What are holidays for, as Philip Larkin almost asked? Solving that question will occupy parents all over the country as the school holidays start in England and Wales. Parts of this government act as if the purpose of holidays is to provide a bank of unused hours which employers can draw on at will. Jeremy Hunt’s attempt to browbeat senior doctors into working at weekends is of a piece with Anna Soubry’s drive for wholly unrestricted Sunday trading, something which will mean less leisure both for the harassed shoppers and the workers who must serve them. There is an important principle at stake here.
Everyone needs leisure, whatever they earn. Everyone needs time to do different things, and time to do nothing at all. This is not just to make us more efficient worker drones. We need to do nothing for its own sweet sake; even those of us lucky enough to have jobs that we look forward to every day still need a hinterland in which we care about other things. Most people anyway work for the sake of the free time it brings them; they should not take holidays so that they can work more efficiently at the end but entirely for their own sake. Of course, some people are rotted by having nothing to do. But overwork afflicts more people than unemployment and ought to be easier for public policy to cure.
Consumption can be another kind of work, as Christmas shopping reminds us every year and grocery shopping reminds us every week. The purpose of leisure is not shopping and further acquisition but the chance of being open to surprise and gratitude. The only thing we should be grasping for in our free time is meaning. If Ms Soubry remembers the Sundays of her childhood, when she had no one to tell her what to do, and nothing to spend her parents’ money on, as unspeakably miserable and boring, this suggests a shrivelled soul and an inability to amuse herself. It is not an argument for further demolishing the remnants of Sunday as a day of rest. This is not a matter of memorialising the remnants of Christianity. What is important is that there should be a day of rest – or two of them – in everyone’s week, not that it should always be Sunday. But there is a network effect in operation here: the more people observe the same day of rest, the more restful it will be for everyone.
The problem with the health service is a rather different one. Death does not take holidays, and must be dealt with seven days a week. But the frontline staff in hospitals are rather unfairly deployed. Among doctors, free time is much more unequally distributed than money. It is something the juniors give up so that their seniors can hoard it. Consultants argue that they make little difference on their own, when all the support workers and technical staff of a modern hospital are off enjoying their weekends or family lives, which implies that more patients die for lack of support staff than for lack of experienced doctors.
That may be true. But the little difference that consultants might make is better than none at all. And no doubt the support staff could manage their time better. In a Britain of many faiths and none, there will always be people happy to work on Sundays if they can keep their own chosen days for rest. But for most people the point of work will always be the pleasure that comes when it stops – and the government should respect this.
