Personally I have never found the sight of grown men shaking sticks at each whilst dancing around with bells sewn onto their trousers a particularly entertaining one. But I have to say that even when they are blocking the road outside a country pub I would have to defend their right to do so.
After all where would this country be without its eccentrics?
It would just be, well, boring. And that would never do. After all it is a tradition isn't it? Like warm, flat, beer poured from a jug, sausages and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. And because we are British we love our eccentrics and our eccentricities.
It's why we keep dogs even though we've given up hunting. Why we set out on Saturday's to do our hunter gathering in Tesco's and gather round bonfires on Guy Fawkes night.
I remember some great, eccentric traditions from my younger days growing up in Manchester, the Whit Walks marvellously parodied in the film East is East. The Easter Fair at Daisy Nook celebrated in song by the Oldham Tinkers, a band who are another great British tradition, the 'battles' between the kids from sacred heart and the protestant kids fro our school which were fought out in Sunny Brow park where the great battle apparently occurred between some one and some one else, history forgot to mention who but the Vikings were occasionally mentioned, which gave the Gore Brook and Gorton (Gore Town) their names.
Of course changing the Whitsun Holiday had an impact on the Whit Walks but the relative collapse of religion helped as well and at least keeping the holiday on the same day annually helped to keep track of when it should be.
Now, apparently, we are to lose May Day.
The Con-Dem Government simply, it appears, cannot bear having a holiday on Labour Day. So it is to be abolished. How mean spirited is that? And with the economy in ruins, not helped by the scorched earth policies being implemented how miserable, you would think that the PM should have bigger things on his mind.
Europe celebrates, Labour Day as does Russia, they even wheel out their tanks and missiles to remind us not to interfere. But we are to lose our Bank Holiday on the first of May and it is to be replaced with another day, possibly St George's Day or Trafalgar Day or some other suitably patriotic day.
If you want to be patriotic why not add another Bank Holiday to celebrate George beating up on the dragon or Nelson beating up the French and the Spanish at Trafalgar. Imagine the excitement when the traditional musicians and the Morris Dance choreographers have to devise some new dances, shaking their sticks and ringing their bells, with a hey nonny no as the Dragon shrinks back into its lair or the combined European navy sinks below the sea off Gibraltar taking the Euro with it, a great opportunity for the creative introduction of the telescope in dance!
It appears that the cuts and the need to keep productivity up means that we cannot have another day so there has to be a balanced score-card of bank holidays, lose one, gain one, but make sure you don't accidentally gain an an extra one.
There have been some great cause celebre's already in this parliamentary term, think of the privatisation of woodlands, but surely the Labour Party needs to develop a strategy for defending Labour Day, the loss of Clause 4 was to be regretted but it signalled modernisation, when modernisation was needed to show that Labour had moved on.
But the loss of a Bank Holiday celebrating the dignity of Labour and the millions of working people, my grandparents and most likely yours, if you weren't educated at Eton; whose labour made Britain great and whose lives were sacrificed in two Great wars is surely worth defending?
So Mr Milliband lets hear your defence of Labour Day and let's keep May 1st as a Public holiday.
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