Summer Bank Holiday in UK 2024

Summer Bank Holiday premiered in 1871. It was introduced on the first Monday of August and it had on purpose allowing bank employees to attend or participate in cricket matches. In 1971 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales the holiday was moved to the last Monday of August. In Scotland the holiday is still being celebrated in the beginning of the month which is why in the rest of The United Kingdom it is sometimes called “Late Summer Bank Holiday” to separate them from each other. In 1965 the Caribbean immigrants from Trinidad were complaining about poor housing and working conditions that concerned them. They showed their unhappiness by protesting on the streets of Notting Hill, a district of London, on the day of the summer bank holiday. By means of presenting their different culture through diverse artistic forms they stood against racism. Since then the tradition has been kept to this day with every year growing, gaining new cultural representations of various cultivations and becoming more and more popular. Nowadays the parade doesn’t seem to be so much of a political demonstration, however it happens to face some controversy once in a while. It is known as one of the biggest street carnivals in the world having gathered around 2 million people each year and is more associated with summer bank holiday than its original cause, cricket matches, which dates and priority (for British people) have changed over the decades. Some shops on that day are closed but many stores use this day as a great opportunity for extra earnings and offer many sales and deals to attract the customers. Children do not go to kindergardens and parents don’t go to work because most of the businesses have a day off and so do majority of organizations and some governmental institutions. This is due to the fact that in the old days if the bank employees had a day off everyone else had to have it too because companies could not do their work when the banks were closed. Also, if you need to pay some bills by the summer bank holiday’s date, the law allows you to do it the next working day without being penalized. The holiday also marks the end of the summer vacation time so on that day there is a big traffic around the country. Some people come back to their homes, others try to use the last long weekend by going away for three days.