The shop closing day issue in Watford was thrown right into the laps of the traders by two speakers at the Chamber of Commerce Festival luncheon on Wednesday.

“If we are to survive, let alone flourish, as a shopping centre, we cannot afford to lock out our customers on Wednesday afternoons,” the chairman of Clements, Mr Richard Edmonds, told a record number of businessmen.

“No other industry I know suddenly downs tools and walks out at lunchtime on Wednesday,” Mr Edmonds said.

The Mayor of Watford, Alderman J. Stanley Oliver, who has long made a stand against haphazard “days off” said: “For heaven’s sake. Get this shop closing settled for once and for all. The shopping hours at present are chaotic and stupid.”

[From the Watford Observer of May 22, 1970]