Anonymous ID: e052fc March 14, 2022, 8:44 a.m. No.15861292   🗄️.is 🔗kun

Commonwealth Day

 

Commonwealth Day (formerly Empire Day) is the annual celebration of the Commonwealth of Nations, since 1977 often held on the second Monday in March.[1] It is marked by an Anglican service in Westminster Abbey, normally attended by Queen Elizabeth II as Head of the Commonwealth along with the Commonwealth Secretary-General and Commonwealth High Commissioners in London.[2] The Queen delivers a broadcast address to the Commonwealth.[3]

 

While it has a certain official status, Commonwealth Day is not a public holiday in most Commonwealth countries,[1] and there is little public awareness of it.[4] It is marked as a holiday in Gibraltar,[5][4] but not in March.[6]

 

History

 

King George VI delivering a radio broadcast to the British Empire on Empire Day 1939, from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The idea of a day that would "remind children that they formed part of the British Empire" was conceived in 1897.[7] In 1898, Canadian Clementina Trenholme introduced an Empire Day to Ontario schools, on the last school day before 24 May, Queen Victoria's birthday.[8] Empire Day or Victoria Day was celebrated in the Cape Colony before the Second Boer War and thereafter throughout the Union of South Africa.[9]

 

Empire Day was introduced in the UK in 1904 by Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath, 'to nurture a sense of collective identity and imperial responsibility among young empire citizens'.[10] In schools, morning lessons were devoted to "exercises calculated to remind (the children) of their mighty heritage".[11] The centrepiece of the day was an organised and ritualistic veneration of the Union flag. Then, schoolchildren were given the afternoon off, and further events were usually held in their local community. Empire Day became more of a sombre commemoration in the aftermath of World War I, and politically partisan as the Labour Party passed a resolution in 1926 to prevent the further celebration of Empire Day.[12]

 

After the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901, her birthday, 24 May, was celebrated from 1902 as Empire Day, though not officially recognised as an annual event until 1916.[7][13][deprecated source?] In 1925, 90,000 people attended an Empire Day thanksgiving service held at Wembley Stadium as part of the British Empire Exhibition.[14] The British Empire League promoted Empire Day as a patriotic holiday.[15] Empire Day traversed class boundaries, and after the First World War, the jingoism was toned down in favour of sombre commemoration in the festival.[12]

 

"The Conservative party and other groups adopted Empire Day as a vehicle for anti-socialist propaganda, whilst the communist party exploited it as an opportunity to attack British imperialism. Other protests came from local Labour groups and pacifist dissenters. The overt politicization of Empire Day severely disrupted its hegemonic function and the political battles fought over the form and purpose of the celebrations made it difficult to uphold the notion that the festival was merely a benign tribute to a legitimate and natural state of affairs."[12]

 

After World War II, the event fell into rapid decline, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan bowed to the inevitable on 18 December 1958, when he announced in Parliament that the name of Empire Day would be changed forthwith to Commonwealth Day.[12][16]

 

The Commonwealth and Britain have a shared history, cultural links, common legal systems and business practices.[17] Following a 1973 proposal by the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Commonwealth Secretariat selected the second Monday in March as the date on which Commonwealth Day is observed.[18]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_Day