From USA Today, Tuesday 23 Jan 2001, page 11A:
(Available on-line at http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010123/3008182s.htm)
Sovereignty in the balance Metric Martyr
case pits English law against European
By Tara Mack
Special for USA TODAY
LONDON -- Most of the customers haggling over bananas, cod
fillets or chicken wings don't realize it, but this open-air
market in
London is a hotbed of illegal activity.
It looks innocent enough when a fruit and vegetable seller dumps
onions onto his scale to see how many pounds the customer has
picked out. But in a town 300 miles north of London another
greengrocer is on trial, for weighing produce in ounces
instead of
grams and pounds instead of kilos.
The case has riveted the attention of the British public,
turned the
accused into a national hero and earned him a nickname: The
Metric Martyr.
The question before the court is whether Steve Thoburn, who
sells
fruit and vegetables in Sunderland, a city of 300,000 in
northeastern England, violated the law by weighing his goods
using
the imperial weights and measures rather than the metric system.
The trial resumes March 1. A verdict is expected in April.
A 1985 British law said either system could be used. But a 1994
regulation issued by the European Commission in Brussels and
later approved by Britain's Parliament says only metric
scales are
permitted.
Although Britain, as a European Union member, is required to go
metric, the imperial system still reigns in stores and homes
across
the United States, even though Congress passed the Metric
Conversion Act in 1975. The voluntary act aimed ''to coordinate
and plan the increasing use of the metric system.''
A decade later, it was clear that the voluntary transition
to metric
wasn't working. So Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and
Competitiveness Act of 1988, which designated the metric system
as the ''preferred system of weights and measures for United
States
trade and commerce.'' It also required federal agencies,
with certain
exceptions, to use metric measurements in their procurement,
grants and other business-related activities by the end of 1992.
Even so, pounds and ounces rule.
In Britain, the case of Thoburn may seem like small
potatoes, but
the issues resonate with a public already uneasy about its
membership in the EU.
Britain has spent the past few decades flirting with the
idea of a
united Europe but never fully committing to the
relationship. British
governments have been attracted by the union's trade
benefits, but
they have been repelled by Europe's homogenizing tendencies. The
United Kingdom is among only three of the 15 EU member states
that have not joined the single currency, the euro.
Put an entrenched Euroskepticism together with an attachment to
the imperial system and you end up with the debate over European
federalism and national sovereignty -- now being filtered
through a
case of one man selling bananas.
''It's a test case of enormous constitutional importance,'' says
Thoburn's barrister, Michael Shrimpton. ''It's a test case with
implications far behind weights and measures. We are seeking to
confirm the right of Parliament to create laws even though they
might be in breach of European law.''
The man at the center of the battle says he doesn't care about
politics at all. Thoburn, 36, says he couldn't give ''two
monkeys''
about Europe. ''I'm not anti-metric. I'm a businessman,'' he
says
from a Sunderland pub, where he's sifting through fan mail. ''If
somebody came into my shop and asked to be served in metric
weight, I would have willingly served them. But I have yet
to have
one person ask me for something in metric weight.''
The Sunderland City Council, which brought the charges, says
Thoburn had been warned.
''When it became clear that he was intent on flouting the
law, then
we had no choice but to prosecute,'' spokeswoman Rose Peacock
says.
The government says 20% of retailers still use imperial
scales. And
several vendors at the London market, bundled against the cold,
say they don't care if they are breaking the law.
''I've been a fruit trader all my life like my father and
grandfather,
and we've always dealt in pounds and ounces,'' fruit and
vegetable
seller George Mayo says. ''The government has sold us out to the
European countries.''
Some of his customers are equally committed to the imperial
system. ''I get all in a muddle with the other,'' says Joyce
Speed, 66.
For his part, Thoburn says he will never convert. ''If it
means me
having to do something what my customers don't want me to do, I
will put my business up for sale,'' he says.
© Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett
Co. Inc.
