrs - burnt to death right where the flaming procession passes - die again today in

a burning caravan in Firle village, just as they died again - among flaming crosses - in many a Mississippi lynching.

-Dave Bangs, Brighton