Metrication in the United Kingdom

'The key to Britain's future...'

How an Empire ends U.K. Politics

God Save the King?

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“”We can far better deal with those countries if we adopt the metric system. We cannot expect people whom we want to buy our goods to mess about working out our farthings, pence, shillings and pounds, and inches, feet and yards, when they can trade with many other countries on the metric system.

—Mont Follick, House of Commons debate on the Decimal System – 12 May 1953.

The first British moves towards the metric system was in the 19^th Century, when British industry noted the utility of having a system which allowed decimals, the growing importance of having accurate measures (key for precision engineering such as steam engines) and the fact that Europe (who owned much of the rest of the world at this point) was progressively adopting said system which meant it had all effectively 'gone metric' by 1914. There had in fact been semi-serious proposals for metrication in the UK from the early 1900s, but it was repeatedly kicked into the long grass due to two world wars and a generation of economic turmoil between them.

Introduction

It was the new Labour government under Harold Wilson which finally made the leap in 1965 as part of the 'white heat of technology' modernisation programme which also brought 'decimalisation' to Pound Sterling. The argument was mainly economic; that British cars, planes, computers and suchlike would sell better overseas if made in metric and that constantly having to convert between that and 'Imperial' was an unnecessary extra cost on firms. Perhaps slightly surprisingly, the incoming Conservative government under Edward Heath in 1970 decided to continue with both plans, despite having resisted it in opposition – most likely due to combination of sunk cost (a lot of British businesses had either already metrified or had organised to) and the fact it was a precondition for joining the European Economic Community which the British finally did in 1973 which later led to the urban myth that 'the EU' had forced the metric system on an otherwise unwilling public and nation, a line still peddled by crank groups like the 'British Weights and Measures Association'.

All well and good; except the spirit was half-hearted at best and faded quickly. Some of the sector 'transition periods' ended up being repeatedly extended (such as the sale of loose produce until 2000) while elements of the government itself effectively gave up entirely (which is why road speed limits are still in miles per hour). This led to confusing mishmashes where differing decisions would collide - such as fuel economy being judged in miles per gallon but said fuel sold in litres. Quite a lot of products were only 'soft metrified' (454g food jars, 227g coffee packets) while others were badly metrified ('inch' weight plates/bars vary between 25mm to 30mm) and some left unmetrified (trouser waistbands). British schools were supposed to 'go metric' in 1974 but with little actual enforcement, Imperial continued to be given primacy into the 1990s and the NHS simply can't make it's mind up whether patient statistics should be in feet/pounds or in metres/kilos which occasionally causes screw ups such as reading '6ft 2in' for '6.2cm' rather than 188cm.

Despite this, it can be said that even with vacillating/tepid official support, Britain has slowly metrified since 1970, with the bulk of the work achieved by 2010. The primary factor in this was globalisation – that when it came down to it, the world thinks in metric, makes in metric and trades in metric so the path of least effort is for you to convert to them rather than arduously convert their measures into yours (at your own cost, naturally) or demand (at extra unit cost) particular items in Imperial dimensions with little real benefit. Outside of particular corners (personal measurements, long distances, sale of milk and draft beer) Imperial is now effectively obsolete outside a few niche areas (such as the building trade) or products (precious metals, land) with the occasional Imperial-based system grandfathered in (such as shoe sizes, based on the ⅓-inch 'barleycorn') as you can survive just fine in the UK today without knowing how many hands are in a foot but not if you don't know how many millilitres are in a litre. The European Union itself kept on extending the British deadline for 'full metrication' until it finally gave up in 2007 when the Commission quit asking Brits to ditch the final Imperial holdouts, though it had to be noted the British Government was perfectly happy to enforce them on their own people but didn't want to spend billions in changing every road sign in the land. Perhaps the most obvious evidence that metric is 'winning the war' is via education - that younger Brits increasingly think in metric, with a few legacy units still in use (for example, stones and pounds for human weight) and otherwise scratching their heads when hearing that the weather is 'over 100 degrees' (Fahrenheit) or similar. The use of terms like 'yardstick' and 'give an inch and take a mile' shouldn't be mistaken with continued use of such units but more of examples of dead metaphors.

Opposition

Outside of the predictable resistance due to sheer laziness (as you'll have to learn an entirely new set of measures) or the feelings that a 'quintessential element of Britishness' was being lost there were legitimate concerns at the time; mainly that of stealth inflation and costs of conversion. The first was that the public feared businesses would use the confusion between the two systems to increase their margins on the sly; this was increased when decimalisation came in at the same time (you tell me, is 'sixteen new pence per square metre' the same as 'two shillings and sixpence per square yard'?). However, this was partly neutralised by the fact that the transition period (allowing for dual measure displays etc) was generous (perhaps too generous) which would show up the discrepancy. The other complaint was that industry not wishing to spend cash on converting; from getting metric scales to having to adjust their entire product lines; while there was no avoiding the former the latter was mainly avoided by allowing 'soft metrication' (so current plant could continue to be used) and continued sales in Imperial measures if requested. Some sectors got repeated delays; the fuel industry only ditched the gallon in 1980 when the price was about to go into three digits and their pump displays only had two.

Because this hurts my patriotic heart!

At first, resistance was led by a combination of the obtuse, wilfully ignorant and nostalgia fetishists but the movement started to make real headway after the upswing of Euroscepticism after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. Now, 'Brussels' was held to be the cause of 'the loss of British units', and a stubborn clinging onto them was held to be a sign of 'patriotism'. This belief gained traction into the late 1990s as the 'transition period' for loose produce and remaining foodstuffs expired… which led to the 'Metric Martyrs'.

The issue was simple. After 2000, shopkeepers had to display pricing with metric units and use metric-displaying certified scales when weighing them. Unlike what the 'martyrs' claim, there was no ban on also displaying pricing using Imperial measures and/or from selling 'a pound of potatoes', while traders have had to for centuries used officially-licensed scales. Said martyrs were done for using illegal scales, not displaying metric pricing or insisting in pricing via Imperial measures. Yes, a few people decided this was a molehill worth dying on, apparently – though it can be said they had also been radicalised by the likes of Daily Express, Daily Mail and The Sun screaming headlines about 'federal Europe' and 'save the Pound (Sterling)' and goaded on by a then little-known agitator named Nigel Farage and a crew from this tiny political party called UKIP who helped prolong the whole thing by helping fund lawyers and organising supportive demonstrations outside the courts.

The Eurosceptics mined this for all it was worth, with the usual suspects spending the next fifteen years declaring ad nauseam that 'Brussels' was 'going to ban pints', 'force UK to use kilometres' while right-wing journalists constantly bitched about a topic which less and less of the wider public really gave a toss about, like Richard Littlejohn (good job you're safe from them in Florida), Peter Hitchens (I hear you, you hate 'modernity') and Charles Moore (when was the last time you had to plough a field with oxen, dear sir?). While it never got an eighth as large as the anti-metric campaigns in the USA, it was enough to gain a foothold in the 'Brexit coalition' and become a minor edge in the 'culture wars'. How minor? Well, as of writing the above-mentioned 'British Weights and Measures Association' hasn't seen worth publishing their newsletter for over two years and the 'Active Resistance to Metrication' group have a website which is so crap it proves Haig's Law to be correct (while modern in looks it has almost zero correct content, which makes it inferior to their old 'Web 1.0' site).

Our plucky band of Imperialists' hopes rose after 'Fweedom Day' (1^st Jan 2020 to everyone else) that their beloved measures would return, crowing happily when Edwardian cosplayer Jacob Rees-Mogg (at this point 'Minister of Brexit Opportunities') showed he thought it was grand to re-adopt a system that had been ditched before he'd been potty-trained, ordering a survey forthwith. Despite attempting to tune the study to fit their preconceptions and with other Tory blockheads championing the idea, this study didn't go well; businesses and educators alike were at a loss of where these 'benefits' were, engineers were strongly against and the public aroused enough to the point 99% of respondents were solidly against. Not much of a shock that the Ministry of Rishi Sunak (after dumping the pilot) quietly took the plan behind the shed and shot it after a suitable interval of taking over from the Johnson/Truss regime. Though unlikely because he actually cared, more that it was obvious this bit of culture-war posturing was making them look utterly ridiculous.

External links

• Metrication UK - Documenting the current level of British metrication efforts and past efforts.