Media blast from the past

In the early years of the Metrication Programme, which began in 1965, the press was not hostile to metrication. They published articles that sounded supportive or neutral. It was only a couple of decades later when metrication progress ran out of steam and the consensus on metrication broke down in the 1980’s that the press turned against metrication. Here we look at some of the earlier and later newspaper articles that reflect the changing attitudes to metrication in the UK.

On 28 April 1967, the Daily Telegraph published an article with the headline, “Anger over slowness in metric planning”. Its opening paragraph said:

Industry is becoming increasingly irritated by the lack of Government action to co-ordinate the metric – conversion programme. There is particular concern that Mr. Jay, President of the Board of Trade, has shown few signs of urgency in asking the retail trade to decide on the timing of its change-over.

On 17 November 1969, The Scotsman reported that Grangemouth Town Council put up distance signs in kilometres ahead of the planned changeover. They proceeded two years ahead of time:

Now Mr Taylor and his staff are planning to cover up the offending figures in kilometres, which will be unveiled again in two years time, when the official changeover takes place. Grangemouth was just ahead of its time as the development department’s own plans are not yet finalised.

There seemed to be a feeling that if you give local authorities an inch – they’ll take a metre.

A letter by Oliver Stewart in the Daily Telegraph on 3 June 1970 made the case for describing speed in metres per second. The letter writer describes metres per second, the SI derived speed unit, as the best ever devised and argues that it is suitable for everything related to speed.

By the late 1980’s, the media became hostile towards metrication along with the political class and the general public. The consensus on metrication in the early years of the Metrication Programme was long gone. A sense of nostalgia appeared in headlines such as The Independent’s “A Fond Farewell to Mr Therm” in February 1989 and The Guardian’s “Pints, acres and therms inching towards oblivion” in February 1989.

The mistakes made by British politicians have left us with an entrenched hybrid system of weights and measures and no plan to get us out of the muddle. This muddle is reflected in the media. We have borne the costs of the metric changeover without gaining the benefit of a simple, single universal system of weights and measures that are used worldwide. Hence the media rarely publish any positive articles to promote the metric system and challenge common prejudices on metrication because the metric system is perceived to be unpopular. What will it take to regain the support of the media for metrication?