Time...

...for change?

Yesterday we moved closer to legislation which could mean the UK's clocks moving forward by an hour.

It seems sensible to me, from a business perspective anyway, to bring us in line with Central European time, and I would love an extra hour of light in the evening. But then I don't live in the North of England or Scotland where it wouldn't be getting light until much much later.

It's an interesting debate and one which has raged for years

Actually it was an American, Benjamin Franklin, who first suggested the idea of daylight saving. He wrote an essay on it entitled An Economical Project which he presented in Paris during his time there as an American delegate in 1784. The idea was received with interest then largely forgotten.

It was a British builder called William Willett who really set the ball rolling. He became passionate about the idea of using daylight hours better and wrote a pamphlet, The waste of Daylight. In it he wrote:

Everyone appreciates the long, light evenings. Everyone laments their shortage as Autumn approaches

Willett was so taken with his idea he spent a fortune of his own money lobbying parliament. Finally he attracted the attention Robert Pearce - later Sir Robert Pearce - who introduced a bill in the House of Commons proposing to make it compulsory to adjust the clocks.

The bill was drafted in 1909 and brought before Parliament several times but on each occasion it met with scorn, particularly from the farming community. Poor Willett died on 4th March 1915, an object of ridicule.

But then in 1916 the First World War began and with it, the need to save coal. Germany instigated a similar change in their own time system and Britain soon followed suit. The bill was passed on May 17th, 1916 and the clocks were advanced the following Sunday, May 21st. The tradition of British Summer Time (BST) had begun.

The switch was initially met with opposition and confusion. The Royal Meteorological Society insisted that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) would still be used to measure the tides. Some parks decided to close at dusk, staying open for an extra hour while others, like Kew Gardens ignored the new system.
Eventually though the seasonal time changes became generally accepted.
During the Second World War the Government decided to advance to clocks by one hour all year and by two in the summer time which became known as ?double summer time.? They reverted back to the original system when the war ended.

Since then there have been occasional calls for BST to be either implemented throughout the year or scrapped completely with campaigners on both sides of the argument citing statistics on road traffic accidents, mental health issues and farming issues.

Between 1968 and !971 the Government ran an experiment with BST being left in place throughout the year but as results about the benefits were inconclusive the old system was reinstated and has been in place ever since.

Who knows what may happen in the future.

The clock is the first Christmas present I bought my husband when we bought our first house. We both love old clocks. A house without a ticking clock is a home without a heartbeat :-)