Why not allow counties and cities the right to allocate a locally determined public holiday?
This year England and Wales will have nine bank and public holidays, one more than the usual ration. Four of the nine are concentrated within the next 11 days. Scotland, with its slightly different public holidays, will also use up three of this year's 10 in the same period, while Northern Ireland will have four of its 11. This year is, of course, an unusual one, because the combination of a very late Easter and the extra public holiday to mark the royal wedding have created a wider window of getaway opportunity. Yet 2012 will have an extra holiday too, to mark the Queen's diamond jubilee. The government, moreover, has floated the idea of changing the May Day holiday. All in all, this is a good moment to consider the place of bank and public holidays in the national calendar.
It may, perhaps, be asked whether public holidays are not anachronistic in an era in which so much holiday is privatised, entitlements guaranteed, and in an age in which the majority of people take far more days off than they did in the 1870s, when bank holidays first became established. Should there, indeed, be fewer of them? But the answer will always be that public holidays remain important and life-enhancing occasions. The reasons for maintaining them include cultural tradition, national solidarity, the uneven provision of private entitlements, the needs of specific groups of workers who particularly rely on public holidays, and the underlying truth that there is more to life than work anyway. The original Bank Holidays Act, indeed, was introduced in an attempt to encourage more playing of cricket.
In fact there is a strong case for having more public holidays. England and Wales do not just have fewer public holidays than Scotland and Northern Ireland; provision is more generous in much of the European Union too. France by tradition has 12 public holidays, while even the United States has 10. So an extra public holiday, or even two, in the autumn would not just fill the current bank-holiday-free gap between August and Christmas, and help parents during schools' half-term break, it would also do something to make good the overall deficit.
It is important, too, not to turn public holidays into political footballs. Forget worthy but foolish plans for Britishness days. Resist the temptation to commemorate feats of arms. And leave the May Day holiday alone. It has a deep history worth celebrating – and we need more public holidays, not fewer. In which spirit, why not also give Britain's counties and cities the right to allocate a locally determined public holiday of their own if they choose? Local bank holidays were quite common a generation ago. They deserve a comeback. And we all need a few more breaks. Enjoy the next 11 days.