Patrick Comerford
I’ve spent some time this afternoon watching the boat races and I have lost a few hours cheering on the two winning Cambridge teams. This has been the last day in Lent,the last Saturday in March, and the last day in the Winter Time of GMT. The clocks change tonight, going forward an hour at 1 am. Despite the wet and cold weather we have had in recent days, this also marks the beginning of British Summer Time (BST).
The clocks move forward every year early in the morning on the last Sunday of March, which is also Easter Day this year.
The clocks moving forward also means that we lose an hour in bed. But this is also a leap year, so we have gained an extra day and lost an hour in the course of less than a month.
The decision for clocks to go forward for summer came about through a campaign in the early 20th century to change the clocks during the summer months, so that people in the northern hemisphere could make more use of the earlier daylight hours.
Benjamin Franklin first suggested the idea of daylight saving time in a whimsical article in 1784.
William Willett, an early promoter of British Summer Time, published a pamphlet The Waste of Daylight (1907) that proposed changing the clocks in spring and putting them back in autumn. However, his proposal was complicated, involving advancing the clocks by 80 minutes in four separate moves of 20 minutes each.
The House of Commons rejected a Bill in 1908 to advance the clocks by one hour during the spring and summer months.
Willett died in 1915. A year later Parliament passed the Summer Time Act. It was introduced as a temporary efficiency measure for World War I, but established the practice of putting the clocks an hour forward during summer.
The decision to change the clocks on the last Saturday night and Sunday morning in March was made because it would be the least disruptive option for schools and businesses.
Before time became standardised, different areas of Britain and Ireland kept their own local time, and until the late 19th century, each area set its own clocks.
The Time Act 1880 established Greenwich Mean Time for Great Britain and Dublin Mean Time for Ireland. For 36 years, Ireland’s time was set on the longitude of Dunsink Observatory, and was 25 minutes 21 seconds later than Greenwich. This had implications for trade and commerce, as well as communications and travel.
On 1 October 1916, just five months after the Easter Rising, Ireland relinquished its individual time zone and adopted Greenwich Mean Time. With the introduction of daylight saving and the end of summertime that year Dublin’s time was aligned to that of London.
The Time (Ireland) Act 1916, which came into effect on the night of 30 September and 1 October, and all clocks were put back 35 minutes. This streamlined the time zones, and Ireland adopted Western European Time, set on the Greenwich meridian. Many nationalists saw this as a further erosion of Ireland’s autonomy. But the question of the time zone was not revisited after independence, and from 1918 Ireland remained within the standardised time zones that were effective across Europe.
The Standard Time Act 1968 legally established that ‘the time for general purposes in the State (to be known as standard time) shall be one hour in advance of Greenwich Mean Time throughout the year.’ The act was amended by the Standard Time (Amendment) Act 1971, which legally established Greenwich Mean Time as a winter time period.
Double summer time (GMT + 2 hours) was used in the UK during World War II, but was not introduced in Ireland, leaving different time zones on each side of the border until 1947.
Interestingly, the clocks the Royal Observatory Greenwich are not changed during British Summer Time and are always set at Greenwich Mean Time. Visitors to the Observatory during summer are often confused by the apparent delay on the Shepherd Gate Clock, Britain’s first public clock to show GMT.
On the other hand, the Dolphin sundial in the Observatory needs to be adjusted four times a year: at the solstices in June and December, and when the clocks change in March and October.
Today, people argue that changing the clocks is good for environmental reasons by reducing energy consumption; gives longer evenings to support leisure and tourism; encourages people to exercise more outdoors; and reduces road accidents.
However, some still argue against daylight saving time – they have concerns about the safety of children going to school in darker mornings, about farm safety and about the effect of changing routines on livestock. Others argue that changing the clocks is now redundant as many people spend time in well-lit homes and workplaces, where the amount of daylight makes little difference to their lives.
About 70 countries have some form of daylight saving time, but this varies from region to region. In the US, the clocks go forward on the second Sunday in March (10 March 2024) and back on the first Sunday in November (3 November 2024), although not all states change their clocks. Arizona does not use Daylight Saving Time, apart from the semi-autonomous Navajo Nation, nor does Hawaii.
The European Parliament backed a proposal In March 2019 to end the practice of changing the clocks in EU member states. Initially the plan was for EU member states to change their clocks for the last time in 2021, but the legislation has stalled in recent years, and seasonal time changes continue.
Many years ago, I knew a student who was a fervent evangelical was vocally opposed to the Lenten practices, including changes in both the college chapel and college kitchen. One year, he strenuously objected that because it was a leap year and 29 February fell in Lent, an extra day had been introduced to Lent.
He suggested it was some high church ‘trap’ to add to the Lenten observances. No amount of logical argument could persuade him that the number of days remained the same whether or not it was a Leap Year. He did not smile when I suggested summer time was reducing Lent by an hour.
Most phones and laptops automatically update themselves, but, it seems, many watches, most clocks and the timers in cars and on kitchen devices do not change automatically and need to be moved forward tonight.
So, it still makes sense to remind myself to put the clocks forward tonight.
