No Bank Holiday but does a Saint Monday (& Tuesday) beckon after England Women’s Victory in the Euro Final
Pub hours were extended until 1am on Sunday by the Home Secretary (who probably isn’t in Stoke Newington pub herself tonight) with the reasonable aim of allowing people to celebrate a win for England Women (‘girls’ Nigel Farage on X) in the Euros Final.
Of course there is a downside to that as racism and domestic violence are well known consequences of major England football games.
For the majority however the game will have been enjoyed perhaps particularly the penalty shootout.
There have been calls for a Bank Holiday which won’t happen. However Saint Monday seems likely.
Until the 1871 Bank Holidays Act there was a tradition known as Saint Monday
The daily routines of working life are well-known and they date back to the imposition of industrial disciplines on what had been previously an agricultural workforce during the nineteenth century.
Labour was required to work machines and if it wasn’t available money was being lost.
There was a battle over hours and time (there still is of course) and artisanal and craft working practices were only slowly given up.
EP Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class records employers complaints about the working practices of weavers. They did not work on Sundays, or Mondays (Saint Monday) or often on Tuesdays either. Towards the end of the week and on to Saturday they worked ferociously hard.
Saint Monday was a day of leisure to rest and to drink.
Thompson speculates in his essay Time Work Discipline that bursts of hard work followed by periods of idleness and drinking, while not what employers want, may well conform to a much more natural working pattern than the daily grind of economic reality most now experience.
So perhaps it’s just human for many to enjoy a football related beer on Sunday evening and mark Saint Monday as a result and possibly even Saint Tuesday too.
Leave a Reply