I am really looking forward to Sunday morning. It’s not simply that I shall have an extra hour’s sleep, it’s that we will finally be back on ‘real time’. It’s the day the clocks go back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
The idea of putting the clocks forward in the summer goes back over a century, and an eager proponent was builder William Willett, who found his neighbours’ drawn curtains objectionable. In his 1907 pamphlet The Waste of Daylight he argued a change would make better use of the hours of daylight and save money in lighting costs.
Early supporters of clock changes
Willett was not the first to have the idea of changing the clocks though. Benjamin Franklin mentioned the idea in 1784 and Edward VII, then the Prince of Wales, had already privately implemented it in 1901.
He ordered that all the clocks on the estate be set half an hour fast so he had more daylight in the evenings for his beloved riding and hunting. ‘Sandringham time’ continued until 1936. Thus, Norfolk can claim to be the home of daylight saving.
Daylight saving in wartime
The law introducing the change of clock time across the whole country was passed in May 1916. The motivation was to save coal during wartime and Britain’s enemy, Germany, had made the same change a few weeks earlier.
During WWII the change was even more extreme, with the clocks going forward by two hours in the summer and one in winter. My mother remembered this change as “simply awful, dreadful”.
I sympathise. Those of us old enough to remember 1968-1971 will have endured Harold Wilson’s imposition of DST throughout the year. It was grim.
I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and I need daylight in the morning to be able to function throughout the day. My full spectrum light and lots of vitamin D help, but it’s early daylight I really need.
Current debates about daylight savings
There have been various initiatives to get everyone across Europe and the USA to stop changing clock time twice a year. Talking about daylight saving is of course nonsense to start with – there is only so many hours of daylight in a day; all changing the clocks does is move when those hours are.
The USA is heading for permanent “daylight saving time” while the situation in Europe is more complex. There the plan is to allow each member state to decide whether to stay on its own standard time throughout the year or permanently move to “summer time”. However, this initiative has stalled.
For many years there have been moves to make Greenwich Mean Time plus one (GMT+1) permanent, or even go back to GMT+2 in the summer and GMT+1 in the winter. As in 1971 though, these moves tend to fall flat. Some of the arguments put forward in favour seem distinctly questionable, to say the least.
Energy efficiency and daylight
GMT+1 would push the energy demand into the domestic market, but it is much easier, nationally, to achieve energy savings in commercial and industrial premises than in homes. The darkest hour might or might not be just before dawn, but the coldest hour certainly is.
Domestic central heating would be coming on an hour earlier across the country. Domestic lighting is usually less efficient than in commercial premises, too. Then there’s the extra fuel needed to start cars when it’s colder and drivers may well be less alert first thing.
A north-south divide in daylight
It’s stating the obvious, but the further east we go the earlier the sunrise. Bear in mind that William Willett, lived in Kent. The Greenwich meridian cuts through our region, with most of the British Isles to its west.
Add to that, the British Isles are not aligned north-south. As one goes north one also goes west, so Edinburgh is half a degree further west than Bristol. After the autumn equinox, the further north one goes, the fewer the daylight hours. Aberdeen has fewer than 7 hours of daylight on the winter solstice while Ipswich has an hour more.
Is permanent GMT the solution?
It has even been suggested that Scotland could have its own time zone. Livestock farmers, wherever they are, also find the hour change causes disruption. The animals don’t know the clock has leapt forward or sprung back.
The time to really think about whether we want to work on GMT+1 during the winter is not now, it’s just before Christmas. That’s when it bites. That’s when you have to think to yourself: “If we were on GMT+1 it would still be pitchblack at 7:30am, not murky grey. The roads would be icier and the air temperature lower. Would I really want to have been doing this an hour ago?”
Finally, however, the tide of opinion seems to be turning. This week the British Sleep Society has urged the Government to stay on GMT throughout the year. They say: “… from the available scientific evidence that circadian and sleep health are affected negatively by enforced changes of clock time (especially in a forward direction) and positively by the availability of natural daylight during the morning”. Gosh! I’m not alone.
