Sunday trading makes us free
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Version 0 of 1. The news that Wednesday’s budget is expected to contain plans to allow shops to open longer on Sundays was, well, news to me. Related: Budget 2015: George Osborne to shake up Sunday trading laws It turns out that currently, larger shops can only open for six hours a day on Sundays – a fact that, now it’s staring me in the face, does seem startlingly obvious. Yes, if I come to think of it, big supermarkets do seem to close early on Sundays. But I rarely use them as I live in a small town and don’t have a car, so this most anachronistic of laws seems to have passed me by. And more to the point, I thought we were done with any dispute about Sunday trading. I may be 18 years younger than the business minister, Anna Soubry, but I too remember the tiresome monotony of Sundays. Defending the proposals that could hand responsibility for Sunday trading laws to Britain’s towns and cities, Soubry said, of Sundays past on the Today programme this morning: “The only thing to look forward to was Sing Something Simple on the radio and, I mean, goodness me, if that didn’t sum up a miserable Sunday.” My musical references are more Morrissey than Sing Something Simple (“Every day is like Sunday, Every day is silent and grey”) but (alarmingly) I find myself in agreement. Growing up in the UK in the 80s and early 90s, there was nothing, oh but nothing, to do on a Sunday. My teenage years were miserable enough, but Sundays were the most doleful day of all. The looming threat of school on Monday, the obligatory overcooked Sunday roast with the wretched relatives – and all the homework you hadn’t done. The Sunday Trading Act was introduced in 1994 – again, a surprising fact to me (it’s been a startling morning) as when I was 16, in 1991, my local supermarket started opening on a Sunday. Apparently, this flouting of the law was common, with only Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and House of Fraser remaining resolutely shut on Sundays. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I had a part-time job at the supermarket, and they were desperate for people to work on a Sunday – so much so, that they paid time and a half. So I got to leave the house, I got to avoid the dismal roast – and I got paid handsomely (or so I thought at the time) for my trouble. So I got to leave the house, I got to avoid the dismal roast – and I got paid handsomely I loved Sunday opening. It was incredibly freeing, and felt, after the economically austere 70s and the divisive, Thatcher-dominated 80s, as if Britain was finally changing. Soubry also said “you have family life but you can still have shopping” – which is a kind of catchy Tory mantra if you think about it, albeit one that makes me, without a “family life”, fly into murderous rage – but I take her point. The seaside town I live in now is a tourist attraction, and on Sundays the streets are thronged with visitors clutching ice cream cones and buying souvenir driftwood sculptures. The butchers and greengrocers are open. Bands play in the pubs. It’s all good. But Sunday opening isn’t really about shopping – it’s about emancipation. It’s about recognising that people work different patterns and have different needs. It’s about the fact that we, as a nation, aren’t really into churchgoing and stultifying roast dinners any more. The plans have been criticised by campaigners worried that longer opening hours will put pressure on employees. But here, in my seaside idyll, many places close on Monday, when the tourists have gone home. The bicycle shop shuts for an hour for lunch every day, and so does the pharmacy. And many shops are shut on Wednesday afternoon. Why, I do not know – it’s something I find alternatively charming and infuriating, but ultimately, it’s fine by me. But if you don’t believe how exciting Sunday opening was in the 90s, just ask my dad, who is the same age as Soubry. After pondering being forced to go to Sunday school (“Awful, I used to hide”) he brightened up. “When I was a kid, I had plenty to do on a Sunday … throw rocks, go over the fields, the woods.” |