THE CHRISTIAN AND COMPULSORY
METRICATION
By Tony Bennett
At first sight, compulsory metrication may seem like a minor irritation which
should not particularly concern the Christian. Some may even regard the
standardisation of weights and measures worldwide as a blessing.
However, metrication has an interesting history which should at least give us
pause for thought. It was devised, of course, by the French revolutionaries
(many of them Freemasons), inspired as they were by their anti-Christian,
humanist ideology. They abolished the 7-day week and many other trappings of
Christian civilisation, quite apart from killing hundreds of thousands in their
pursuit of 'liberty, equality and fraternity'.
Whatever its advantages, the metric system is essentially an artificial
system, with major disadvantages compared with our system of inches and feet,
yards and miles, pints and gallons, ounces, pounds and stones and so on. These
are all units easy for the human mind to conceive and nearly all of which can
conveniently be divided into halves, quarters, sixths, etc., which is difficult
in the metric system. The British system of weights and measures has passed down
from generation to generation by oral tradition and cannot just be eliminated by
law-making. Decades of compulsory metrication, including the removal of the
teaching of British weights and measures from the national curriculum, have not
stopped us weighing ourselves in stones and pounds, measuring our height in feet
and inches, speaking of our car's fuel consumption in miles per gallon, and so
on.
The system of weights and measures the Israelites used was a human, natural
system, like ours. A recent United Nations survey revealed an amazing 1,600-plus
different systems of weights and measures still in use - all of them 'natural'
systems like ours - and proof if it were needed that the metric system is by no
means as widely adopted as its supporters claim.
The decision to impose the metric system on Britain was made by Harold Wilson
when he quietly met with leaders of the then European Economic Community in
1963, a year before he was first elected Prime Minister. Decimalization of our
currency followed, garages were forced to sell petrol by the litre, hospitals
ordered to discard their lbs. and oz. scales in favour of metric scales and
supermarkets forced to sell by the kilogram and gram. The next notch on the
ratchet was to make it a crime under British law for loose goods to be sold in
pounds and ounces. That is currently being 'flouted' (or rather, very sensibly
being ignored) by thousands of small shopkeepers and market traders. As I write,
the law on this issue is about to be determined by two High Court judges, who
will have to decide if five 'metric martyrs' are indeed criminals. The British
public clearly don't think so, having overwhelmingly voted Sunderland
greengrocer Steve Thoburn as 'European Campaigner of the Year', much to the
irritation of the European Commission, and as 'Man of the Year' in an ITV
Teletext poll last month.
Despite all this, the government recently promulgated a Regulation which will
make it a crime even to mention pounds and ounces in British shops after 31
December 2009. On 1 January this year it became illegal for supermarkets in
Britain to sell any packaged items mentioning pounds and ounces. These attempts
at outright obliteration of our system of weights and measures bring to mind the
notorious quotation from former World Health Organisation Director Brock
Chisholm when he addressed the United Nations 1985: "To achieve one world
government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism,
their loyalty to family traditions, and their national identification".
Against this background, compulsory metrication may be seen as one way of
stripping away our national identity. So many other examples could be given.
The next major attempt to eliminate use of British weights and measures will
be the government's plan, recently admitted (see Daily Mail, 24.4.01), to
destroy the three million British road signs in miles, yards, feet and inches,
and replace them with signs in kilometres and metres. The pretext (for that is
what it is) is that by 2006, more than 50% of British drivers will have been
'metric educated'. Already a start was made in 1994, when new Regulations
allowed Councils to erect dual-unit bridge height and road width signs with
metric units more prominent than British units.
But apart from those two exceptions, all British road and pedestrian signs,
even those on private land to which the public have access, must be in British
units only - under the Road Traffic Regulations 1994. Yet this has been and is
being routinely flouted by dozens of local authorities who have stealthily been
erecting metric road and pedestrian signs whenever they can get away with it.
This, of course, causes confusion, a point conceded by John Prescott two years
ago when he was Transport Minister. So a campaign has developed to try and dam
this creeping (and, it must be remembered, unlawful) metrication of our road
signs before the trickle of illegal signs becomes a flood. When challenged, some
authorities concede defeat and change the signs; others are clearly reluctant to
do so, and need many letters before they give in. Still others refuse to deal
with the illegality or claim they will alter the signs 'in due course', but
never do so. What does one do when a local authority persistently refuses to
remove or alter a metric sign which is clearly not permitted under British law?
Some of us have, as a last resort, taken to direct action to stem the flow of
unlawful metric road signs by neatly painting over any illegal metric distances
the authorities fail to remove, carefully amending them into British units, or
in appropriate cases removing them from the roadside. In a handful of cases,
this has met with a swift and aggressive response from authorities unwilling to
put their signs back into British units. They have reported these incidents to
the Police. I have personally now been arrested three times in connection with
such incidents. In one case, the charges were dropped; in another, the Police
have so far decided there is insufficient evidence to proceed. The third case is
proceeding in Maidstone Magistrates Court on a charge of 'criminal damage', and
concerns 56 illegal metric road signs erected by Transco Pipelines - despite
four years of campaigners having warned them time and again that to use metric
distances on their signs was illegal. We painted over the illegal distances. The
likely trial date is March.
What do the Scriptures say on using any form of 'direct action'? There is
Christ's warning that we should "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17) - regarded as a general
injunction to obey the law of the land. By and large, the examples from the
Scriptures of believers defying the authorities centre on attempts to ban
believers from giving due worship and acknowledgement to God. The defiance of
Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego in Daniel 3 is a shining example. But I might
mention the midwives (Exodus 1:17), who "feared God, and did not as the king of
Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive", and the Jericho harlot
Rahab, who defied the king's men hunting for the Israelite spies with words she
knew to be untrue: "There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they
were�whither the men went I wot not: pursue after then quickly; for ye shall
overtake them" (Joshua 2:4-5).
I see compulsory metrication as one of many attempts our governments have
been making for decades to strip away our sense of national identity for some
ulterior purpose. It disconnects us from our history and erodes an aspect of our
distinctive culture, contrary to the 'celebration of diversity' principle so
often promoted in other contexts e.g. the 'multicultural society'.
A sense of national identity was of course something God Himself gave to
human beings - for the express purpose of restraining evil. In Genesis 11:9 we
read how "the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from
thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth". This
was in response to God's observation (Genesis 11:6) that "the people is one�now
nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" - a clear
warning of the likely explosion of evil if we ever move to the one world
government so many high-ranking people are now working towards. Taking direct
action against illegal metric signs seems to those of us involved to be a
legitimate way of helping to prevent the loss of one significant part of our
national identity. But I am aware that many fellow-Christians may disagree.
