Unidad documental simple 318 - Carbon copy of a letter from F. W. Pethick-Lawrence to Herbert Morrison

States his objections to double summer-time and to single summer-time in winter, and expresses the hope that these measures will not be continued after the war.

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Transcript

9th. March. 1943.

Dear Herbert,

I was glad to see that you said in the House that it was premature to make any statement with regard to the continuance of “Double Summer Time” after the war. I should like you to appreciate the feelings of a countryman with regard to both questions of “Double Summer Time” and the continuance of “Single Summer Time” through the Winter.

We get up about six o’clock every morning. That means under the present arrangements that we have been getting up in the dark for about five months and that those of us who breakfast about seven had to have it in the dark for about four months. Just as it will be getting light when we get up, down comes upon us “Double Summer Time” which means a further three weeks getting up in the dark.

“Single Summer Time” in the Winter also had the disadvantage that the frost is not off the ground until quite late in the morning, and neither garden nor field can be worked in the hours following on breakfast.

“Double Summer Time” means similarly, that at any rate in the month after it begins and the month before it ends, the fields and the garden are saturated with dew long after work on them should begin.

At the other end of the day there is of course more light, but we do not want to have the nicest working time of the day after supper in the evening and we do not want to have to go out and water the garden near the time when we go to bed, which is our first opportunity of so doing because up till then the sun is too powerful.

While the war is on we acquiesce in temporary changes which are we understand desired by industrialists, though many of them I am sure hate getting up in the dark as we do. But we hope the Home Office will refuse, after the war, to continue changes which are advocated partly by those late risers who never get up in the dark in any case, and who imagine that “Summer Time” and “Double Summer Time” add one extra to the hours of daylight.

Yours sincerely,
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Rt. Hon. Herbert Morrison, M.P.,
Secretary of State for Home Affairs.
Home Office, Whitehall,
S.W.1.