The Randolph Hotel, the Super Cinema and the Taj Mahal Restaurant were traditional targets for November 5 hooliganism in Oxford.

Managers would put the shutters across their windows and wait for the hail of fireworks to cease and the hordes of marauding youths to go away.

Police were often at full stretch keeping control in the 1950s, as university students and young people from the town clashed in the streets.

By 1959, the Deputy Chief Constable was telling Oxford magistrates that November 5 "had ceased to be a celebration and had become a time when a certain elemen think they have free licence to attack the police and damage property".

The following year, the university vice-chancellor and proctors issued a notice requiring "undergraduates to avoid outdoor gatherings of any description on the nigh of 5 November", and the police mounted an all-out campaign to quell town troublemakers.

Youths who offended found themselves surrounded by police and hauled off down alleyways to a special incident room in Blue Boar Street. When they came to court, the magistrates imposed heavy fines. For two years, the traditional running battle continued.

Then the message sank in and by 1965, the Chief Constable could say with satisfaction: "The people of Oxford can now walk about the centre of the city on the night of November 5 and go to the cinema or theatre without the fear of being in the centre of a disturbance."

The 'tradition' was dead.