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UK Retail Price Maintenance Regulations?
In the 60's Wilson's Government ended these regulations which had allowed manufacturors/suppliers to fix the prices their goods were retailed at. Anyone remember exactly when this happened? My interest is, as a record collector, I note that HMV's ASD & CSD issues had 'sold subject to RPM etc' on early labels but only a tiny handful (watching eBay listings suggests about 1 in 1000) of the third 'postage stamp' type labels had this on indicating that the first 'PS' design was made obselete by the ending of the Regulations. Just for info I've listed the (stereo) Label types below:-
ASDs:1st - cream with gold rim: 2nd red with the dog in a semicircle and His Master's Voice in a white lettered arch at the top: 3rd - red, full colour postage stamp sized 'dog' as above; 4th - Red with black and white PS and a white rim to the label: 5th - as 4th but coloured postage stamp and 6th - similar to 2nd but the HMV lettering is in gold. CSD 1st is as ASD cream but pale green, 2nd is black.
I have some old records ( from 1929 on) and till the early `30s ,they have a copyright stamp stuck on for 3/4d(0.003125p) with the name of the copyright holder i.e. "Francis,Day&Hunter","Campbell Connelly","Keith Prowse",which were later incorporated into the label.There is also a warning on some against selling below the fixed price. RSP on most products was ended earlier than you state ,as I believe that Edward Heath was a Minister responsible for bringing the measure in. We still had Purchase Tax ,though, which meant that ,for example, on a car, tax in the price was equal to a V.A.T. rate of 70%. Happy days.
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