Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Rename Heathrow21 after Sir Winston
Major backed an idea to celebrate wartime premier Former PM was ‘strongly against’ two UK time zones plan
PLANS to create two time zones in the UK were opposed by John Major amid concerns it would “feed the separatist debate”, private Downing Street records show.
The Prime Minister was vehemently against the idea, floated by Lord Mountgarret in late 1994 and then just over a year later by Bournemouth West MP John Butterfill.
The creation of single/double summer time would have moved the clocks forward an hour all year round – on top of British Summer
JOHN Major considered renaming Heathrow Airport after Winston Churchill, declassified files reveal.
Then-prime Minister Mr Major found the 1996 idea to honour the Second World War leader “intriguing”, the Government papers show.
He asked senior Whitehall aides to explore the proposal by London businessman Harvey Spack.
Mr Spack’s letter said: “New York has Kennedy Airport, Paris has De Gaulle and we have the stupid name of Heathrow! It should be renamed with the name of the greatest man of the century, who has no truly great memorial in our country. I can only see this as a tremendous boost to the ‘feel good factor’ for us.”
Mr Major wrote back: “I am looking into this, and I am grateful to you for raising it.”
His letter sent via No10’s principal private secretary Alex Allan to Transport Secretary Brian Mawhinney, is among papers published today by the National Archives, Kew.
It asks Mr Mawhinney to look into “the merits and practicalities and how this might be floated”.
The plan flopped and the airport remains named after the Middlesex hamlet which was demolished for its construction in 1944.
A memo also declassified today from Mr Major’s time as PM reveals officials feared he would have to hide behind a plant pot to avoid shaking hands with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
Aides were worried about a chance meeting at Stormont during US President Bill Clinton’s 1995 trip to the UK.
Time – in an effort to create a longer day.
However, the move was only to be applied to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, meaning Scotland would be on a different time zone to the rest of the UK.
Newly-released files at the
National Archives in Kew show the idea did not sit well with the PM.
In a handwritten note on an untimed memo, sent as Mr Butterfill was preparing a Private Member’s Bill, Mr Major wrote: “It feeds the separatist debate – I am strongly against it.”