Metrication in the United Kingdom

The first British moves towards the metric system was in the 19th 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'1963 and “white heat” in Scarborough Metric Views. modernisation programme which also brought 'decimalisation' to Pound SterlingHow Britain converted to decimal currency BBC News, 5 February 2011.. 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 Communitythe forerunner of the EU. which the British finally did in 1973We're in: the UK enters Europe - archive, 1 January 1973 The Guardian, 22 January 2020. which later led to the urban myth that 'the EU' had forced the metric system on an otherwise unwilling public and nation,The EU did not completely outlaw use of imperial measures in the UK FullFact 17 June 2022. a line still peddled by crank groups like the 'British Weights and Measures Association'British Weights and Measures Association – see 'Ministers' Metrication Conspiracy'..
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 1990sThe advent of the 'National Curriculum' put it officially on 'legacy support' in 1999. 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 188cmCovid: Man offered vaccine after error lists him as 6.2cm tall BBC News, 18 February 2021..
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.Inching Towards the Meter: Britain, Europe and the Politics of Economic Integration University of Manchester, 2 May 2017. The primary factor in this was globalisation – that as British commerce, industry and science increasingly dealt with a 'metric world' and the 'Imperial world' shrank to almost nothingMost ex-colonies normally metrified on or soon after independence and the old 'Dominions' metrified around the same time the UK did. it's reasonable to assume that even without governmental pressure, there would be increasing alignment with the metric system because it would have been less effort to conform to metric than to arduously convert all the measures into Imperial (at your own cost) for no obvious economic or technical benefit and still carrying the price of perhaps lost export sales due to perceived/actual incompatibility. 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,EU gives up on 'metric Britain' BBC News, 11 September 2007.Metric martyrs take a mile The Guardian, 7 May 2007. though it had to be noted the British Government was perfectly happy to enforce them on their own peopleWill we ever go completely metric? BBC News, 2 September 2004 but didn't want to spend billions in changing every road sign in the land. 
==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'?Answer: No – the business has increased it by ~7% (1.05p per m2).).Inflation, decimalisation and metrication Archive of Market and Social Research 11 January 2023. 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.'13.38 new pence per yd'. 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; fuel stations only ditched the gallon in 1980 when the price was about to go into three digits and their pump displays only had two.Putting off the day of having to upgrade to 2007, when petrol went past 99p a litre.
250px|thumb|right|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 of 1992.Seen by opponents as being the plan to make a 'United States of Europe'. 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 
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 measuresAs long as the metric was equal or larger in font, as shown in the picture to the right. and/or from selling 'a pound of potatoes'Only that it would be priced as 0.454kg., while traders have had to for centuries used officially-licensed scales.So customers can be sure they truly are getting the kilo they've paid for. 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'Metric Martyrs' (now defunct). – 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)''Last chance to save pound' Daily Mail, 26 May 2001. 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.We owe the Metric Martyrs a formal pardon Nigel Farage.com, 31 May 2022.
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 LittlejohnFor decades, imperial and metric had co-existed happily... Bringing back pounds and ounces would mean the scales of justice are tipping our way Daily Mail, 30 May 2022. (good job you're safe from them in Florida), Peter HitchensWhy were the metric zealots so hate-filled? Daily Mail, 1 June 2022. (I hear you, you hate 'modernity') and It’s metric zealots who are living in the past The Telegraph, 21 May 2022. (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'.The battle of the standards: why the US and UK can’t stop fighting the metric system The Verge 16 January 2023. How minor? Well, as of writingNovember 2024. 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 websiteActive Resistance to Metrication (You've been warned). which is so crap it proves Haig's Law to be correctFor those who cannot be bothered; acres of 'Lorem ipsum' placeholder text, buttons that don't work, a slogan which doesn't make sense, a campaign map which features the wrong country, uses the wrong national flag and currency (hint; we're not America!), apparently there are people who say ' Lorem ipsum' about the organisation, a 'vote for Mary Brown' section with zero elaboration and coding done so poorly it's making the 'about us' section rather difficult to read. Their poor grammar makes English teachers sad and the is crying over your abuse of that humble mark. (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' (1st 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.Govt pays for 'ludicrous' study on benefits of reintroducing imperial units after Brexit LBC, 23 February 2022. Despite attempting to tune the study to fit their preconceptions and with other Tory blockheads championing the idea,Tory MP has said the UK will adopt imperial measures to bring back 'British culture and heritage.' Euronews, 30 May 2023. this study didn't go well; businesses and educators alike were at a loss of where these 'benefits' were, engineers were strongly againstEngineers raise concerns over proposed switch to imperial measurements New Civil Engineer, 13 October 2023. 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.Imperial Measurements: the Spurious Brexit Dividend that Failed to Divide Byline Times, 18 January 2024. Though unlikely because he actually cared, more that it was obvious this bit of culture-war posturing was making them look utterly ridiculous.
==Current situation==
The British are perhaps now between 75-90 percent metric, depending on occupation, lifestyle and most importantly, age. Outside of particular corners (personal measurements, driving distances, sale of milk and draft beerMetric or Imperial: what measures do Britons use? YouGov, 7 April 2022.) Imperial is now effectively obsolete outside a few niche areas (such as the building tradePartly due to the cultural conservatism of builders, but more logically due to the fact that about 75% of British homes were built using Imperial-sized materials such as doors and bricks.) 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 footAnswer: three. but not if you don't know how many millilitres are in a litre. 
Simple lifestyle/societal changes are an under-appreciated factor in metrification, because the simple opportunities to use measures of any form has declined since the 1960s. The independent 'purchase by weight' greengrocers and butchers have slumped (declined 66% and 60% respectively since the 1980sFruit & veg deserts & the death knell of the local greengrocer Wicked Leeks, 23 July 2023.Is this the death of the traditional butcher shop? The Telegraph, 10 December 2021.Which is even worse when you take into account the 17% rise in population since then.), while the supermarkets which did the culling have now generally culled their own 'loose produce counters'Tesco to axe remaining fresh food counters Grocery Gazette, 20 December 2022., leaving Brits purchasing prepacked (metric) measured produce. Pubs and bars now predominately sell bottled beers over draftBottles are metric while draft isn't. and almost no newsagent now stocks loose 'pick and mix' confectionery. The decline of traditional 'do it yourself' activities (such as scratch cookery, baking, dressmaking, brewing, woodworking etc) reduced experience of working with measures while the shift away from coal to electric/gas for heating (ending the ritual of the 'coal man' coming with his hundredweight bags). The advent of digital calculators is also an overlooked factor; the personal advantage of metric over Imperial was minimal in the world of paper and slide-rulesAssuming equal knowledge of both systems, naturally., but not when you could simply pull out a device which could do it in a moment.
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 similarThe 'legacy mode' which British schools now apply is to teach kids to convert a few 'important units' into metric, so if they encounter say a pound or inch in the wild they're able to make guestimate translations.. The use of terms like 'yardstick' and 'give an inch and take a mile' shouldn't be mistaken with continued use of such unitsUnless they drive. but more of examples of dead metaphors. This is something even the tiny band of Imperial campaigners admit; that without 'active official support' (ie a forced revitalisation via education and public use) Imperial measures are fairly firmly destined to generally fade into the sunset - with the mile, the stone and pint as increasingly archaic-looking relics.
==External links==
* Metrication UK - Documenting the current level of British metrication efforts and past efforts.
==Notes==
==References==
Category:British politics
Category:Mathematics
Category:Moral panics
Category:Science