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Lancashire Times
A Voice of the Free Press
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Jan Harris
Deputy Group Editor
6:00 AM 28th March 2020
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Spring Forward, Fall Back

 
Clocks go forward this weekend as the country enters British Summer Time.

That's right British Summer Time starts this weekend. The clocks will be changing on Sunday at 1am when we put the clocks forward one hour.

This year it will be one of the strangest clock changes, as due to the spread of coronavirus and the UK being in lockdown, the need to worry about changing our clocks will seem insignificant as most of us are staying indoors and will be unable to take advantage of the extra daylight hours.

Forward or back?
Most of us struggle to remember if we put the clocks forward or back. This happens twice a year. In spring we go forward and in autumn back.

People often say, "do we put the clocks forward or back?"
The easiest way to remember is the saying 'Spring forward, fall back'.

So what does this mean?
Yes unfortunately we will all lose one hour's sleep, but at least that means summer should be on its way, days are getting longer and the evenings will be getting lighter.

Why do the clocks change?
Benjamin Franklin, who was an American inventor and politician, came up with the idea in 1784 while he was in Paris. The idea was that if people got up earlier when it was light it would save on candles.

The idea of British Summer Time (or Daylight Saving Time) arrived in the UK later when an Englishman William Willett, (the great great grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin), in 1907 thought it was a good idea too and proposed it to British Parliament.

He was a keen horse-rider and was incensed at the 'waste' of useful daylight first thing in the morning, during summer.

Parliament discussed the idea of moving the clocks forwards and backwards in 1908 but Willett wasn't able to convince the people that it was a good idea.

Willett unfortunately died in 1915, a year before Germany adopted his clock-changing plan on 30 April 1916 and Britain adopted the idea a month later on 21 May 1916.

The Summer Time Act of 1916 was passed by Parliament and 21 May 1916 was reported in the press as being the first day of British Summer Time.

image by Chris Knight
image by Chris Knight
British Double Summer Time
This was temporarily introduced during the Second World War (2 hours in front of GMT). During the winter clocks were kept one hour forward of GMT in order to increase productivity.

When the war was over Britain returned to British Summer Time except for a brief period between 1968 and 1971 when clocks went forward but not back. This idea was abandoned as not being very successful.

Technology
Experts say that because we all tend to rely on technology most of us will forget to put our clocks forward this weekend, but as the majority of us have TVs, laptops, tablets, computers and smartphones we don’t need to worry as technology will do it for us.

The future
There is an ongoing discussion as to whether in the UK we should continue to change our clocks.

A committee of MEPs has voted to scrap the custom of changing the clocks in spring and autumn by 2021.

The proposed end to the spring and autumn custom of changing our clocks could affect Britain even now it has left the EU, so will changing the clocks be a thing of the past, we shall have to wait and see.


The clocks go forward by one hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March - meaning this Sunday, 29 March.

The clocks go back one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October, to Greenwich Mean Time. This year the clocks will go back on Sunday 25 October 2020.