Prisoner of war camps in Gloucestershire
COMMANDING many a column inch in the Gloucestershire Echo and Gloucester Citizen of February 21, 1970 was the vexed issue of early closing days for shops.
In front of me is a copy of the Echo from that date and being a broadsheet it takes up so much of the desk there’s barely space for the keyboard.
But the headline on page four (pages two and three were classified adverts in those days) reads “Monday closing may come to Cheltenham”. The shock horror is implied.
Those long enough in the tooth to remember those days will know that all shops were closed on Sundays. In fact virtually everything was.
But in addition, shops were shut for a half day in the week, a convention that the Echo’s writer believed was about to be brushed aside in a retail revolution.
“One thing that can be predicted with fair certainty is that before long there will be some sweeping changes in Cheltenham and elsewhere in shopping habits” he or she warned.
“Many influences are working in the direction of change including the supermarkets and chain stores, which have largely taken over control and are in a position to dictate conditions according to their own desires. Also the lure of television and Saturday sport and the desire of shop workers to join occasionally with their factory brethren in the delights of a free weekend”.
The piece goes on to reveal that the early closing day applecart had already been upset in Gloucester.
A number of the city’s leading stores had organised a vote among customers to learn if they would prefer to maintain the status quo and see shops continue to close at lunchtime on Thursdays, or if they favoured the radical step of staying open on Thursdays, but closing all day on Mondays instead.
“The result” the Echo told us “is that the Bon Marche, the city’s biggest store, the whole of Gloucester’s new and extensive retail market, Denton’s and State’s furnishers now close on Mondays, joining Price right, Tesco and Down’s supermarkets, which already closed on that day along with British Home Stores.”
By tradition shops in Cheltenham town centre had for many years closed on Wednesday afternoons.
But this was not universally the case. Some were shut from lunchtime on Thursday, while Madam Wright’s, the posh frock shop in the Little Promenade, was alone in shutting its doors to customers on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons.
But Sainsbury’s in Cheltenham had taken to closing all day on Mondays on grounds that it allowed them restock the shelves for the week ahead.
“Tesco have gone part way at their new store by changing from Wednesday to Monday for half day closing, so this cannot be said to be for the purpose of giving sales staff a long weekend” the Echo informed its readers.
Introducing a new element to the argument the Echo continued “Of course, there is the precedent of the butchers in Monday closing.
This has always been accepted as right and proper, as being at one time the days for slaughtering and of preparation. And Monday is still generally regarded as cold meat day.”
Wishing to delve deeper, the Echo dispatched a reporter just before one o’clock on a Wednesday to interview shop proprietors and found one about to pull down the shutters.
“So you close on Wednesdays” remarked the reporter, who received a more complicated reply than might have been expected. “Wednesday has always been the most convenient half day to close for people round here. But we’re thinking of changing to half day on Saturday. It used to be the busiest afternoon of the week, but now it’s the slackest. All the men stay at home watching sport on the television.”
Other retail proprietors noted that Friday evening was now the most brisk for business.
The article pointed out that two years earlier Marks and Spencer had proposed opening on six days a week with staff working a rota system that meant they took Monday off one week, Tuesday the next and so on, enabling each member of the sales staff to have a three day weekend off every five weeks.
Town traders had given this idea short shrift, presumably on grounds that it was so complicated nobody understood it and the proposal had been withdrawn.
A sizeable chunk of page four in the Echo of February 21, 1970 then goes on to discuss the pros and cons of shops closing at lunchtime.
But that’s an exciting topic we may return to at another time.