28.2.08

MARTYN JONES MP LEADS CALLS TO MAKE ST DAVID’S DAY A NATIONAL HOLIDAY

Mr Jones issued a statement celebrating St David’s Day:

“Today across Wales many children will hold eisteddfodau and sing our native songs. Many Welsh people will don a daffodil or fly the flag of St David.

More today than at any point in our history Wales is one nation. We enjoy our own elected Assembly, we have a firm sense of ourselves as a Welsh people and of course we continue to celebrate Welsh rugby success in the Six Nations as united people.

Wales is a small country but it is a fiercely proud one with a proud history and a future that we are working to be proud of. We are a people of Gaelic passion and of manufacturing strength, a country with a coalminer’s ancestry and a technologically prosperous tomorrow.

Today across the world’s continents and all over the face of the Earth people of Welsh heritage can walk with their heads held high and proudly state that they form part of the great body of this country’s people that describe themselves as Welsh.

St David was a man of learning and a man of peace. These are two of the many enduring lessons that will mark Welsh growth in the centuries to come. However this day is about more than one man, more than one political message or one world view.

It is about a vision of Welshness that transcends partisan interest and symbolic figures. It is a day of unity in which all Welsh people stand together in acceptance of the realisation that in this modern world there is more which pulls our great people together than drives them apart.”     

Following this brief statement Mr Jones said that he thought the time was ripe to reconsider the issue of making St David’s Day a national bank holiday. A poll conducted in 2006 suggested that 87% of Welsh people were in favour of making March 1^st a Welsh bank holiday.

Mr Jones added:

“The Welsh people have spoken on this issue and their wishes seem perfectly clear to me. I must confess I find myself with the majority on this issue. It seems only right that a bank holiday should be declared for an occasion which means so much to almost everyone in Wales.”

Mr Jones further added in a tongue in cheek manner: “Plus the 1^st March is my birthday and it’d be nice to get the day off work on an annual basis”