Going metric
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Three years ago Lord Orr-Ewing, then Chairman of the Metrication Board, said that 'The country is now approaching a critical stage. . . it has always been the intention that metrication of consumer goods should follow the changes in manufacturing industry'. Last week, belatedly — but then the metrication story has been a leisurely affair — that crisis forced the Government into a tactical retreat. Mr John Fraser, Mr Hattersley's under-strapper at the Orwellianly-named Department of Prices and Consumer Protection, asked three hundred trade and consumer organisations for their views on metrication. Over the next two days all outstanding metrication Orders were withdrawn. Business managers in both Houses had no confidence that the latest Orders would not be defeated, and for the time being potatoes, dried fruit and pasta stay Imperial.
The muddle the Government has got itself into is only a natural consequence of what has preceded it. Metrication has been a very strange affair: the attempt to wreak a change of the greatest importance for everyone in the land almost entirely by cajolery, blandishment and stealth. As late as July 1974 I could write that no legislation specifically designed to convert the UK has even been passed. Acts of 1864 and 1897 had made the metric system legal first in contracts, then for most other purposes. In 1950 the Hodgson Committee recommended the adoption of metric. The 1963 Weights and Measures Act, though assuming that Imperial was still the usual system, treated metric as an equal and provided part of the machinery for the subsequent metrication programme.
In 1965 — the era of Mr Wilson's whitehot technology — the Government announced its intention to change to metric. There were powerful forces urging the Government on. The FBI as it then was — now the Confederation of British Industries — said that `we see changeover as an essential move to put Britain in line with her main overseas competitors'. Here was the beginning of a logical fallacy, or at least a contradiction, which has dogged metrication ever since. Once, a large enough part . of the world market — that is the Empire and the United States — had used Imperial to enable manufacturing industry to use that system for export purposes.
As more and more of the world used metric it became necessary for British industrialists to adopt it: if the overseas market for machine tools wants them in metric measurements that is the system to use. But it does not follow that ordinary consumer goods should be sold in kilos and
litres. The usual criticisms of the Imperial, system — its mathematical clumsiness an° incoherence — do not apply: a housewife
does not multiply three-quarters of a pound of potatoes by half a pint of milk. On the contrary, Imperial was the system which
everyone knew and understood, and inevitably metrication has been one of the least
popular causes of the age. And the story since illustrates that simple principle that a British government is capable of doing absolutely anything as long as it is not electorally unpopular. In 1968 the target for complete changeover was set at 1975. Ever since it
has been receding: now it is 1981, but in fact the final date is anyone's guess. The Me' rication Board was set up in 1969 under the chairmanship of Lord Ritchie-Calder, theft Lord Orr-Ewing, then Mr Maxwell-Scott. It is not a statutory body but one of those curious beasts which nowadays springs half-armed from the Government's loins. (An expensive beast: its cost has risen froal £655,000 in 1974 to £1.62 million in 1971). ' The 'voice of consumers and retailers have been considerably strengthened' on this Quango, but room is still found for Mr Hugh Scanlon at £750 pa. The Board, non-statutory and with no legal powers' uses every form of beseechment and hee; toning, silly little cards with `metric recipes, for Yorkshire pudding; jingles like `a pinto' water's a litre and three-quarters'; and the, comic quarterly Going Metric which woul° carry news items like 'metric size limits for the judging and exhibiting of dahlias have been instituted by the National Dahlia Society'. It was at the Board's urging that the 197° Weights and Measures Act was introduced. Voluntary metrication had proved painfullY, slow, and for the first time the Secretary 0' State was given enabling powers to phase out Imperial measures section by sectionThat is the action the Department grown increasingly wary of taking. After alit more people buy dried fruit than machine tools, and there is an election in the offing. In the end it may be that Imperial measure$ will be retained by custom for weighed out values rather than pre-packed food. French and Danish housewives still use pre-metrie measures to buy some food, and no Orernment will readily use the force of law, ultimately meaning fines, to stop shor keepers and stallholders selling vegetables by the pound. Many of us do not see why metrication need ever have been introduced for ever day purposes. Millimetres and grams lef, industry by all means; but not half-litres 0 beer, kilos of butter and however Mall, kilometres it is from London to York. Ott; even the most committed metrimaniac Malt admit that the wrong method was used. would have been simpler but, more imP0,rtant, more honest if comprehensive leg's.; lation had been introduced early. As It 'going metric' has been a nasty story of t°, e way we live now, under delegated lee lation and government by decree.
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