Metric Martyrs deserve their overdue pardon

The Government must clear the names of the campaigners who sowed the seeds of Brexit

July 4 2021 marked the 21st anniversary of the day that Steve Thoburn’s scales were seized. On that day in 2000, two trading standards officers, accompanied by two police officers, marched up to Steve’s busy market stall in Sunderland. He was threatened with arrest if he did not hand over his three sets of imperial scales after an undercover “consumer protection exercise” had confirmed that he was selling bananas by the pound.

The next day I received a phone call from Steve. I was a market trader and had recently highlighted in the local press that the enforced metrification regulations, introduced on January 1 2000, were oppressive and did not have public support. “Neil, they’ve taken my scales,” he said. “Can you help?”

I turned up at Steve’s shop. An hour later there were reporters, photographers and satellite trucks at the back of the pitch. A few weeks later, we formally launched the Metric Martyrs campaign.

Now, Boris Johnson finally seems to be acting on his 2019 manifesto pledge to lift the EU’S ban on shops selling produce in imperial measurements. Lord Frost, Minister of State for the Cabinet Office, announced in Parliament this week that the law could be changed to reflect this, freeing up traders to use imperial measures.

This is a bittersweet moment for me. Steve’s conviction of the criminal offence of selling bananas by the pound attracted global media attention and was referred to by district judge Bruce Morgan as “the most famous bunch of bananas in legal history”. The Morgan judgment highlighted in the starkest terms the consequences of the UK’S membership of the EU and his view that Britain had “quite voluntarily surrendered the once seemingly immortal concept of sovereignty of Parliament” made headlines around the world.

Looking back, it is believed by many to have sowed the seeds of Brexit and I saw it as poetic justice that, on the night of the Brexit vote, Sunderland delivered the first blow, setting in train the biggest political and constitutional reform for a generation.

When it went to appeal, Steve’s case was consolidated with three others. Greengrocer Colin Hunt, a Hackney market trader, had been convicted of failing to advertise prices in metric. Julian Harman and John Dove, a greengrocer and a fishmonger respectively, were convicted of pricing by the pound. In Harman’s case, one charge – that he had displayed a sign stating “Brussels sprouts 39p per lb” – brought cries of “shame” from the public gallery when it was read out.

The hearing before Lord Justice Laws put “Thoburn” at the heart of the constitutional debate. Nevertheless, defeat came again when his judgment was handed down on February 18 2002. Appeals to the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights were rejected.

Despite legal setbacks, we continued to win the hearts and minds of the British public. Every time we were knocked down they willed us to get back up and fight. They knew that this was about more than a system of weights and measures.

Tragically, Steve Thoburn died of a heart attack on March 14 2004 aged only 39. He left his wife, Leigh, a widow and his two small children, Georgia and Jay, without a father. Along with his family, we have continued to fight for a posthumous pardon for Steve and to clear the names of the other Metric Martyrs, a case that is now surely unanswerable.

We first called for such a pardon shortly after the European Commission backed down and abandoned the rest of its enforced metrification agenda in 2007. We had saved the mile and the pint, but the campaign to clear the Metric Martyrs’ names continued.

Another name was added to the list in 2009 when Hackney Council decided to prosecute Janet Devers, the first prosecution since 2001. She was convicted of some of the charges at a magistrates’ court, but secured a partial victory when her decision to be tried by jury on the others led to the council abandoning the case. Janet was passionately supported by the British public, including the now Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, who turned up at Janet’s stall to offer support and spoke about her case in his maiden speech to Parliament in 2010.

After more than 20 years of campaigning, the Metric Martyrs have finally been vindicated for their brave and courageous stand, and today we can raise a pint glass to the late Steve Thoburn, the first to draw a line in the sand. We are also within touching distance of finally securing his posthumous pardon and pardons for John, Julian, Janet and Colin, too.

Leigh Thoburn died suddenly in late 2016 aged 43, and so student nurse Georgia and I are now leading the relaunched Metric Martyrs’ Royal Pardon campaign. The advice we have received is that if the laws which banned the sale of products in imperial measurements are repealed, the Martyrs or their families would be able to apply to the Ministry of Justice for their convictions to be disregarded.

All these years after he spoke up on Janet Devers’s behalf, the power to grant such a request now lies with Mr Raab. He must do the right thing.