Decimalisation

Britain was one of the last countries to go decimal – and had Margaret Thatcher not abolished the Metrication Board, we might have abandoned miles and pints too. Ros Taylor finds out how Britons were persuaded of the merits of getting rid of shillings and farthings, and why the revolution went unfinished.

Mark Stocker is an art historian who works with the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa) and is the author of When Britain Went Decimal: The Coinage of 1971.

Warwick Cairns is the author of About The Size of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things.

Seth Thévoz voiced a Commons speech by the MP for Horsham, Peter Hordern, in 1970. He also read an extract from a Guardian article by Anthony Burgess, Damned Dots (1966) which is not available online.

Sir John Wrottesley's intervention in 1824 and the riposte can be read here.

The BBC's Decimal Day 1971, Nationwide, ITV's Granny Gets the Point, the Royal Mint history of decimalisation and a Thames TV report on metrication were useful sources. Max Bygraves' Decimalisation is on YouTube. Your Guide to Decimal Money, circulated to all households, can be read online. A 1975 Conservative memo discussing metrication is at the Margaret Thatcher Archive. I also drew on Andrew J Cook's PhD thesis, Britain's Other D-Day: The Politics of Decimalisation (University of Huddersfield, 2020).

The UK Metric Association and Metrication UK campaign to complete the metrication revolution.