a stitch in time saves nine
This Sunday, British Summer Time, aka ‘daylight saving’, comes to an end and clocks go back by an hour. But has this always been the case and why exactly do we do it?
The idea of daylight saving is generally attributed to Kent builder and keen golfer, William Willet, who, in the early 1900s, gave rise to the notion of the idea that “the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep.” His initial proposal of moving the clocks forward, and extending both the working day and the long summer evenings, by 80 minutes in four twenty minute blocks proved impractical even though it gained widespread support, including that of Winston Churchill.
However, not for the first time, these ideas were seized upon by those tricky-dickies over the Channel and, in 1915, Germany was the first country to put the clocks forward to both save energy and boost war production. We followed suit the year later with a system based upon Greenwich Mean Time (GMT +/-1) and today, daylight saving is used by seventy countries, affecting the shut-eye of more than one billion people.
The idea of dividing the day into units of equal duration, 24 segments, dates back to ancient times. The Romans went further by splitting daylight into twelve periods of (relatively) equal duration that they called hours, but which actually varied in length according to the time of year, from about 45 minutes in winter (darker, shorter days) to 75 minutes in high summer. Not particularly exact but you get the idea and can see what they were trying to achieve.
Apart from there obviously being more daylight, studies suggest that operating to a BST system increases physical activity (no sh*t, Sherlock!), curtails electricity usage, reduces traffic accidents and is popular with retail as more people stay out shopping and enjoying the piazza lifestyle. In Crewe. Probably. The downsides include the stated facts that depression levels go through the roof when the hour is lost, closely followed by the rising number of heart attacks, strokes and suicides. A 2011 YouGov poll found that more than half the population would favour and support moving the clocks forward one hour all round and be done with it once and for all. And we did indeed try this.
In the UK, we implemented this GMT+1 proposal between October 1968 and October 1971. The anticipated upsides were all in order but it proved massively unpopular in Scotland and the frozen north, where in midwinter the sun didn’t rise until gone ten-ish, meaning kids walked to school (yeah, they did crazy things like this back in the day) in the dark and many sections of workers, including farmers, postmen and builders, understandably objected to spending more than half their day in the pitch black. On a free vote, the House of Commons voted by 366 to 81 in favour of returning to the previous system. Ah, the days of discernible and non-negotiable parliamentary majorities!
However, it all seems set to change. The EU, which currently stipulates that member states should follow the current system, is, following a majority vote of 84%, planning to end daylight saving time across the whole bloc. Yet another thing that isn’t set to affect us in the future so enjoy the extra hour come the next ‘Great British Spring’.
