LOCATION Tashkent

SPEAKER Rupert Joy

EVENT Bonfire Night

DATE 05/11/2009

Thank you all for joining us tonight at the British Embassy's annual commemoration of Bonfire Night. I hope that everyone is wrapped up warm and has something to drink. I shall be brief!

Britain has many strange and wonderful traditions. One of its best-loved and most enduring traditions is Bonfire Night, which has been celebrated around the country on 5th of November for over 400 years. Like many British traditions, it has its origins in a historical event that took place at a turbulent time in our history.

Bonfire Night started as a thanksgiving for the failure of a Catholic plot to overthrow the Protestant King James I by blowing up the Houses of Parliament. Britain's Parliament survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and has developed into a dynamic modern institution open to people of all faiths. Today, Bonfire Night is a social occasion to gather round a warm bonfire with friends and family, and a glass of something warming in the hand, as the autumn evenings draw in.

We wanted to make our Bonfire Night party a slightly larger event than usual this year. First, to compensate for the fact that the timing of my predecessor's departure and my own arrival made it difficult to organise the usual summer celebration of the Queen's Birthday. And second, because Bonfire Night symbolises, in its way, the resilience of Britain's long tradition of parliamentary government.

It feels appropriate to celebrate that, at a time when both Uzbekistan (next month) and Britain (next spring) are approaching parliamentary elections. My country's parliamentary system has, over centuries, evolved its own, very British, traditions. Uzbekistan's parliamentary system is of course very much younger. But it, too, is evolving its own distinctive Uzbek characteristics; and it is developing in a positive direction. Whichever parties win the forthcoming elections in our respective countries - and I think we have a fair idea of the probable outcome in both cases - both parliamentary institutions can only benefit from developing closer links over the coming years.

That's all from me. Thank you for listening. It's time to light the Bonfire. Please stand well back, and enjoy the party.

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