From Free Life, Issue 31, June 1999
ISSN: 0260 5112

In 1965 Harold Wilson, in an effort to appease President De Gaulle, told him we would go metric. George Brown put this in the National Economic Development Plan but stated it would be voluntary.

In 1972, again to appease the Europeans, Edward Heath published a White Paper saying we would go metric voluntarily.

In 1979 Margaret Thatcher said it had gone far enough, and we would never go metric voluntarily, and abolished the Metrication Board.

In response, in 1980 the EEC issued a draft Directive, EEC 80/81, making metrication compulsory.

This was approved in 1989 by the Council of Ministers. The UK was represented by the Foreign Office with Douglas Hurd, Linda Chalker and Francis Maude who again saw it as a sop to please the EEC. The Department of Trade and Industry was not represented. A senior DTI official said: “We are forever following the Foreign Office with a bucket and shovel clearing up their messes”.

There was a minor amendment to the Directive 89/617.

A Statutory Instrument was approved in a Standing Committee of the House of Commons in November 1994. It was nodded through without proper discussion, just some jokes about the length of cricket pitches!

The European Union has drafted another amendment this year which has not been ratified giving a further ten year derogation for supplementary indicators.