» Shopping on a Sunday was not always simple
TAKE a look at the shops pictured here and guess what they had in common. Here’s a clue. The photographs were all taken before 1994.
Well the answer is that they didn’t open on a Sunday. Or they might have done if they only sold carrots.
Or if they were small, although one person’s idea of small could be quite different to another’s.
We can, however, be completely sure that it was illegal for large shops, department stores and supermarkets to open on a Sunday until the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 came into force.
Except that most large shops, department stores and supermarkets did open on a Sunday and had done so in dribs and drabs from the mid 1970s onwards.
It was illegal and they were fined for opening. But as the profit they made was bigger than the fines they had to pay, they threw open their doors and welcomed in customers anyway.
Due to the arcane nature of English law, it was illegal to sell a Bible on a Sunday, but OK to buy a magazine off the top shelf. As has been mentioned it was fine to sell carrots, but not other vegetables.
Fish and chip shops were not allowed to open, but a Chinese Take-away could do so perfectly legally provided it sold nothing else on the day except fish and chips.
And if all that sounds a confused mess, it was. In an attempt to bring clarity to bear on the reigning confusion, a Bill to allow Sunday trading was put before Parliament in 1984. And was promptly thrown out.
An unlikely coalition of politicians from all sides opposed the idea on grounds that it posed a threat to family life, workers’ rights, religious principles and much else.
And so it remained that nobody was sure if they were committing a crime by buying or selling on the Sabbath and it wasn’t until this week in 1997 that shops were officially and generally allowed to trade on Sundays.
Licensing laws were equally baffling back then and especially so on Sundays.
In 1960s Gloucester, for example, pubs could only remain open until 10pm, whereas in Cheltenham pints could be pulled until 10.30pm.
This gave rise to a weekly one way convoy from city to town of tipplers wishing to avail themselves of an extra 30 minutes’ drinking time.
But back to shops. Macfisheries in Stroud, like wet fish shops everywhere, couldn’t offer their fishy wares for sale on a Sunday, yet were one of the few to open their doors on Good Friday.
This was traditionally a bank holiday, but by convention eating fish rather than red meat on a Friday, especially Good Friday, meant that you could pop into Macfisheries for half a pound of halibut, while pork chops were universally unavailable.
Robinson’s grocery store in Cheltenham’s Hewlett Road might have been too large a small shop to open on Sunday. So a box of cornflakes was out of the question, but as you can see from the photo a packet of cigarettes could be obtained from the machine on the wall outside.
Peter Richards fashion shops in Gloucester and Cheltenham, as the advert tells us, were “Specially created to bring quality at lower prices to you”. But not on a Sunday.
So you might think that the Sunday Trading Act of 1994 overnight meant people knew where they were about shopping on Sundays. But then you’d be forgetting that plenty of shops continued not to open seven days a week.
In fact many closed for half a day in the week as well.
Until the 1970s shops in Cheltenham closed on a Wednesday afternoon and some, such as The Famous and Madam Wright’s pulled down the blinds on a Saturday afternoon as well.
In contrast in Gloucester, Thursday was half day closing until there was a general move, prompted by the Bon Marche department store, to stay open on Thursday afternoon, but close all day Monday instead.
Now, of course, shops can open all the time. Oh, just a minute. Thinking back over the last 12 months…