We must pray that the Isle of Lewis Presbyterians win their battle with the barbarians of Tesco

With God on their side, they might be able to beat off the scourge of the modern era of convenience

It’s like a plotline from a classic Ealing comedy. The Presbyterians of the Isle of Lewis are battling to stop the Tesco in Stornoway from opening on a Sunday. I’m picturing wizened, bearded men, dressed in thick oatmeal-coloured jumpers, their wives in long black cloaks clutching and dragging bedraggled, toothless children behind them. They stride up the rain-lashed street towards the town hall for a meeting with the besuited southerners who touched down in their helicopter, briefcases in hand, just minutes previously.
Perhaps they’ll need a translator to help the folk of Tesco comprehend the thick local dialect; an accent as forceful as a gale on a stormy night.
It’s a hell of a showdown on this large rock of the Outer Hebrides archipelago, a place of rain and wind, of seals and golden eagles, of weaving, crofting and peat cutting.
And we should root for these people, direct descendants of 9th-century Vikings, as they fight a modern-day incursion – a supermarket hoping to destroy this last bastion of Sabbatarianism.
Of some 3,000 stores across the UK, perhaps only one doesn’t open on a Sunday – something that vexes the men and women at Tesco HQ, in their colourless boardroom behind the gleaming glass and steel of Shire Park, Welwyn Garden City. Who are these Norse brutes denying them additional revenue by the flat sands of the Atlantic Ocean?
So far, the Tesco campaign has been successful. They have lobbied the folk of Western Isles Council, doubtless finding some affinity in the 1970s building on Sandwick Road, whose brutish architecture makes your average Tesco look like a fairytale castle.
The council, formally known in Scottish Gaelic as Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, has ruled in favour of Tesco, giving them permission to open seven days a week and to sell alcohol on each of those days.
But the battle is not won because Tesco must consult its Stornoway staff and while this happens, the Christian fundamentalists are raising their game.
Of course, those in favour of Sunday opening point to the convenience offered; that this is the bright and fabulous modern world. That this democratising of shopping – this accessibility – enables families and individuals too busy and fraught to shop during the week to do it on a Sunday.
But, more than that, it’s simply a sign of civilisation to be able to get what you want when you want, be it fags, booze, a pot of taramasalata or a week’s worth of shopping, your trolley topped with fabric conditioner and loo paper.
And the Isle of Lewis is backward, lagging by some 30 years precisely; the Sunday Trading Act was ushered in by John Major’s government in 1994. It had been a convoluted and complicated battle, the new law stamping out bizarre anomalies that had crept into legislation ever since the Shops Act of 1950. Some shops of small size could open, for example, but while they could sell ice cream and cigarettes, they couldn’t sell frozen fish fingers. 
And successive Tory administrations did not get an easy ride. Attempted reform in 1986 saw Mrs Thatcher’s only parliamentary defeat.
So this fight feels like old news and no one can quite believe there remains a stronghold where the ‘Keep Sunday Special’ flags still fly, while the rest of us revel in the badge of ‘Make Sunday Just Like Every Other Damn Day of the Week’.
I was reminded of this last weekend when I made a rare trip to London on Sunday. I could see and sense absolutely no difference between that day and my usual metropolis foray on a Wednesday and it rather broke my heart.
I remember the quietness of Sundays from my childhood of the 1970s and early 80s. There was very little traffic and the Bayswater Road was lined with stalls and art works tied to the railings.
And we did that arcane thing of going to church. Which is still a wonderful thing to do in London on a Sunday, especially if you’re a country bumpkin and you realise you can go to any church (I’m talking from Anglican experience), be it The Queen’s Chapel in St James’s or St George’s Campden Hill, get a full congregation and a choir (which makes your 14 oldies and an ‘interregnum lay reader’ in the countryside feel comparatively gloomy).
But it was these sorts of services that we dragged ourselves to. And the enforced denial of retail therapy pressed an altered pace into our lives.
Convenience, from retail to tech, has been the creeping scourge of the modern era. We can shop, work, eat, drink and communicate relentlessly without ceasing, with Christmas the only day left of any difference. And even then we are now solicited by Tweet, Thread, Insta to attend the sales on Boxing Day morning.
The seemingly common-sense initiative to release ourselves from the old-fashioned purdah of sacrosanct Sunday is one of many steps towards a world of obesity and mental anguish.
The Rev Kenneth Stewart of the Reformed Presbyterian Church summoned the spirit of the Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell, made famous in Chariots of Fire, who stated: “The Sabbath is His. And I, for one, intend to keep it that way.”
“It’s a feature of life here,” said Rev Stewart, “that even those who are not committed Christians or churchgoers still value the distinctive nature of the Lord’s Day.”
Let’s hope, with God on their side, they can beat off the barbarians of Tesco. Although victory comes with a downside. Because having looked longingly at those sandy beaches, the fresh air and nice jumpers, we’ll all be making a beeline to that Sabbatarian paradise.