Andrew Vine: Nation of shoppers that’s open all hours

Yet it’s not so very long ago that such routine bits of shopping were out of the question, as Britain’s high streets remained firmly shuttered on Sundays, with little other than corner shops, garden centres and DIY stores open.

It will be 20 years ago on Thursday that the trading laws were liberalised to allow shops to open on Sunday, bringing about a quiet social revolution in the British way of life.

Silent town and city centres went the way of Wednesday half-day closing and pubs shutting their doors at 3pm, though not without a fight.

From the perspective of 2014, when Sunday shopping has become commonplace for millions, the furore surrounding the decision in 1994 can seem hard to understand.

But a furore there was. Eight years earlier in 1986, Margaret Thatcher – in her pomp and used to getting her own way in most things – was defeated in Parliament over Sunday opening with opposition coming from her own MPs.

The arguments they deployed so powerfully then, that Sunday opening would be an affront to family life and affect church attendance, were hardly less potent by 1994, being bolstered by trades union concerns over staff being exploited and forced to work on their traditional day of rest.

This time, legislation went through, not least because the Government was under legal pressure from large retailers challenging the outdated 1950 Shops Act which prohibited much Sunday opening.

It’s amusing to recall the effect that Sunday opening had on shoppers. Customers who routinely used the same supermarket week in and out on a Saturday were to be seen wandering around aisles they knew like the back of their hands wide-eyed in wonder, simply because it was a Sunday.

The fears over the consequences of opening failed to materialise. Family life did not collapse, and there seemed no perceptible effect on – already declining – church attendance. Nor were workers exploited. And 20 years on, it’s time to look again at Sunday trading because we’re a country not so much of shopkeepers, as Napoleon had it, but of shoppers addicted to spending.

There are continuing restrictions on the hours when large stores can open, and the Conservative MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, is pressing for them to be abolished. The restrictions were lifted temporarily in London during the 2012 Olympics, and just as Sunday opening in 1994 did not hurt British society, nor did those couple of months.

If any restrictions were to remain, compulsory closing on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday would be an appropriate mark of respect for this country’s Christian tradition.

But apart from that, the time is overdue for a complete liberalisation of Sunday trading, not least to give high street retailers a fighting chance against online competition.

Twenty years ago, few, if any, of the shoppers wandering wide-eyed around a supermarket on a Sunday for the first time could have foreseen the growth of the internet. Continuing to compel a large store to close at 4pm while its customers can shop to their heart’s content online around the clock if they so desire is absurd.

Britain’s attitude to shopping has changed, even over the past two decades, as – economic slumps aside – the country has become generally more affluent and perhaps more self-indulgent as well.

Shopping was once about necessities, but now it has become a leisure activity as well. This can be criticised as showing a lack of imagination, but it’s a fact nevertheless, and crucially all those impulse buys are helping to keep people in jobs and put food on their tables.

That addiction to shopping has, ironically, turned on its head the argument offered 20 years ago that Sunday opening would ruin the day of rest. For so many people now, the chance to browse around the shops at leisure amounts to a rest from the sometimes frenetic pace of life.

To look back on those pre-1994 days of shuttered Sundays is to see a different, and not necessarily better, Britain. The 20th anniversary is an appropriate moment to let the shops have their head, as well as the people who enjoy them.