{"id":6108,"date":"2021-12-27T10:54:12","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T10:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6108"},"modified":"2021-12-27T10:54:14","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T10:54:14","slug":"english-bank-holidays-and-common-law-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6108","title":{"rendered":"English Bank Holidays and Common Law Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In honour of the traditional family argument about whether Christmas Day is a bank holiday or not, I shall be wittering on about it for a while. The UK government web site on Bank Holidays<\/a>, lists it as a bank holiday. Incorrectly, although it’s understandable why it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Act of Parliament currently in force establishing “bank holidays” is the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971<\/a>, which lists the following as bank holidays :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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The following are to be bank holidays in England and Wales :-<\/p>

Easter Monday<\/p>

The last Monday in May.<\/p>

The last Monday in August.<\/p>

26th December, if it not be a Sunday.<\/p>

27th December in a year in which 25th or 26th December is a Sunday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Note how the 25th doesn’t appear! Within the text of the Act, it also states :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No person shall be compellable to make any payment or to do any act on a bank holiday under this Act which he would not be compellable to make or do on Christmas Day or Good Friday<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are of course other missing bank holidays which are proclaimed on a yearly basis by the queen, but Christmas Day and Good Friday are special – they’re Common Law holidays that have been taken as public holidays since time immemorial (6 July 1189) as traditional customary holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those two days appear many times in legislation dealing with restrictions on what can be carried out on those days, but nowhere is it declared that they are public holidays – it is just assumed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There used to be a good deal more customary holidays – in 1833 the Bank of England shut for 33 days a year but in 1834 shut for just 4. When bank holidays were first established in 1871, they were intended as public holidays but were expressed in financial terms – specifically so banks couldn’t be declared bankrupt for not being able to process a promissory note or a bill of exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is why we call them “Bank” holidays. And why they aren’t strictly speaking “holidays” for workers – they are really just holidays for banks as there is no guarantee that you can take a bank holiday off work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Bare Family<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In honour of the traditional family argument about whether Christmas Day is a bank holiday or not, I shall be wittering on about it for a while. The UK government web site on Bank Holidays, lists it as a bank holiday. Incorrectly, although it’s understandable why it does. The Act of Parliament currently in force […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[2077,1164,2075,2076],"class_list":["post-6108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-bank-holiday","tag-christmas","tag-common-law-holiday","tag-public-holiday","category-7-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1Aw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6108"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6111,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6108\/revisions\/6111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}