Wales: slightly less of a country?

We explore how the treatment of St David's Day encapsulates Wales' place in the UK

Hello!

The Senedd was in recess for spring half term last week but there is still plenty to talk about.

This week I want to look at why St David’s Day isn’t a bank holiday and why this sums up Wales’ place in the UK.

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St David’s Day - Wales is seen as just a bit less of a country

If you are reading this on the day it was sent you are probably already getting those Sunday blues. You know that in less than 24 hours you are going to have to clock into work again. Wouldn’t it be lovely if tomorrow was a bank holiday?

Well, there is a strong argument that it should be. There is significant political support for making St David’s Day a bank holiday. If this were the case, as our patron saint’s day falls on a Saturday this year, there would be a bank holiday on Monday.

As so often happens, Wales gets the short straw compared to Scotland, where St Andrew’s Day is a bank holiday. It’s a day where people celebrate their nation. The same is true in Ireland where on St Patrick’s Day they also have a bank holiday. Scotland also has an extra Hogmanay Bank Holiday on January 2 (though Scotland only has one Bank Holiday at Easter with a day off on Good Friday but no official holiday on Easter Monday).

While I don’t think that St David’s Day not being a bank holiday is the biggest deal in the world, I do believe that the context around it is a fascinating snapshot into everything that is wrong with how Wales is treated by the wider UK. So let’s explore it.

The UK Government’s terrible response

A few years back when the Tories were in power, 12,000 people signed a petition calling on Westminster to make St David’s Day a bank holiday in Cymru.

The petition said:

“St David's Day has always been a significant day in Cymru/Wales, and has been used to celebrate everything Welsh. It's time to make this special day a bank holiday in Wales, just like Scotland has St Andrew's Day, and Ireland has St Patrick's Day as bank holidays”.

As so many people signed, the rules required the UK Government to respond.

A statement from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:

“We appreciate the sentiment behind this request; however, the Government has no current plans to change the well-established and accepted arrangements for bank holidays in Wales.

“The decisions to create bank holidays for St Andrew's Day, and St Patrick's Day have been developed against a backdrop of different histories, economic, social, cultural and legal systems. Different factors require separate considerations.

“Although an additional bank holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, the cost to the economy of an additional bank holiday remains considerable. The latest analysis estimates the cost for a one-off bank holiday (across the whole of the UK) to be around £2bn.

“The Government regularly receives requests for additional bank and public holidays to celebrate a variety of occasions. However, the current pattern of bank holidays is well established and accepted. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 provides the basis for UK bank holidays each year and contains provisions for appointing additional or substitute days. Additional bank holidays, including those created after 1971, and some substitute days (for example when bank holidays fall at a weekend) are appointed by Royal proclamation.”

Let’s take this dog turd of a response paragraph by paragraph.

We can dismiss the first as the condescending “we appreciate the sentiment” crap it is. But there is plenty more to say about the other ones.

“Historical context”

St David’s Day parade in Cardiff (Copyright: Gareth James)

The second paragraph is utterly illiterate to history and reinforces the perception that the Conservatives under Johnson simply saw Wales as less of a country than Scotland.

Let me give you a very brief description of the different backdrop “of histories, economic, social, cultural and legal systems”.

• St David was established as a Welsh leader by the 10th century.

• His fame was reinforced in the 1120s when the Pope declared that English pilgrims who went to St David’s cathedral in Pembrokeshire twice would have the same spiritual reward as if they went to Rome once. This honour was not extended to any other place in Britain.

• March 1 became the most important date in the Welsh calendar of worship. It was so universal that when men from Wales settled in Ireland after its conquest in 1169, they still used St David’s day to date documents.

• However in the 1500s during the Reformation St David’s cult and cathedral came under attack when an Englishman called William Barlow was appointed Bishop who stripped the cathedral of its relics.

• In the next few centuries after that there isn’t much evidence that St David was worshipped within Wales.

• But the veneration of St David was kept alive by Welsh communities abroad and in the 1700s his popularity started to return.

• It wasn’t until the 1920s that the story of St David’s medieval life was translated from Latin and published in English for the first time. This led to Welsh poets like Saunders Lewis taking an interest in St David as a Welsh patron.

One could argue that like many things that are Welsh (language, identity etc), St David’s prominence survived despite being dealt a pretty tough hand by history. That is why the “Scotland has a different cultural context” argument is so frustrating because Scotland has never had the symbols of its nationhood as actively repressed as Wales has.

“We can’t afford a bank holiday”

Just to remind you, the previous UK Gov’s main argument against a St David’s Day bank holiday was:

“Although an additional bank holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, the cost to the economy of an additional bank holiday remains considerable. The latest analysis estimates the cost for a one-off bank holiday (across the whole of the UK) to be around £2bn.”

First things first, that £2bn cost is thrown around a lot when arguing against the St David’s Day bank holiday but it’s important to note it is based on the whole UK having a bank holiday. If it was just Wales, which makes up 5% of the Welsh population, it would be considerably less.

But this doesn’t mean that a bank holiday wouldn’t have an impact on the economy, it would. I have spoken to several businesses, large and small, about the impact a bank holiday would have. These are the main pros and cons I have come across (these are not all directly economic):

Pros:

• Good for certain sectors such as hospitality.

• Good for certain areas. Places like Pembrokeshire are likely to see an influx of tourists.

• Improves “brand Wales” and promotes Welshness.

• Wellness benefits across society. Ultimately a long term benefit to productivity?

Cons:

• Wales has a longer and more interconnected border with England than Scotland does. The impact of having one side of the border on holiday while the other isn’t could be challenging for production lines.

• Inevitably many businesses will lose money due to a day of not trading.

• One argument made to me by the former secretary of state for Wales David TC Davies was that children will be more likely to engage with St David’s Day and Welshness in school than they would do at home.

“The current pattern of bank holidays is well established and accepted”

It may seem innocuous but perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of the response was the line about how the current pattern was “well established”. To me this is symptomatic of a political system and class that is stagnant and incapable of change. You can point to hundreds of things in UK politics that are “well established” but are albatrosses around our necks when it comes to governance, wellness and fairness.

The “it’s how we have always done things” argument is a barrier to so many improvements that we could make in the UK.

Where does the UK Labour Party stand on the issue and what about St George’s Day?