Until the advent of the railways, the United Kingdom used
local mean time. Greenwich Mean Time was adopted first by the
Great Western Railway in 1840 and a few others followed suit in the following years. In 1847 it was adopted by the
Railway Clearing House, and by almost all railway companies by the following year. It was from this initiative that the term "
railway time" was derived. It was gradually adopted for other purposes, but the legal case of
Curtis v March in 1858 held "
local mean time" to be the official time. On 14 May 1880, a letter signed by 'Clerk to Justices' appeared in
The Times, stating that 'Greenwich time is now kept almost throughout England, but it appears that Greenwich time is not legal time. This was changed later in 1880, when Greenwich Mean Time was legally adopted throughout the island of Great Britain under the
Statutes (Definition of Time) Act 1880 (
43 & 44 Vict. c. 9). GMT was adopted on the
Isle of Man on 30 March 1883,
Jersey in 1898, and
Guernsey in 1913. Ireland adopted GMT by the
Time (Ireland) Act 1916 (
6 & 7 Geo. 5. c. 45), supplanting
Dublin Mean Time. At the beginning of the 20th century,
Sandringham time (
UTC+00:30) was used by the royal household. This practice was abolished by
King Edward VIII in an effort to reduce confusions over time. In the summers of 1941 to 1945, during the
Second World War, Britain was two hours ahead of GMT and operating on
British Double Summer Time (BDST). To bring this about, the clocks were not put back by an hour at the end of summer in 1940 (BST having started early, on 25 February 1940). In subsequent years, clocks continued to be advanced by one hour each spring (to BDST) and put back by an hour each autumn (to BST). On 15 July 1945, the clocks were put back by an hour, so BDST reverted to BST; the clocks were put back by an additional hour on 7 October 1945, so BST reverted to GMT for the winter of 1945. The United Kingdom experimentally adopted
Central European Time by maintaining Summer Time throughout the year from 1968 to 1971. In a
House of Lords debate,
Richard Butler, 17th Viscount Mountgarret said that the change was welcomed at the time, but the experiment was eventually halted after a debate in 1971, in which the outcome might have been influenced by a
major accident on the morning of the debate. Proposals to adopt CET have been raised by various politicians over the years, including a proposal in 2011 to conduct an analysis of the costs and benefits. The dates of British Summer Time are the subject of the '''''' (c. 6). From 1972 to 1980, the day following the third Saturday in March was the start of British Summer Time (unless that day was Easter Sunday, in which case BST began a week earlier), with the day following the fourth Saturday in October being the end of British Summer Time. From 1981 to 2001, the dates were set in line with various European Directives. Since 2002 the Act has specified the last Sunday in March as the start of British Summer Time with the last Sunday in October being end of British Summer Time. The '''''' (
SI 1997/2982) implemented the same start and end dates of summer time in the United Kingdom as in the European Union from 1998. ==Future==