ABSTRACT
That shopping is an integral part of life, and has been so for centuries, cannot be denied, whether we happily espouse the view of England taken by Smith as 'a nation of shopkeepers' or, by contrast, join Chesterton in shunning 'the awful shop'. During the early post-war decades changes in retailing appeared which increased in pace and scope until, in the '80s, they assumed such proportions as to attract the title 'retail revolution'. From the '50s, when the food retailers took their first steps along the supermarket path, the UK shopping scene became one of continuing and accelerating transformation. This chapter looks at the coincidental convergence of policies which helped to fuel the retail revolution. The relationship of retailing and regulatory policies is ever a subject of constant movement, its patterns forming and reforming in kaleidoscopic fashion.
