ACTIVE RESISTANCE. Are you actively resisting something? There are many forces at work in our society today which a great many of us wish to resist - actively resist. If you are involved in any campaign of active resistance and would like details of your group included on our website, or would like us to link your organisation on our website, please e-mail Tony Bennett on ajsbennett@btinternet.com. Please see below (last question) or the kinds of active resistance activities we are most likely to support

Questions and Answers

1. Who or what is Active Resistance to Metrication?

Active Resistance to Metrication is a group of people opposed to forced metrication. We have no issue with people choosing to use the metric system, as has been the case for example in describing car engine size in cubic centimetres or wine bottles in litres, centilitres or decilitres. But we are opposed, like millions of fellow British people, to having the metric system forced on us by criminal penalties, especially when the system of British weights and measures is in several key respects superior to the metric system.

2. When and why were you formed? – and who are you?

A.R.M. was first set up following a meeting held in June 2001. Its first and current Chairman is Mr Derek Norman of Huntingdon. Its first and current Secretary is Tony Bennett of Harlow. Five members set up the group and it has now grown to dozens.

The initial focus of A.R.M., for which we are best known, was our direct action campaign to tackle the mushrooming of illegal metric road and footpath signs erected by various local and other authorises, including the Highway Agency.

Members of A.R.M. use code names. Among our members, who include the editor of one of the world’s best-selling magazines, we have ‘Daisy Chain’, ‘Furlong’ ‘Foot Rule; ‘Wun Tun’, ‘Rod Pole’, ‘Yardstick’, ‘Hundredweight’, and many more. Code names are used on A.R.M.’s well-known direct action raids, about which you will learn more on our website.

3. Do you have any connection to British Weights and Measures Association?

There is no formal link. We share their main aims, of course, namely the preservation and promotion of a wonderful, very useful and practical and perhaps above all human system of measurement, and opposition to all forms of forced metrication. But our methods of achieving those aims are different. Some members of A.R.M. are also members of British Weights and Measures Association.

4. What has A.R.M. actually accomplished?

Over the past 6 years, we have been able to convert over 2,500 road and footpath signs, that were illegally signed in metric, to British distances such as miles, yards, feet and inches. We use professional techniques including professional adhesive labelling and plates made by sign manufacturers. Where we make amendments to signs which are governed by the strict rules of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002, we use Department of Transport-grade adhesive reflective material and of course the same size and font style of lettering (Transport Helvetica) used by the Department of Transport, The Highways Agency, and local authority highways departments. You will find many examples of our professional amendments, which we have carried out in many different parts of the country, on our website. On many other occasions, we have persuaded authorities to make the changes voluntarily.

We get regular reports of changes made as a result of other supporters of A.RM. around the country (and our network of illegal metric sign ‘spotters’) and these are reguarly logged and updated on our ‘Gazetteer of Ugly Signs made Beautiful’ which you can request by e-mail from ajsbennett@btinternet.com.

Due to our proactive and direct action campaigning, we have over the years ensured that most highways authorities are now fully aware of their responsibility to erect all road and footpath signs in British weights and measures (apart for limited exceptions, such as bridge heights and road widths, which may also be signed in metric - but never in metric alone.

The culmination of our campaign to save British weights and measures on our road and footpath signs came in an unlikely fashion - on the BBC TV current affairs programme, ‘Question Time’, in February 2006. The then Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, responded to a questioner who asked the panel if Neil Kinnock was right to suggest that Britain would be seen as a backward country if we did not convert all our road signs to metric by the time of the London Olympics, in 2012. Answering ‘No’, Mr Darling also announced that the long-promised, or should we say ‘long-threatened’, conversion of our road sign to metric would never happen. Please see a separate report of this broadcast, which we’ve titled: “How The Mile Was Saved”, elsewhere on our website. It includes the full transcript of this remarkable occasion, when the Minister’s statement that Britain’s 2 million road signs would never go metric was greeted with long and sustained applause and loud cheering.

5. How are you funded?

By donations from those who support our work. In this respect, we acknowledge with gratitude many donations but especially those from British Weights and Measures Association and from one of our greatest supporters, a modest and generous man in south London, who likes to be known only by his A.R.M. code name of ‘Furlong’.

6. What other ‘active resistance’ campaigns, direct action or otherwise, do you support?

Members of ARM will be happy to give space on this website to those who are actively opposing:

• The gradual transfer of our sovereignty - that is, our political independence and our ability to make our own decisions about our own future - to the European Union
• The attempt to dismantle out historic sense of County, or shire, boundaries, and to undermine our sense of loyalty to such counties, which have been part of the fabric of this country over 1,000 years. We support CountyWatch, a direct action group which removes wrongly-placed county boundary signs, in order to promote knowledge of Britain’s true, historic county boundaries
• Identity Cards
• Political correctness
• The Islamification of Britain
• The undermining of marriage in society
• Police ineffectiveness and corruption
• Light sentences for serious crimes
• Increasing powers being given to central government quangos and local councils over our daily lives
• Unnecessary and counter-productive health and safety measures
• Poor cleanliness of British hospitals, as shown by the rapid growth of hospital-borne infections such as MRSA and c-difficile.

DONATIONS:

Donations are always being sought: All contributions received will be directly used by ARM to complete the process of eliminating from public view illegal road and footpath signs in metric distances.

CONTACTS:

To link your campaign or to obtain web-space on our site, contact Tony Bennett 01279 635789 or Mobile 07835 716537

Or contact our Chairman Derek Norman: 01480 435837

A.R.M. Correspondence Address: ‘Meadowbank’, 9 Station Cottages, Brampton Road, HUNTINGDON, Huntingdonshire, PE29 3BW.