Call For New Bank Holiday To Celebrate 'Britishness'

The UK should have an additional bank holiday to celebrate Britishness and thank community heroes, a think tank report has urged.

The report by the Institute for Public Police Research, which is due to be published next month, suggests that a new bank holiday should be introduced on the Monday after Remembrance Sunday - which would fall on November 12 this year.

The report says that the new bank holiday would help the Prime Minister's attempt to build a British national identity and that it could also act as a national 'thank you' for community heroes, such as John Smeaton, the baggage handler who intervened in the attempted Glasgow airport terrorist attack, and emergency service workers who helped people stranded by July's flooding, as well as a national 'ask' for people to give back to their communities.

The report also suggests that the honours system should be simplified to just three different grades instead of the current 21 honours and that titles should no longer refer to the British Empire.

It argues that the awarding of civic honours should no longer be mixed up with political appointments and that the link between elitism and the honours system should be broken by ending the tradition of awarding automatic honours to senior civil servants.

Kate Stanley, IPPR Director of Research, said: "We need a day when people 'give something back' to their communities and celebrate the diversity and pluralism of modern Britain. Awarding civic honours on a single national day would be a national 'thank you' for the many thousands of citizens who go out of their way to help others."

However, Neil Carberry, head of employment policy at the CBI, said that although the idea of celebrating national heroes was a "positive one", there was "no reason" why this could not be done on an existing bank holiday.

Mr Carberry said that an extra bank holiday could cost the economy up to £6 billion.

(KMcA)