In 1972 the British government published a White Paper on Metrication (PDF download 195 kB, 23 pp)

Some paragraphs are reproduced below and make interesting reading in the light of the current state of the UK's metrication. Extracts are listed with their paragraph numbers.

Your comments and additions to these extracts are welcomed.

1. In due course, as a member of the enlarged Communities, the terms of the directive* will come to be applied here as well. But we shall naturally need a longer period in which to complete the changeover. Arrangements negotiated with the Community will ensure that units used in our legislation are retained until 31 December 1979. Where there are special reasons they may be retained for even longer. [*EEC directive on weights and measures to be used throughout the Community.]

2. The present system for showing speed limits and other road signs is unlikely to be changed for a long time to come. [Over half a century by now.]

3. The Government acknowledge and support the progress that has already been made. They will not, however, use public purchasing power deliberately to hasten the changeover from imperial to metric units. In their own purchasing they will use metric and international standards only when their discussions with suppliers show that there will be general benefit from doing so. [The Government is one of the biggest purchasers of goods and services in the country but refuses to use this power to support metrication.]

4. Meanwhile the more industry adopts metric units, the more will the general public become involved in the whole process. The range of products covered will grow and there will be no clear boundary between metric and non-metric parts of the economy. In these circumstances to attempt to keep imperial units for the individual shopper while industry was on metric would be both confusing and costly. It would also deny us the very real savings which stand to be gained when turning over completely to metric.

5. The Government recognise that the period during which some foodstuffs are sold in imperial quantities and some in metric will present problems for many shoppers. The Government intend to take action to ensure that the marking of sizes and quantities is absolutely clear and will consider how best the housewife can be given information to enable her to continue to judge value for money.

6. Some people believe that industry should go metric but that there should be no need to involve the private consumer. This view ignores the fact that more and more of manufacturing industry is devoted to producing consumer goods which it would be uneconomic to have to make to both imperial and metric specifications. Industry has consistently argued that it could not go far down the metric road in isolation from other sectors of the economy without foregoing many of the benefits of the metric system and incurring extra costs. In 1970 the Confederation of British Industry said:

It never made much sense to talk of industry going metric in isolation. All parts of the economy are interdependent, and whilst timing and method must be left to individual decision it is likely to be in the interests of all that the economy should move forward roughly in step together. It was in 1967 that it became apparent that metrication in industry had progressed to the stage where business and the retail sector would soon become involved in the process. Industry's move was gradually extending beyond the process of manufacture to the other parts of the economy, and coordination was obviously necessary; the CBI therefore made a number of approaches to interests concerned with distribution and the retail trades and then suggested, and the Standing Joint Committee agreed, that the Metrication Board should be set up as national coordinator.

1. A working knowledge of those imperial measures used in everyday life will still be needed for some years.

2. The Standing Joint Committee on Metrication reported in May 1968 and recommended that an organisation was needed to coordinate the sector plans for the country as a whole and that only an organisation such as a Metrication Board could fulfil this role (21). In July 1968 the then Government announced their acceptance of the recommendation to establish a Metrication Board:

to guide, stimulate and coordinate the planning for the transition for the various sectors of the economy. Every sector of the economy need not move at the same pace. But there will be unnecessary confusion and expense, and great difficulties for industry, unless there is central machinery for coordinating the programmes of change for the various sectors (22).

[The Metrication Board was established three years after the Government's original announcement that industry would metricate, in 1965. Its first meeting was in May 1968. Good grief!]

1. The most expensive operation within the field of public administration will be the conversion of all road signs showing miles (or mph) to kilometres (or kph). The cost of conversion of all road speed signs is likely to be about £2m and of all road signs indicating distance appreciably more. Unlike the changing of distance signs, where phasing is practicable, the change of speed limit signs must be done as one major operation. It had previously been proposed that speed limits should be made metric in 1973 but on 9 December 1970 the Minister for Transport Industries announced in Parliament that this would not be done and that the Government had no alternative date in mind (26). The change of speed and distance signs to metric units will need to be considered in detail, but not for some years.

(26) Hansard (Commons) Vol. 808, Col. 417-418.

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Emphasis and comments in [square brackets] added by u/klystron

Italics are in the original.

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Some errors in the text:

"grammes" used instead of "grams"

kph used instead of km/h

Repeated use of "the government have" where it should be "has". Other entities are described correctly, eg "industry has". (My internal grammar nazi was gnashing its teeth all the way through reading this document.)

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Glossary:–

CBI - Confederation of British Industries

DTI - Department of Trade and Industry

EEC - European Economic Community - now the European Union, EU.

Hansard - The official record of Parliamentary proceedings. (Named after the stenography service that performs this office.)

HMSO - Her Majesty's Stationery Office - The government printing service.

White Paper: a government or other authoritative report giving information or proposals on an issue.