George Orwell and metric units

When I first read Animal Farm, I was too young to understand what it was about. I was completely oblivious to the fact that the book (novella, if you must) was an anti-Stalinist satire. I took it at face value, and thought very little about the actual message — though it did leave me with a permanent craving for bacon. The only thing that really landed for me while still in primary school, was the single law which the seven commandments eventually became. "All Animals Are Equal / But Some Are More Equal Than Others."

In addition to being totally unaware of the political context of one of Orwell's finest works, I was also completely unmindful of the units of measurement used. In fact, when I re-read it much later on, it was no surprise to me that all units of measurements were imperial. After all, it was published in 1945. Although metric units were first permitted for use in
the UK in 1897, they didn't come into common use until around 70 years later.

Four years after publishing Animal Farm, Orwell published what many would consider to be one of the greatest books of all time. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its focus on behaviour control, mass surveillance and totalitarianism has a lot of parallels with 2020. One of the (many) things that struck me about the book, (keeping in mind the theme of this blog) was that all 43 references to distances were in metric units.

On the very first page, referring to a poster, he says, "It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features."

There are also references such as:

"Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it."

"Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull."

Did something change? Did Orwell come round to the metric system in his final years?

Probably not.

In his 2002 book Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens states:

"And [Orwell] had a strong conviction that the metric system — which was to become such a toxic issue in England in the early years of this millennium — was somehow ill-suited to humans, let alone Englishmen".

Many of his arguments are the very same baseless arguments which persist to this day. Imperial units are easier to visualise. Imperial units are easier to say. Imperial units are more natural.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston follows an old man into a prole pub in search of an honest account of what life was like before the Revolution. The old man asks for a pint. The barman had never heard of a pint and points out that they serve beer by the litre or half-litre.

'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'

This dialogue suggests that Orwell's use of the metric system in Nineteen Eighty-Four is, alongside Newspeak, part of the Party's plan to forcibly alienate people from the things that they once held dear. A very clear reflection of his own views on the matter.

In his 1941 essay England your England, Orwell refers to the imperial system as "a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books", suggesting that it was part of England's "obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance." He also points that it is inefficient.

These are truths. A system of measurements based on arbitrary increments is hardly efficient. To say that it is easier to visualise a foot than a metre is a fallacy. Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil war, he had to use and be proficient in metric units while living and fighting in Spain. He was aware that the metric system is objectively better, and even conceded that the metric system was necessary for industry and science. Orwell simply remained unconvinced that it was suitable for Joe Public.

"All Measurements Are Not Equal / But Some Are More Unequal Than Others."