England Moves to Change Law on Sunday Shopping

“Your Sunday is about to be hijacked,” the leaflet says, with a spread of make-believe bullet holes across the page to illustrate the point.

Its authors are the Pro-Sunday Coalition, one of several groups trying to keep alive centuries-old laws banning most types of trading in England on the Christian Sabbath. The English Sunday, they say, is not for sale.

Under government-sponsored legislation now before Parliament, shops will be allowed to trade all day, every day, without restriction. If passed, it will mean the end of one of Britain’s strangest legal tangles.

The 1950 Shops Act makes Sunday shopping illegal, with some notable exceptions. Its origins go back at least as far as 1781. Critics call it out of date, ill drafted and unworkable.

Under these laws one may purchase whiskey on a Sunday but not dried milk, aspirin but not toothpaste, flowers but not flowering plants.

You may buy hay for your horse but not pet food for your dog. Sunglasses are permitted, but only for medical purposes.

These are extreme examples of the effects of the Shops Act, which aimed in part to restrict Sunday selling to perishable goods and items needed in emergencies.

Moves to change the ancient laws have sparked off a controversy across the country with heated debate in Parliament and a host of books, pamphlets and opinion polls.

“Without the traditional Sunday, life would be a plateau, like days without sleep or life without death,” Hugh Montefiore, bishop of Birmingham, told the House of Lords.

The bishop is a patron of the most recent and most powerful pressure group, the “Keep Sunday Special” campaign, which unites Anglican and Roman Catholic church leaders, trade unions, major retailers and politicians of all main political parties.

Another group, the Lord’s Day Observance Society, says it has distributed a million leaflets against the move.

Supporters of change look north to Scotland, where Sunday shopping has been deregulated for the last 40 years. Even pubs, which in England must close their doors to drinkers during the afternoon, stay open all day in Scotland.

They point out that the law is broken on every Sunday throughout the England, with street markets, gardening stores and furniture warehouses among the main offenders.

Even the church is not entirely averse to a little Sunday shopping. A recent survey of English cathedral gift shops found almost half were open on Sunday, leading to accusations that the dean of Canterbury himself was encouraging an offense.

“We actually bought books, a tie and a record,” a Consumers Assn. spokesman said of a Sunday visit to Canterbury cathedral. “As well as our crowning glory--a book on the pubs of Kent.”