Nor Thy Manservant, Nor Thy Maidservant

Eight weeks? If we let this pass, then it will be forever.

Sunday trading was the only ever Commons defeat of Margaret Thatcher's Premiership. Her massively corporate-funded neoliberal heirs are determined to declare it a free-for-all, and the little people can be compelled to work seven-day weeks as surely as they are compelled to work on what are supposed to be public holidays, something made all the easier by the fact that we have holidays for nothing instead commemorations of historic events, or Patron Saints, or anything in any sense real like that.

Small shops, defining and defined by families and local communities, would be driven down even further. The ban on large supermarkets opening on Easter Sunday is already a dead letter in many places due to the wilful failure of those whom we pay to enforce it. The Major Government lost by only one vote when it tried to force shop assistants and delivery drivers to work on Christmas Day. After this, that.

Only one party is in a position to hold the line, and it happens to be the party to which USDAW, which organised so successfully against Thatcher on this very point, is affiliated now as then. If that party does so, then it will deserve the electoral support of everyone who wants to keep Sunday special, and of everyone who favours businesses that define and are defined by families and local communities. What excuse would anyone of such mind have for withholding that support? I can see none.