Metrication in The United Kingdom - Assessment of The British Metrication Programme

Assessment of The British Metrication Programme

When the Metrication Board published its White Paper, the journal New Scientist, sensing a lack of urgency in the minister's handling of the issue, voiced criticism of the government's handling of the metrication, in particular the government's refusal to use its purchasing power to push the metrication process it quoted one metricationalist as saying " is not firming things up at all. It will turn us into a dual country".

Studies of the British metrication programme included two by US government agencies – NASA in October 1976 and the National Bureau of Standards in April 1979. Both reports noted that the British metrication programme lacked leadership from government. This manifest itself in many ways including:

1. The failure to appoint the Metrication Board at the start of the metrication programme meant that industry had to take the lead in a programme that affected everybody and did not have the machinery to implement metrication in, especially, the retail sector.
2. The failure of government to provide funding – much of the initial work was funded by industry itself.
3. The failure to provide a "champion" for metrication – such a role fell outside the remit of the Metrication Board.
4. The belief that the programme could be accomplished purely by voluntary means – both reports highlighted the need for appropriate legislation to keep the programme on track.

These sentiments were echoed in the final report of the Metrication Board.

In 2000, after the deadline for the cessation of selling loose produce by imperial units had passed, certain traders continued to sell produce from their market stalls in pounds and ounces. They were variously prosecuted for using unlawful scales, giving short measure and failing to display unit price per kilogram. Five such traders, who became known as the Metric Martyrs, appealed to the High Court, but lost their case and in July 2002 were refused leave to appeal to the House of Lords. The Metric Martyrs then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the basis that their human rights had been violated, but in February 2004 that court declared that no violation had occurred. Shortly after losing his ECHR appeal Steve Thoburn, one of the Metric Martyrs, died at the age of thirty-nine following a heart attack.

The involvement of the European Commission led metrication to be linked in public debate with Euroscepticism, and traditionally Eurosceptic parts of the British press often exaggerating or inventing the extent of enforced metrication. Example stories include the Daily Star, which on 17 January 2001 claimed that beer would soon have to be sold by the litre in pubs, something not demanded in any EU directive.

Reaction to the UK Metric Association report A Very British Mess (2004), the executive summary of which was published in Science in Parliament, was mixed – the Daily Telegraph, put forward the proposition that the UKMA's assertion of hostility or indifference by the British public to the metric system was due to the lack of cultural empathy rather than it being "Foreign or European" while the Economist said that retreat was impossible and the current impasse costly".

A Ipsos MORI telephone survey conducted in September 2007 for The Sun newspaper, entitled "Northern Rock, Metric Measurements And The EU Constitutional Treaty" found significant opposition to metrication in the sample questioned when asked "How strongly would you support and oppose Britain switching to use entirely metric measurements, rather than continuing to use traditional units?": The opinion breakdown showed that the greatest variation in opinion was between tabloid and broadsheet readers rather than age, social class or voting intention.