RE Peter Mullen’s column about the possibilities of staying on British Summer Time all year round (Echo, Oct 27). I recall that this was tried during the Labour administration of 1966-70.
With parents complaining that children were going to school in the dark, it was not a success and Home Secretary James Callaghan dropped the idea.
To have dark winter nights, it would seem, is entirely British.
LD Wilson, Guisborough, East Cleveland.
KEEPING the hour on for British Summer Time was tried as a three-year experiment in the Sixties and proved most unpopular. Children were going to school wearing fluorescent armbands and newspapers carried the headline “Nine o’clock dawn over London”.
Other countries now adopt the clock change. In Petts Wood, between Chiselhurst and Orpington, Kent, there is a stone sundial showing only British Summer Time in memory of William Willet who founded the Daylight Saving Scheme in 1908.
Alan Robson, Thornaby, Stockton.
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