A Tesco store in Weybridge, Britain, in a July 6, 2023, file photo. The Scottish town of Stornoway is in an uproar over plans by the manager of a Tesco supermarket to open the store on Sundays.Peter Nicholls/Reuters
Sunday shopping has become almost second nature for most Canadians, but for the 8,000 residents in the Scottish town of Stornoway, keeping the Lord’s Day holy is so engrained in the local culture that they used to lock up the swings in playgrounds on Sundays.
Now this community in the Outer Hebrides is in an uproar over plans by the manager of the Tesco supermarket to open the store on Sundays. The Stornoway outlet is the only one in the United Kingdom that isn’t open seven days a week.
More than 1,500 people have signed a petition to block the move and church leaders have launched a campaign to urge Tesco’s executives to reconsider.
“The community has historically been a deeply Christian one and it has also observed the Lord’s Day very carefully as a communal day of rest. And I suppose in some ways that’s what distinguishes it,” said Rev. Kenneth Stewart of the Reformed Presbyterian Church who is among those opposed to the opening.
Mr. Stewart said his primary motivation was Biblical, citing God’s Fourth Commandment: ”Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” But he also said many non-believers have told him that having one day a week to rest without distraction is vital in today’s fast-paced world.
“We genuinely believe that people’s well-being is at stake,” he said. “When there is genuine communal rest you can feel the difference. And so many of us on the island don’t want to lose that.”
Christian Davies, the Tesco manager, said he’s confidant he can balance the needs of customers while respecting local customs. “While shopping on a Sunday is not for everyone, a store that is open seven days a week would significantly improve the shopping experience for all customers by offering choice,” he said in a statement.
But he’s up against Stornoway’s deep Christian fundamentalism.
Mr. Stewart said it wasn’t that long ago that all parks and playgrounds were locked every Saturday at dusk and that most residents shied away from hanging their laundry on the line on Sunday. “People would not do washing and stuff of that kind. And you were expected, if you became a part of the community, to fall in line. And people did. Normally when people go to a community to live in it, they don’t want to start annoying it.”
The golf course and the recreation centre are still closed on Sundays, but the tradition has come under threat in recent years as the church’s influence has waned.
Despite protests from religious groups, the first regular Sunday flights to the island began in 2002 and the ferry service launched a Sunday sailing seven years later.
In 2018, the An Lanntair arts centre began showing movies on Sundays to a packed house, and faced only a handful of picketers. Organizers said they found “that opening the arts centre as an inclusive and welcoming community space on Sundays has the potential to contribute to the health and well-being of people across our community.”
Still, there have been difficult moments over the issue in recent years.
In 2017, Leona Rawlinson received a Bible and a letter from the Lord’s Day Observance Society after she opened her small tweed shop, called Tweedtastic, on Sunday. “We are concerned for the spiritual and eternal as well as temporal consequences of such actions of Sunday opening, and do not believe that lasting blessing or profit will follow,” the letter said.
The National Secular Society, which supported Ms. Rawlinson, alleged at the time that she faced intimidation and harassment from some locals. Her partner, Martin Flett, added that some churchgoers were organizing a boycott of the shop. “Both Leona and I are spiritual people but we don’t have the same belief systems as the hard-liners up here,” he said.
The local government, the Western Isles Council, has given Tesco permission to open the store seven days a week but it’s not clear when Sunday shopping would start.
Mr. Stewart said his group will keep up the pressure because he believes that if Tesco goes ahead with its plan, the town’s other grocery store, a Co-op, will follow suit. “The opening of supermarkets, I think, is the single most destructive act to our communal Sabbath because the pressure put on people to work and shop and so on is really quite huge.”
He’s not sure how many of the town’s residents support his cause, and he knows that many people believe that the choice of whether to shop on Sundays should be left to individuals. “At the end of the day, we rely on the will of the community to keep what they have,” he said.