British Giving an Inch to Europe’s Metric Ways : Imperial Measures Being Replaced by Trading Partners’ System

LONDON —  Metrication is coming! Metrication is coming!

Britain lurches measurably closer to Europe this weekend when packaged food officially sheds ounces and pounds and acquires grams and kilos.

It’s the latest chapter in a phased switch from old-fashioned, American-friendly imperial measurements to the metric standard of Britain’s partners in the European Community--and most of the rest of the world. Britain’s defection means that the United States will soon be almost alone in the yard.

But not everybody is happy about the change. For many, the novelty can be as unappetizing as the word that describes it in a land that cherishes beer by the pint, roads by the mile and foreign ways mostly by their absence. Will Shylock henceforth demand his 454 grams of flesh?

Will Lear be every 2.54 centimeters a king? And what, fairest Juliet, shall befall gooseberries and yon maggots?

British distaste at having to abandon the trusted old for the foreign new may prove a harbinger of down-home discomfort when Americans too inevitably confront the swelling meter wave.

“Our culture and heritage are being treated with contempt. Traditional units are built into our buildings, our literature, our language. If children are not taught about them, they are being cut off from their past and their forefathers,” snaps Rob Carnaghan, leader of the Dozenal Society, which believes that 12 is a better anchor for a numerical system than 10.

Sunday’s changes implement a 1989 directive by the European Commission in Brussels, extending the metric measurement of goods that has been in effect since the mid-’70s. Newcomers will now include all packaged fruits, vegetables and meats and all liquids for drinking. Thus, shoppers will buy sacks of potatoes by the kilo and bottles and cartons of soft drinks, milk, juice or beer by the liter.

Recognizing that consumers are apt to be confused less by new sizes than by changing prices, major retailers have been offering in-store education campaigns and lofty promises: “We guarantee no price will increase as a result of metrication,” retail chain Marks & Spencer says.

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Exporters welcome the practicality of the one-measure production line. But Britain’s 230,000 shopkeepers do not like the changes and neither do consumer groups, which fear that unscrupulous merchants will disguise price increases in new weights.

Eight-foot-tall signs line the approaches to the roadside mega-stores called Trago Mills, which say they will ignore metrication: “Brussel louts ban a pound of sprouts.” “Parliament be damned--for selling England by the gram.”

“I have no intention of prejudicing older people who have no understanding of these lunatic measures,” says Bruce Robertson, chairman of Trago Mills, a company with about $150 million in annual sales.

Sign of a new measure: In the village of Henham, population 1,259, the 83-year-old owner of the Starr Garage stopped selling gasoline rather than pay the $10,000 it would cost to covert his pumps from gallons to liters. “Wherever the metric system has spread, it hasn’t been by people saying, ‘Gosh, this is worth the effort to change.’ No. It’s always been a triumph of bureaucrats or armies,” says the Dozenal’s Carnaghan.

Damaged British pride is salvaged by indefinite exceptions for two pillars of nationhood: pubs will continue serving beer by the pint; ditto dairies delivering milk by the pint. An imperial pint is 20 U.S. ounces; a U.S. gallon is about four-fifths of a--vanishing--imperial gallon.

Confusing? Oh, yeah! Food products sold loose will remain in imperial measures for five more years. Thus, it will be possible to buy a pound of strawberries at a street market, or half a pound of sausages from a butcher. Buy packaged chopped meat? Kilos. Loose chopped meat? Pounds in the same supermarket.

There are 454 grams in a pound; one kilo is 2.2 pounds.

Shirt collars and computer discs will remain in inches; quarter-pounders won’t change and neither will nine-inch pizzas. Road distances will still be measured in miles, natural gas measured in therms and sea depth measured in fathoms.

But starting Sunday, fabrics and carpets, though measured in feet and inches, will be sold in meters. Land may still be sold in acres, but the official registry will be kept in hectares. Electrical cable bought off a spool will be sold in feet; packaged cable by the meter. Or is it the other way around?

“The present dual system is crazy,” says Robin Simpson of the National Consumer Council.

Chris Howell, metrician at the government’s Institute of Trading Standards Administration, observes: “One system will not be a great inconvenience in the long term. But having two is silly--a complete cockup.”

But in the government view, the change is every centimeter a winner.

Jonathan Evans, the consumer affairs minister, laments the “confusion and concern that’s being whipped up. . . . This is not going to be a huge seminal event that has been put across by some people.”

Evans says he has received letters from consumers outraged that they will have to buy metric butter.

“Butter has been sold in metric quantities for the last 18 years. As has bread, biscuits, tea and the rest of it,” he said.

But old ways will not go quietly. At the 195th Egton Bridge Gooseberry Show this month, the winning gooseberry weighed 29 drams and 17 grains, notes gooseberry fancier J.P. Toomey.

“It will be hard to persuade the local people that metric can match this. Is it possible for gooseberries to be exempt from the metrication laws?” Toomey wonders.

No way, says Fran Atkins, spokeswoman for the Trade Ministry. Gooseberries metric must go. In fact, nearly 80% of dry goods are already weighed and packaged metrically, she says.

“I had a call from the ‘Anglers’ Times’ wanting to know what was going to happen to maggots, which are now apparently sold by the pint. Some people are really winding us up, aren’t they?” Atkins asks sweetly.

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For some, adoption of foreign standards is symptomatic of eroding sovereignty. Britain is notoriously two-minded about the nominal pursuit of unity with European allies.

Prime Minister John Major’s government supports eventual unity, but Foreign Minister Malcolm Rifkind cheered Euro-skeptics on the eve of the new round of metrication. It may sometimes be worthwhile accepting loss of influence, if that is the way to protect the national interest, Rifkind said, warning against “an artificial consensus, a bogus unity, that lacks credibility or conviction.”

Such second thoughts will not halt metrication’s hammer, but the rear guard is still fighting. The Imperial Measures Preservation Society plans to sue Britain in the European Court for discrimination in overturning traditional values. So it goes in an over-measured land where some citizens would cheerfully hang their bureaucrats from the .9144 meter arm.