7 DECEMBER 1991, Page 5

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THE ENGLISH SUNDAY

The grand remonstrance against the outbreak of Sunday trading by our leading retailers, delivered in a 'private' letter to the Prime Minister from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Hume, the Modera- tor of the Free Church Federal Council and the Chief Rabbi, will not be as easy to Ignore as such admonitions tend to be when Issued by the Established Church alone. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister should courteously but firmly resist them. Their argument that it is surely wholly unaccept- able for those who seek profit by illegal action to be allowed to pursue it without c ensure' would be more impressive if shops In cathedrals and churches all over the country were not involved every Sunday in Illegal trading. The current advance Involves some 1,000 supermarkets and 1,000 other high street stores; but, on a nor- mal Sunday, around 10,000 shops and stores are open, selling goods which are technically prohibited: all of them are seek- ing that terrible thing, profit 'by illegal action'.

Even when the law is clear, it has never necessarily been immoral to ignore it where It is clearly obsolete or ridiculous: if it were not so, why are Dr Carey and his support- ers not pressing for the enforcement of the Public Worship Regulation Act (1875), under which it is still an offence punishable by imprisonment for a Church of England clergyman to place candles on the altar, genuflect, or use incense? In the present case, the law is not only obsolete and ridiculous: it is unknowable. The House of Lords itself has declared that it does not know what the law is: how then can it be immoral to disobey it?

The four religious leaders offer a differ- ent argument when they protest that 'the

flouting of any widespread and deliberate II. outing of the 1950 Act will undermine the Institution of a nationally observed day'. But the special observance of Sunday has nothing to do with the regulation of trade. Sunday is .kept far more devoutly in Scot- land or Ireland, where Sunday trading is w_ Idespread; in many parts of the United Slates, the Sunday churchgoing of 60-70 Per cent of the population co-exists with a complete deregulation of trade.

Even in England, the special character of Sunday has never been dependent on trad- ing legislation: indeed, for most of our his- tory, no such legislation has been effectively in force. The 1950 Act was intended as a temporary measure consolidating a mass of late-Victorian and early-20th-century legis- lation; the 1677 Act (repealed in 1950) was generally ignored for most of the 18th and 19th centuries.

There have, in fact, been two quite differ- ent and opposed English traditions of Sun- day observance. The Puritan Sunday of the 17th century disintegrated during the 18th century; the 'Victorian Sunday' — the 'tra- ditional English Sunday' of the modern imagination — was only imposed on the nation as a whole after decades of intense popular resistance (sometimes involving rioting and mass demonstrations).

For much (and probably most) of our his- tory, the 'English Sunday' has been far more like the 'Continental Sunday' of our fond imagination than the restricted and, in many places, somewhat gloomy day which was general until recently.

Today, the traditional English Sunday the genuine article — is once more assert- ing itself: a day for freedom of worship, freedom for leisure, freedom to conduct such trade as the people require and free- dom to work for those who wish to do so. All this is, however, under threat. The pre- sent virtual suspension of the law is the result of a reference to the European Court of Justice rendered necessary by the craven failure of this Government to legislate.

But Europe — in this as in other matters — is unlikely for long to support the English way of life. The restrictionist pres- sure group, Keep Sunday Special (KSS), has been busy in Brussels, lobbying mem- bers of the European Parliament on behalf of the German proposals to impose the dour Teutonic Sunday on happier lands. This effectively disposes of the claims of KSS to be concerned to defend the 'English Sunday' against the encroachments of those concerned only with profit: the Germans wish to restrict the Sunday trade of others principally because they themselves might suffer from the competition. As for KSS itself, it is controlled by a small group of fundamentalist Sabbatarians who have dis- guised their organisation's unEnglish and puritanical character by assembling a dis- parate coalition of churchmen, trade union- ists and others who are mostly un-aware of the group's underlying tendency.

The defence of the re-emerging English Sunday ought to be part of Mr Major's brief at Maastricht. Here at home, he should announce that he is preparing a bill (to be enacted shortly after the election), which would combine protection of the rights of those who do not wish to work on Sundays with a generous measure of liberty for those who wish to trade. In Europe, he should make it clear that he will veto any attempt in Brussels to override this legisla- tion: for here, as clearly as anywhere else on the European battlefield, the English- man's libertieg are at stake.