St David’s been dead for more than 1,400 years and we still don’t get the day off... unless this year you’re a council worker in Gwynedd.
The debate over Westminster’s continued intransigence over allowing Wales to celebrate its national day with a bank holiday surfaces annually with the daffodils.
Scotland celebrates St Andrew with a day off. Northern Ireland gets a bank holiday for St Patrick’s Day. But nothing for Wales. Some say this is because a government obsessed with muscular unionism fears a nationalist uprising if we get a day to chill out, don a daff and eat Welsh cakes.
Read more: One part of Wales makes St David's Day a bank holiday
But do they even bother to flex an imperialist bicep in our direction? While the other Celtic nations have been granted the grudging respect of a holiday to celebrate their distinct identity, there’s a sense that Wales is never even on the UK Government’s radar.
After all, they can’t even keep up with their own where Wales is concerned. When quizzed, Jacob Rees-Mogg couldn’t even name the leader of the Welsh Conservatives.
They bang on about the nations “bound by the ties” of the union flag but give no thought to how diverse those nations are. They constantly tell us the union is precious yet no thought is given to the lack of parity between its constituent parts. Wales is always the fourth nation in the running order and not just alphabetically.
No Welsh representation on the union flag and while Saint Andrew and St Patrick have come marching in to claim their bank holidays, St David is left out in the Celtic cold.
But not in Gwynedd this March 1st. Fair play, they’ve just gone for it. Fed up of waiting for Westminster to take notice of the Welsh Government’s “time after time” requests through the official channels, local politicians have gone rogue.
Describing their move as “drawing a line in the sand”, the council cabinet of Gwynedd defied ministers in London and voted this week to shut its buildings and wind down its services on St David’s Day to give up to 5,000 of its workers an extra day off.
Hoping other councils would follow their example, the leader of the Plaid Cymru-controlled council, Dyfrig Siencyn, declared: “It’s really offensive and insulting; our masters in London are treating us as little children who cannot make decisions themselves. I think it’s another example of how this government is treating us here in Wales. What do we expect from such a government that sees us as the last colony the empire has?”
The UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has responsibility for bank holidays in Wales and England. And while it has always resisted Cymric calls for a St David’s Day off on the grounds of economic disruption it didn’t mind adding one for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee this year – a move that seems to have proved the tipping point in Gwynedd.
Councillor Nia Jeffreys commented: “The principle behind it is the importance of St David’s Day for us as a nation, how close it is to our hearts. It’s embarrassing that they can give an extra day off willy-nilly for the Queen’s Jubilee but we can’t decide for ourselves what day we have off.”
Even with this year’s royal add-on, the England and Wales bank holiday allocation remains the stingiest in the British Isles, let alone Europe.
Scottish workers get 11 public holidays, while Northern Ireland get 10. There’s a feast day every five minutes in Italy – you can’t turn round without bumping into some papier mache saint’s effigy being hoisted through the centre of town – while Austria gets 13 public holidays and France practically shuts down for the whole of August.
But England and Wales only get eight public holidays. Then there’s the logjam. Splicing them evenly through the calendar would improve matters, but no, usually they bung four at us between Easter and May and then we’re utterly deprived of a measly public holiday until August.
The date alone of March 1st would be so welcome for a bank holiday, breaking up that bleak stretch of the dregs of winter between Christmas and Easter. But we need a new Welsh public holiday that means something too – something that brings a sense of reward, focused celebration or poignant commemoration.
Look at what Ireland are doing with an extra day off, for example. It was announced this week that they have created a new national holiday honouring those who have lost their lives to Covid and those who gave their all through the pandemic.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the bank holiday this year was “to recognise all of those workers, volunteers and members of the general public, who helped us in this fight against the pandemic, and especially frontline healthcare workers”.
Next year there will be another new Irish bank holiday on St Brigid’s Day. This February 1st celebration will mark the contribution of Irish women, the coming of spring and the Celtic festival of Imbolc – or rebirth.
St Patrick’s Day, meanwhile, has served as a global PR tool for Ireland for decades, dismissing the notion that bank holidays are automatically economically damaging.
A stand-alone St David’s Day public holiday could provide the same function for Wales – whether giving a fillip to the hospitality sector here with its scope for celebratory events or an opportunity to project a distinct commercial identity to markets beyond our borders.
Let us take pride in a national day with a cultural edge, a public holiday that means something more than queues on the M4 or a rammed B&Q - a day to think about what makes Wales special. Read about 12 things you only know if you have to drive the M4 all the time.
And if the UK Government continue to refuse Wales what Scotland and Northern Ireland already have maybe it’s time to take our cue from Boris Johnson’s own playbook.
So, on St David’s Day regardless of the bank holiday rules, let’s party and raise a glass to our patron saint – if anyone asks just tell them you thought you were at a work event.
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