Sunday trading out but law flouted

Press, 11 July 1980, Page 7

Sunday trading out but law flouted

From KEN COATES in London While New Zealand prepares for Saturday trading, Britain continues with its farcical Sunday shopkeeping law which is riddled with anomalies and which is openly flouted in many areas. As the law in Britain stands, a mother may buy a bottle of gin on Sundays, but not milk powder for er baby’s bottle; a fresh peach but not canned peaches. She may sit down and eat a meal in a public restaurant but not buy a Sunday joint to cook at home unless the shopkeeper, for religious reasons, closes on Saturday instead of Sunday. She may buy a newspaper but not a birthday card from the local newsagent, aspirins but not tights from the chemist. These contradictions have resulted in some local councils turning a blind eye to the regulations. London’s oldest department store, Whiteley’s of

Queensway, which paid for full-page newspaper advertisements of bargains to be offered on its first Sunday opening, remained closed on June 29 after the Westminster City Council had served a lastminute injunction on it to stop it from opening. However opposite the imposing granite facade of Whiteley's a dry cleaner’s, a car-accessory shop, a liquor store, four boutiques, a stationer’s, a bookshop, and a large departmental chemist’s shop were all open on the same day. This was to say nothing of the rest of Queensway: 18 restaurants, 15 clothes shops, three supermarkets, four chemists, four newsagents, four take-away food shops, three Bureau de Change offices, three pubs, two American icecream shops, a bookshop, a record shop, and a jewellery shop were all open for business. Whiteley’s staff had reserved items in their Sunday sale for disappointed customers who had come from all over London and

who had gathered on the pavement outside. The latest attempt to change the shops Act, 1950, failed in Parliament the week before Whiteley’s attempted Sunday opening. Mr Clement Freud, a Liberal M.P., was refused leave by 121 votes to 79 to introduce a bill to relax Sunday trading laws.