LONDON — About 200 protesters, many from London’s anti-capitalist Occupy movement, marched to Parliament on Guy Fawkes Day, the annual commemoration of the English anarchist who tried to blow up the building in the 17th century.

Many of Saturday’s protesters were wearing a grinning, somewhat sinister mask of Guy Fawkes that has become an icon of the Occupy Movement around the world. The rally was largely peaceful, but the group was kept from getting close to Parliament by a heavy police presence.

Additional Photos

A group of London friends sport Guy Fawkes masks outside the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest camp near St. Paul’s Cathedral on Thursday. 2011 Associated Press file

Some activists said that donning the masks is a way of reminding governments that authority can be challenged by the masses. “I think people are giving a polite nod to a kind of violent radicalism,” said Laurie Penny, a blogger and frequent protester.

Many of the demonstrators had marched from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where the Occupy movement has set up camp for weeks to protest social inequality and the excesses of the banking industry.

Saturday’s rally coincided with Guy Fawkes’ Day, which is cele-brated in England every Nov. 5 with bonfires and fireworks to mark the failure of the plot hatched by Fawkes and other conspirators to destroy Parliament with explosives in 1605.

Some regard Fawkes as a folk hero, and Saturday’s protesters have a similar message to his: Rebel against state power.

Fawkes is a household historical name in England for plotting with 12 others to destroy Parliament, assassinate King James I and install a Catholic monarch in the botched “Gunpowder Plot.”

The conspiracy fell apart when authorities found out about it and caught Fawkes guarding barrels of gunpowder in the cellar of Parliament. Fawkes was tried as a traitor, and the king’s narrow escape has been celebrated on Nov. 5 with the burning of effigies known as “guys” across the country.

In Britain and elsewhere, Fawkes’ story — or rather a popular culture version of it — has been seized upon as a potent anti-government symbol.

The masks owe their popularity not so much to Fawkes’ story, but to the comic book-turned-movie “V for Vendetta,” which features a violent, anarchist freedom fighter who fashions himself a modern Guy Fawkes and rebels against a fascist government.

Meanwhile Anonymous, an international rogue collective of “hackivists” that has launched cyber attacks on government and corporate websites, also seized on Guy Fawkes Day by backing an online campaign urging people to collectively withdraw their money from large banks Saturday in a bid to show their anger against the banking sector. Activists have dubbed Saturday “Bank Transfer Day” and “Operation Cashback.”

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