Kyle Fitzpatrick’s informative article on daylight saving time (Who changes the clocks – and why?, the briefing, 21 October) omits to mention that Britain once experimented with permanent daylight saving time. From February 1968 until October 1971, clocks were kept an hour ahead of GMT.
A review was ordered by parliament two years into the trial. It found that the darker winter mornings were unpopular in Scotland (where sunrise in midwinter was at 10am or later) and among dairy farmers, postal and construction workers.
Road safety was also a factor. Among children walking or cycling to school, a fall in evening accidents was outweighed by an increase in morning accidents. In the Commons debate in December 1970, many MPs spoke strongly against continuing the trial, especially those representing Scottish constituencies. The government allowed a free vote on the issue, and the Commons voted by 388 to 91 to end the experiment. It has not been repeated.
Dr David Harper
Cambridge
• Kyle Fitzpatrick’s article evoked childhood memories of wartime, when we had double summer time, moving the clocks back and forward two hours. The result for children across central Scotland was that it was still light at midnight in June and July. Some children who were out from dawn till dusk found it difficult to get up in the morning, but then dawn was two hours later.
Brian Callaghan
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
• In 1968 there was a three-year experiment when we kept the daylight saving arrangement throughout the year. Dark mornings felt worse than the equivalent time in the evening caused, I felt, by the lack of “borrowed light” from shops and offices that were still illuminated at night, whereas in the mornings they remained unlit. This made the journey to work in darkness much more forbidding. I was so glad when this experiment ended.
Maureen Panton
Malvern, Worcestershire
• The purpose of daylight saving time is to make us get up an hour earlier in the spring and summer, when there is more daylight. If we do not want to change our habits according to the season in this way, it makes sense to be on the time zone closest to sun time (where the sun is at its highest at midday). We would still have the option of doing everything earlier in order to have more after office hours daylight.
Rebecca Linton
Leicester
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