Hughes backs bigger St George's Day celebrations in Southwark

12.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 22nd Apr 2008

Speaking after attending the first of this year's St George's Day celebrations in Southwark at St George the Martyr Church in Borough High Street last Saturday*, Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey and President of the Liberal Democrats, announced that he is formally asking Southwark Council to agree to greater support for expanded St George's Day celebrations in the borough in years ahead.

Mr Hughes, who has long supported St George's Day being made a public holiday in England, this week said:

"The St George in Southwark Festival is a good and growing initiative which deserves widespread support across all our communities.

"St George, a Palestinian by origin, is a very good patron for our mixed and diverse borough as well as for our richly diverse country.

"Building on this year's lecture, tours, lunches, services and other events, I am proposing to the borough that in future years we invite in turn other countries which have St George as their patron to join us to celebrate our different but linked cultural heritage."

"The Irish have for many years made a big thing of celebrating St Patrick their patron - who of course wasn't Irish. The Scots increasingly commemorate St Andrew - who was not Scottish. And the Welsh are rightly becoming more willing to mark St David's Day on March 1st - although they can claim their patron saint was from their own country. England has been too reticent for too long. Here in Southwark, where we also had the home of the greatest playwright in the English language, William Shakespeare - whose date of birth (and death) was also 23rd April - we should lead by example."

Note to Editors

*19.04.08

** On St George's Day, Simon Hughes will be receiving a flower arrangement at Holly's Flowers in the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre. Mr Hughes also hopes to attend St George's Day Mass at St George's Roman Catholic Cathedral.