This article by Alistair McConnachie appeared in the January 2000 issue of Sovereignty.

From 1 January 2000, excepting the pint for beer, cider and milk in returnable bottles, and the troy ounce for precious metals, anything and everything that requires to be weighed or measured for the purpose of sale must be measured and priced in metric. The government pretends to have negotiated the continuing use of imperial as a supplementary indication. However, providing additional information has always been at the discretion of the retailer and, providing it is accurate, it is no concern to the authorities. For the government to pretend this is a "concession" it has negotiated and granted, is deliberately misleading.

Up until now, traders were free to measure and price their goods in both metric and imperial, or only in metric, or only in imperial. Most small traders stayed with marking and selling in imperial only. This is what the customers understand and want. Now, these items must be measured and priced in metric. Traders are free to price the goods with imperial as a supplementary indication, but it will be quite impractical. This is expensive for traders and confusing for customers.

Customers will be able to make their request in imperial measures - but the sale must be made in metric. If a butcher prices in imperial only, weighs 1lb of mince on imperial scales and says, "Here is a pound of mince" then he will have committed a criminal act.

If enough traders ignore the law then the government will make itself look foolish. The DTI have admitted that a trader who gains an unfair competitive advantage for selling in imperial, could be prosecuted. Traders are compelled to obey a law allegedly for their own profit, but will be prosecuted if they are more successful by ignoring it! Small traders must stand together. Vivian Linacre of the British Weights and Measures Association has said that test cases will challenge the legality of the whole compulsory metrication process.

PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
was provided by Roger Scruton in The Times ("Stupidity Beyond Measure", 9/12/99): "Do weights and measures matter? Those who introduced the metric system - the French Revolutionaries - answered with an emphatic 'yes'. Weights and measures mediate our day-to-day transactions; hence they are imprinted with our sense of membership. They are symbols of the social order and distillations of our daily habits. The old measures were redolent, the Revolutionaries believed, of a hierarchical backward-looking society. They were muddled, improvised, and full of compromises. What was needed was a system expressive of the new social order, based on Reason, progress, discipline and the future. Since the decimal system is the basis of arithmetic, and since mathematics is the symbol of Reason and its cold imperatives, the decimal system must be imposed by force, in order to shake people free of their old attachments.

"The conflict of currencies therefore expressed a conflict both political and philosophical. The distinction between the imperial and the metric systems corresponds to the distinction between the reasonable and the rational, between solutions achieved through custom and compromise and those imposed by a plan. Muddled though the imperial measures may appear to those obsessed by mathematics, they are the produce of life. In ordinary transactions, measurement proceeds by dividing and multiplying, not by adding. It makes sense to divide a gallon into a half, a quart and a pint, or to have 16 ounces to the pound.

"The antiquity of these measures - like that of our old coinage, arbitrarily jettisoned in a previous fit of rationalism - is testimony to their common sense. But the most important fact about them is that they are ours. They are commemorated in our national literature and in our proverbs; they have shaped our eating and drinking habits; they are the lingua franca of all our books of recipes, all our manuals of gardening and husbandry and handicraft, and the subject matter of a thousand schoolbooks.

"The idea that we should be committing a crime by using them, and just because some foreign bureaucrat has said so, is such an offence to the sense of law and justice that we are surely under a moral obligation to go on using them nevertheless. If ever there were a case for civil disobedience, this is it.

"There is another and deeper reason to resist these mad imperatives. The French Revolutionaries believed that by changing weights and measures, calendars and festivals, street-names and landmarks, they could undermine the old and local attachments of the people, so as to conscript them behind their international purpose. The eventual result was Napoleon, who spread the metric system by force across the Continent. In a small way the same is being done to us. The effect of destroying our weights and measures will be not only to undermine the old local loyalties between shopkeeper and customer. It will be to destroy the small businesses that cannot afford the change. And we should ask who would really want such a result.

"The answer, it seems to me, is clear. The supermarkets are international players, who have a vested interest in the metric system, since it is applied in most of the countries from which they import their products. If the measures on which old and local businesses depend are criminalised, the supermarkets will score yet another advantage in their war on behalf of the global government that will do most for their profits. Is that what we want? Surely, it would have been nice of our dictators to ask us, before commanding us to change."

THE ADVANTAGES OF EACH SYSTEM
Metric is good for very small weights and measures. It has been legal in Britain for over a hundred years - since 1897. Every business that wanted to go metric has been free to do so. If metric was more profitable, all traders would have converted long ago. Now the EU, and the Government, is compelling everybody to go metric, whether they like it or not. This is an attack on freedom of choice and freedom of speech.

Imperial is best for larger measures. This is because imperial measurements are easily visualised. For example, an inch (half a thumb) a foot, a yard (length of an average pace). Imperial units are comfortable units. A pound can be held in the hand. A kilo is too heavy. A pint can be held in the hand. It's impractical to hold a litre!

Metric is often impractical for larger measures. Metric units are not so easily visualised. Recently, I tried to buy an ironing board from a catalogue. The measurement was 925mm. Can anyone imagine 925 tiny millimetres laid end to end? It's easier to imagine it as a little over 3 feet. As Scruton implies, dividing down by halves makes sense. It's easy to divide a cake into 12 equal slices but try dividing it into 10.

Metric has robbed people of their sense of value. Few people realise that petrol is over £3 a gallon because the change to litres means that many people can no longer relate quantity to price. Similarly with food: A tin of beans used to be 1lb. That's 453g. Since cans started being measured in grams, products have been deliberately made smaller. That's called "product shrinkage". A can of beans is now 415g, although many people still think it's 1lb. Many people think the carton of milk represents a pint. It's not. It's 68 millilitres - 12% - less than a pint. Vivian Linacre calls this The Great Gram Scam.

Both systems are useful but metric should not be imposed. People are being forbidden from using imperial only, and compelled to use metric. This is totalitarian legislation representing a deliberate intent to obliterate a distinct culture.

TO SUMMARISE :

• Traders are now compelled by law to measure and price items in metric. This is an expensive imposition. They cannot price in imperial only, or sell in imperial at all. Traders are free to price in imperial - as a supplementary marking only - but it will be impractical for them.
• Many customers cannot visualise metric quantities, nor relate them to price. Metric marking will confuse and upset them.
• The imperial system represents a way of feeling, thinking and behaving which is intrinsic to the British identity and culture.
• The act of obliterating distinct symbols of culture is a revolutionary imperative.
• The imposition of metric represents an assault on our freedom of choice, our freedom of speech and our distinct British culture. Traders should be free to use what they want.