CITY AND SUBURBAN
Staying away from work by decree time to scrap bank holidays it's
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
h, good. No more bank holidays until Christmas, so we can get some work done. How the prospect dismays the National Economic Development Council. True to form, its tourism and leisure group wants an extra bank holiday in October, which, it says, would be a big bonus for the tourism industry. I suppose Neddy thinks that if the country were on holiday all the year round, we should all be in the tourist industry and making our fortunes. Nigel Lawson tried to kill Neddy by rudeness, John Major's politeness revived it, I knew we should be sorry. An outfit capable of thought about economic development would ask itself what the Government thought it was doing in telling the banks to shut. Mrs Thatcher always used to tell them to open. 'Call yourselves competi- tive?' she would cry. 'When are you going to be open on Saturdays?' (Finally Sir John Quinton of Barclays murmured, 'Next week, Prime Minister.') The whole idea of holidays by order derives from Lubbock's Act of 1871, which enabled the banks to shut, on four days a year, without suffering any penalty for not paying any bills which fell due on those days. On this narrow technical foundation we have built the notion that on certain days of the year, as it were by official decree, everything produc- tive stops and all businesses shut, except sport, transport, food and drink, and, nowadays, shops. Governments have the idea that this lets them be generous at others' expense, forcing employers to pay for holidays. The self-employed do not see it that way, nor does anyone who gets paid by results. Bank holidays simply make their working life more difficult. Really, though, what business is this of govern- ments? People can and do negotiate holi- days for themselves, without oppression or compulsion, as part of their contracts of employment. That does not mean shutting the shop. Barclays does not close its doors when Sir John takes time off in Antigua — and he himself likes to work on bank holidays. It is an example to us all. Every financial centre has its own holidays but London, which lives by its international business, could put itself forward as the ever-open marketplace. All that is needed is the repeal of Lubbock's Act and its successors. Bank holidays are a pointless survival from a different age, and it is time to scrap them. That might convince the world the British were doing some work.
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