It’s time to ban the bang and leave fireworks to the pros

My birthday falls smack between the Halloween and Guy Fawkes night weekends – I’m 43 this year, thanks for asking, yes, I had a lovely time, and my best present was riding my friend’s horse dressed as Claudia Winkleman from Celebrity Traitors.

When I was small, I found this upstaging by national holidays deeply annoying. My parents mollified me with a mid-week fireworks party at home, with those of us kids who hadn’t yet been traumatised by adverts of screaming children burning their hands, donning gloves to spell our names in sparklers.

That was lovely, and so were many things in the Eighties that we no longer bother with. I am entirely on board with the Labour MP Alex Mayer, who, this week, called for fireworks to be used only at weekends – I would push this further. Despite living in London’s glamorous zone 3, I know a reasonable number of people living and working in the farming community, and this time of year always opens my eyes to the immense harm done to livestock and pets by amateur fireworks, let alone to injuries to human and to home.

With Remembrance Day but a week away, it is sobering to read the percentage of our military veterans whose PTSD can be set off by the noises coming from smoke, whistles and bangs. Professor Catherine Kinane, medical director at Combat Stress, says the charity sees a higher rate of distress in former servicemen and women accessing their services at this time of year.

Many councils organise one big blow-out fireworks display, which gives everyone their yearly allowance of “ooohs” and “ahhhs” with much better-quality fireworks than we can do at home. This also means that farmers and pet owners only have to brace themselves for one night, rather than keeping everyone drugged up through winter. Even now, my Instagram is filled with pictures of ordinarily bold spaniels hiding under piles of blankets and being fed calmers because fireworks noise is simply too much.

Ironically, I am the only one who notices fireworks in my house: neither Sybil, a dog allergic to everything unless it’s expensive, nor Genevieve, a plush calico mog, so much as shrugs when there’s a fireworks display nearby. Maybe it’s their past lives as strays that give them such confidence. Certainly, Sybil finds Amazon drivers far more upsetting.

Me, though: I jump a mile at a car backfiring. On Sunday, my neighbours let off a volley of rockets, which was so loud that I checked the date. My local Facebook group was beadily examining fireworks law. Did you know you can set them off on private property at any time, any day between 7am and 11pm? On Bonfire Night, this extends to midnight, and to 1am on New Year’s Eve, Diwali and Chinese New Year.

Those big holidays are fine, but every day? Much as I rather love the prospect of a mid-morning fireworks display to perk up the gloom of January, this is arguably crackers, not least because unattended fireworks cause so much damage throughout the year.

People have become more understanding that fireworks aren’t for everyone. Children wearing ear defenders have become as common a sight at displays as cinder toffee (mmm) and toffee apples (less mmm, I broke a tooth on one last year). In a more wholesome career offshoot from their being used to drop drugs into prisons, drones, too, have begun to swell the numbers of professional displays from Disneyland Paris to the New Year’s Eve display on BBC One, meaning not everything has to be so incredibly loud.

An Aussie friend and long-time Londoner swerves the display at her son’s school. “I find the bangs a bit much, and the burning guy absolutely appalling,” she says. “In Australia, displays take place only on Australia Day and New Year’s Eve, usually set to music, so the bangs coincide with the musical ones. Absolutely no public purchasing allowed, and you’re in very big trouble if found.”

It is, rather. Couldn’t we just follow their lead?

Last month, the government responded to the latest in a series of 100,000-strong petitions calling for a reduction in the maximum noise level for consumer fireworks from 120db to 90db. It said that “when used responsibly”, they are enjoyable for everyone, and that low and no-noise fireworks are already available to buy. A proposed bill on firework noise levels introduced by the now deputy speaker, Judith Cummins, last year, is stuck waiting for a second reading.

This is another example of a government missing the point. The British public will always get behind a restriction for sensible reasons, sometimes to the government’s surprise: see the huge uptake in abiding by Covid rules, and the support for raising income tax in this Budget rather than making more cuts.

Nobody needs fireworks at random. Limiting them to professional public displays for national holidays such as Bonfire Night, Eid, Diwali, and the two New Years would give everyone a really good show. And, more importantly, it would ensure that anyone or anything who flinches at loud noises can get through the year with a bit more reassurance and dignity.