Commonwealth Day (formerly Empire Day) is the annual celebration of the Commonwealth of Nations, since 1977 often held on the second Monday in March. It is marked by an Anglican service in Westminster Abbey, normally attended by the monarch as Head of the Commonwealth along with the Commonwealth Secretary-General and Commonwealth High Commissioners in London. The monarch delivers a broadcast address to the Commonwealth.
While it has a certain official status, Commonwealth Day is not a public holiday in most Commonwealth countries, and there is little public awareness of it. It is marked as a holiday in Gibraltar, but not in March. In Canada "Victoria Day" is celebrated on the Monday closest to 24 May (Queen Victoria's birthday).
History
The idea of observing one day in each year as a public holiday throughout the empire was first suggested to the council in 1894 and 1895 by Thomas Robinson, the Royal Colonial Institute's honorary secretary at Winnipeg in Canada. Taking up Robinson's suggestion, the Royal Colonial institute's London council addressed a petition to the Queen in July 1894 declaring that, whereas other nations had annual days for national celebration, the British empire had no such day, and proposing that the Queen's birthday should be set aside for the purpose. In a reply the prime minister, Lord Rosebery, stated that it was a matter not for the government but for the community and pointed out that government departments already kept the Queen's birthday as a holiday. The idea was gaining support in Canada, however, and on the initiative of Clementina Trenholme in 1898, who introduced an Empire Day to Ontario schools, on the last school day before 24 May, Queen Victoria's birthday. The idea of a day that would "remind children that they formed part of the British Empire" was conceived in 1897. Empire Day or Victoria Day was celebrated in the Cape Colony before the Second Boer War and thereafter throughout the Union of South Africa.
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'. In schools, morning lessons were devoted to "exercises calculated to remind (the children) of their mighty heritage". 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.
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. In 1925, 90,000 people attended an Empire Day thanksgiving service held at Wembley Stadium as part of the British Empire Exhibition. The British Empire League promoted Empire Day as a patriotic holiday. Empire Day traversed class boundaries, and after the First World War, the jingoism was toned down in favour of sombre commemoration in the festival.
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.
In 1973, the National Council in Canada of the Royal Commonwealth Society submitted a proposal to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau that Commonwealth Day should be observed simultaneously throughout the Commonwealth of Nations. The proposal was included in the Canadian items for inclusion in the agenda for the 1975 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. After the meeting, it was agreed that the Commonwealth Secretariat would select a date with no historical connotations so that the entire Commonwealth could use it as a date to celebrate Commonwealth Day. At a meeting in Canberra in May 1976, senior Commonwealth officials agreed on a new fixed date for Commonwealth Day, the second Monday in March.
Observance
There is not a uniform observance of the day worldwide.