Freedom for a day

By Michael Merrick

I remember some while back when an elderly relative of mine, known for her unflinching pragmatism and somewhat unsympathetic view of religion, suddenly declared to me that she thought the introduction of Sunday trading had been a step backwards. People had always managed without it in the past, she maintained, and families don’t seem to get together on Sundays anymore like they used to, she said, and it’s such a shame when Mr. such-and-such has to work on a Sunday and have Wednesday off, even though his kids are at school on a Wednesday whereas they’re sat at home bored on a Sunday.

There is a truth in those words and it seems to me that, of the three reasons she gave, it is the last amongst them that best symbolises our age. For in our brave new capitalist world it is the weak who are trodden on, and who find themselves most at the mercy of the system they have little choice but to service.

For those who have experienced bouts of unemployment, you will probably know what I’m talking about. After months, perhaps years, of searching fruitlessly, you finally get an interview and are inevitably asked the question (if you’re lucky that is – others interviewers will brazenly announce it as a condition of employment); ‘are you willing to work on a Sunday?’ Only, the question isn’t really a question at all, in that you don’t really have a choice, because you know fine well that if you answer ‘no’ then you’ll be out on your ear and back to the job centre, explaining to your family and friends that you missed out, that they’ll have to keep on scraping by, and all for the sake of some silly selfish notion of wanting a day that you might share with your family each week.

Obviously some will maintain that this is freedom, that people have the choice whether to work on a Sunday or not (legally protected), and that choice should be theirs to make, not that of the state. Only, quite often, there is no such choice, at least not for those at the bottom of the ladder – their freedom dissolved when the state ceased to protect it. What is really happening here, then, is the exploitation of those in too vulnerable a position to resist it, usually by those who benefit the most from the arrangement, be it the capitalist or the consumer.

Now of course, uttering such words will be provoke derision from a certain caste, usually those lucky enough to be in a position where they don’t have to work on a Sunday, or who see themselves as far too sophisticated to embrace ideas that have such a heavy scent of religionist superstition to them. Indeed, in the name of ‘progressive’ thought they would actively oppose such notions on precisely those grounds, condemned by association, regardless of the benefits of the idea.

Which leads me to the Sabbath. Because the inconvenient fact is that the Sabbath, as it used to be known, was a stick in the mud that resisted this tide and protected the most vulnerable. It spoke of universal equality, a day set aside by a being greater than man who decreed that, for one day a week, no man should own any other. You want to talk about ‘equality’ then here it is: ‘slavery’ was abolished once every seven days, that much was guaranteed, and it was a day shared by all so that all could share in it, and so that all could be equal in respect of it. Today we have lost that essential egalitarianism, and freedom exists more authentically for the powerful than for the powerless. But only freedom similarly possessed by the weakest can be said to be truly universal. Instead, we have instituted seven-days-a-week slavery, and all in the name of freedom, be it of the market or the individual: and so the question remains, how progressive are we, really?

And so, as terribly unfashionable as it is to say this (I whisper it in hushed tones), we ought to bring back the sanctity of the Sabbath, or at least construct something similar. Not to please the religious, or to enforce Christianity upon the unwilling, but merely as one way of extending protection to those who lose out the most in the current status-quo. This, undoubtedly, would be a truly progressive approach.