HC Deb 15 June 1928 vol 218 cc1337-40
Commander WILLIAMS

I beg to to move, in page 1, line 8, to leave out the word "second" and to insert instead thereof the word "last".

The effect of this, with consequential Amendments to omit "April" and insert "March," would be to bring the date of Easter earlier than it is at present. My object is to split up the Easter and Whitsun holidays, which are of great importance to great masses of people, as nearly as possible between Christmas and the August Bank holiday. I fully realise that there are very many objections to this from several points of view, especially from the Church, and that there are some authorities who consider that the second Sunday in April would be better than approximately 31st March, but on the other hand it is only right that we should consider the pint of view of those who use Easter not so much as a Festival but as a holiday. I am leaving the point of view of the Festival absolutely out. I am looking at it for the moment from the point of view of the holiday, and I think it would be well to fix the two intermediate holidays between December and August as nearly as possible in the middle of that period. If you can have Easter approximately at the end of March, you have a very full three months between Christmas and March, and, even with my Amendment, considerably less than three months between Whitsun and the August Bank holiday. For that reason it is worth discussing whether in fixing this date, you should not have it earlier even than the great improvement brought in by the Bill as it is at present. An objection which was raised in Committee again and again to making Easter earlier is that we should have a good period of weather at the time of the Bank Holiday. In the West country the tendency is to have particularly good weather at the end of March, and very often you get a less favourable period afterwards in comparison with the rest of the country. In the South and West of England we have an enormous advantage oven other places and I do not see why occasionally our point of view and our natural advantages should not be considered. Apart from that, the main object of the Amendment is to split up the time in such a way as to make it easier for those who have to engage in these long periods of work. I fully sympathise with the position of those who think it impossible from an entirely different point of view. I have no wish to hurt their feelings but I am simply putting forward a point of view which I think ought to be expressed.

Mr. SMEDLEY CROOKE

I beg to second the Amendment.

Sir HENRY SLESSER

I think the Amendment shows the difficulty there is in this Bill as at present drawn in fixing any particular date. If the assumption is that a lot of people in this and other nations are to be consulted about the date, it surely is objectionable to do what the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggests and fix a particular date in this first Clause. I thought, from what the Mover of the Bill said, that the date in the Bill was the date which was most likely to find acceptance with the various persons who are promoting it, and there are Amendments by the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) which, I understand, will raise the question whether, if you are going to give power to fix a date at all, that date should be fixed in the Bill or should only be fixed after consultation with various bodies. If the Amendment is not competent to produce that result, I myself have put down an Amendment, with the support of the hon. Member for Exeter (Sir R. Newman), to that effect. In any event if you are going to have a date, I understood the date on which all discussions and negotiations have gone on so far is the date contained in Clause 1 of the Bill. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman had moved this as a wrecking Amendment it would rather appeal to me, but I do not believe that is the case, That being so, from his own point of view, if the Bill is to go through at all, it will be better to have the date which has been provisionally agreed by certain people rather than a date which the hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to have obtained out of his own inner consciousness. Therefore I hope the Amendment will be rejected.

I cannot sit down without drawing attention to the fact that what I have always feared is made abundantly clear by the hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech, and that is that what is really moving the promoters of the Bill is far more the question of when we shall have holidays, and not when we shall have Holy Days, and his argument that there should be a considered period between Christmas and Easter and so on all shows that the driving power that is behind him, and I rather fear behind the promoters of the Bill, is the secular consideration of Easter rather than the religous one. In any event, we shall have a further opportunity for discussing this question, and I hope that this Amendment will not be accepted by the House.

Captain BOURNE

I cannot oblige the House by accepting this Amendment. As the hon. and learned Member for South East Leeds (Sir H. Slesser) has just said, the date in the Bill is one which has been arrived at after very extensive examination and discussion by the League of Nations after consulting all the countries in the world. The one thing we cannot do, if we do fix Easter, is to fix it solely for considerations either of the home climate or of the climate of any part of our country. The general opinion of those who support the proposal—and they include religious bodies, commercial bodies, educational bodies, Governments and others—is that the most suitable date for Easter is the second Sunday in April, but both the Roman Catholic and the Anglican Church raised objections to that date, because, once every seven years, it will result in the feast of the Annunciation and Passion Sunday coinciding. Therefore, the present date was agreed to as a compromise in order to avoid that particular thing occurring. I think the date is probably the best that can be chosen. When one of the subsequent Amendments put down by the hon. and learned Member for South East Leeds is reached, we can go into that point, but I cannot possibly advise the House to accept the Amend- ment of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Torquay (Commander Williams).

Amendment negatived.