ANOTHER VOICE
Too many Donalds in pursuit of the Sunday duck
AUBERON WAUGH
The newest clerical Donald to emerge and make a nuisance of himself is the Revd Donald English, Moderator of the Free Church General Council, who has some- how persuaded St Donald a Duckett's successor in the See of Canterbury, Archbishop Runcie, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Car- dinal Hume, to join him in protesting against the Shops Bill. I wonder whether this Revd Donald English is by any chance related to the editor of the Daily Mail, who is called 'Sir David English'. If so, it begins to look even more like a sinister conspira- cy. It will be sad if Runcie and Hume emerge as a Tweedledum and Tweedledee comic turn, walking around hand in hand and publicly hugging each other on every occasion. Neither, on form, should be much interested in Revd Donald English's preoccupations.
In fact this Low Church Sabbatarianism has virtually no support in the New Testa- ment, and precious little in the Pharisaic tradition of Judaism to which it might claim to belong. The rule that non-Christians should abstain from servile labour on Sundays was introduced by Constantine, when Christianity became the religion of the state, out of fear that the Christian might suffer inconvenience from his heath- en rivals in trade if he spent most of Sunday in church, as Christians were ex- pected to do in those days. It was nothing to do with natural law.
But the worst Donald of the lot is surely the editor of the Observer, Mr Donald Trelford, who must bear responsibility for the leader which appeared in his news- paper on this subject last Sunday. While agreeing that 'the present rules for Sunday trading (and indeed for shop opening hours generally) are an illogical muddle', it asked if anyone really suffered from them. The measure would disturb 'the entire pattern of a mass of ordinary working people's lives', it said, doubting whether there was `a genuine groundswell of demand for reform . . . even among the retailers them- selves'. Next came a pi-jaw about 'the Government's particular obligations to protect the weak and defend the vulner- able . . . shop workers'.
Most annoying of all, however, was the preamble to this sermon.
It is always a bad practice in politics for any government to resolve to ride roughshod over deeply held convictions, even if they may be held only by a minority; and the offence is compounded when such action is taken, as has become increasingly apparent in this case, purely on the grounds of some abstract dogma.
The blinding dishonesty of this waffle is apparent in the use of 'deeply held convic- tions' to describe the posture of a handful of Sabbatarian loonies against the 'abstract dogma' of those who would like to be able to shop on Sundays. In fact deeply held convictions have very little to do with it. The real opposition comes from retailers who are reluctant to increase their work- force or too lazy to reorganise their shifts.
By the time people are my age they tend to have their lives organised, but young working people — in particular those who are unmarried, or have working wives have their entire existence bedevilled by the present arrangement: nothing can be delivered at their homes because deliveries only take place in working hours on week- days; they have to take an entire day off work (and lose a day's holiday) to admit someone to mend the cooker or service the boiler. Most of the shops close as soon as they come out of work, so that nearly all shopping must be done either in the lunch hour (which means going without luncheon — surely one of the cruellest deprivations imaginable) or on Saturdays, when every- body crowds into the shops causing endless misery and spreading disease.
The real opposition to this obvious and necessary reform, as I say, comes from retailers. A vote for them in the House of Commons is a vote for the general idleness and inertia which are rapidly making Bri- tain one of the most difficult and un- pleasant places to live. The only result of all the early closing and Sunday closing is that more people spend more time watch- ing television. Deeply held convictions, fiddlesticks. Nobody, I am convinced, real- ly enjoys watching television very much, not even the vulnerable shop workers. People demand of Mr Kinnock that he should purge his parliamentary party of the Militant Tendency to convince us of his leadership qualities. I should have thought it an absolute touchstone of Mrs Thatcher's credibility that she should purge her par- liamentary party of this Inert Tendency, comprising all those 68 Members who voted against the measure on Monday's second reading — not by anything s° dramatic as withdrawing the whip, but simply by informing their constituency associations that they are no longer accept- able as Conservative candidates.
No doubt a few of them are inspired by such waffling opinions as might, in Ae political context, pass for deeply helu, convictions. Their fate should be somewhat crueller. There are those like my friend Richard West who sometimes, late in the evening, advance the view that compulsory female circumcision would solve many O the problems of contemporary Britain, but at least he has had the sense not to stand up in Parliament and proclaim it as a deePlY held conviction. What the Sabbatariaus seek to impose on us is no less bizarre. It has nothing whatever to do with the Christian tradition. Ever since Jesus proc- laimed (Mark ii 27), 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,' It has been accepted by mainstream Christ- ians (as it has by Liberal Jews) that the injunction to rest on the Sabbath (as opposed to keeping it holy) was inspired by temporal rather than by spiritual consid- erations. Everybody should rest one day a week, as a matter of physical convenience and economic efficiency. Christians, if they wish to remain part of any particular sacramental group, should go to church 0° Sundays, just as Jews should go to thee synagogue on Saturdays, Muslims to th" mosque on Fridays. It is no longer cone" nient or even possible for everybody tore on the same day, if it ever was, but the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Those who seek to impose their erroneous understanding of what is in any case a minority enthusiasm must be jumped upon, even if this means hounding them out of public life. Has Mrs Thatcher the necessary leadership qualities?
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