Metric Martyrs: The story of the Sunderland greengrocer prosecuted over a bunch of bananas

More than two decades ago, on 9 April 2001, Sunderland greengrocer Steve Thoburn was convicted of two offences after selling an undercover Trading Standards officer 34p worth of bananas using de-stamped imperial scales.

Little could anyone present that day have known, but those actions would effectively serve as the catalyst for Britain’s departure from the European Union – or so many people now believe.

The story began a year earlier in April 2000 when a Trading Standards officer visited the greengrocer’s stall in the city’s bustling Southwick Market and smashed the official stamp on three sets of scales because they only weighed goods in pounds and ounces.

Traders in the city had been warned they must stop selling goods in imperial measures and instead switch to metric following an EU directive introduced in January that year that made it a criminal offence to sell loose goods, such as fruit and vegetables, only in pounds and ounces.

The directive allowed for traders to sell in imperial measures, but only if metric signs were given more prominence – and while scales were permitted to weigh goods in pounds as well as kilograms, at the point of sale all transactions had to use metric weights.

Thoburn – who used both imperial and metric scales – ignored the warning, preferring to keep his customers happy by selling his produce in whichever measurement they preferred.

He carried on using the de-stamped scales but was eventually caught out when he unwittingly sold an undercover Trading Standards officer 34p worth of bananas, weighed with his imperial scales.

On 4 July 2000, two Trading Standards officers, flanked by a pair of police officers, walked up to the greengrocer’s stall and threatened him with arrest if he refused to hand over the three sets of imperial scales.

The greengrocer, dubbed the “Metric Martyr”, was catapulted into the spotlight as he made history as the first person to appear in a British criminal court accused of selling fruit and vegetables illegally in pounds and ounces.

He was subsequently convicted of two offences of breaching the Weights and Measures Act 1985 following a trial at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court – charges he denied.

The fruit he sold on that fateful day 21 years ago was described by the presiding judge in the case as “the most famous bunch of bananas in legal history”.

After having his scales seized, Thoburn turned to fishmonger Neil Herron, who had a retail outlet in the market, for help and the Metric Martyrs campaign was born.

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Herron, now a tech entrepreneur, tells The Independent: “He rang me up, I went across the next day and within an hour we had the world’s press at the back of the shop.

“That was the day the officials stepped over the line and there was no putting the genie back into the bottle.”

The 58-year-old recalls the judge in the case saying the UK “surrendered our sovereignty to the European Union when we joined the common market in 1972”.

“That was the day, I do believe, the British public woke up to the fact this relationship we had with the EU – that we hadn’t been able to touch and poke up until now – probably they could understand it, they could feel it, they knew what it was like to go buy a pound of bananas and all of a sudden to be told that was being taken away,” he says.

The businessman says it was “such a dramatic coincidence that Sunderland is where the flames were first fanned” for Brexit, since the city went on to become the first place in the UK to vote Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.

“Because we are a provincial northeast city, very, very Eurosceptic anyway, we are one step, two steps, three steps removed from Westminster really... and we are probably suspicious of our own elective representatives in Westminster and wouldn’t trust them as well as the whole lot in Brussels,” he says.

Thoburn and Herron, who had known each other since the early 1990s, went on to wage a three-year legal battle against the greengrocer’s conviction.

“We used to sit in Steve’s office over at Southwick and I’d say, ‘Look at the bloody trouble you’re causing now,’ and he’d say, ‘All I want to do is to get my fucking scales back’,” says Herron.

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But despite having the weight of the public, a number of newspapers and Ukip behind them, they failed to get the conviction overturned in the High Court and the House of Lords.

Now, more than 20 years on, with Britain’s recent departure from the EU, Boris Johnson looks set to make good on a promise from his 2019 manifesto to bring imperial units back to the UK’s shops.

The move will come too late for Thoburn, who died of a massive heart attack at the age of 39 in 2004, leaving behind his wife Leigh Thoburn, their two young children and his son from a previous relationship.

His wife Leigh also later died in 2016, aged 43.

The couple’s daughter, 24-year-old Georgia Thoburn, has now taken up the mantle in calling for her father and four other “metric martyrs” to be officially pardoned.

Greengrocers Colin Hunt and Julian Harman and fishmonger John Dove were all also later convicted in 2001 for selling produce in imperial measurements, while greengrocer Janet Devers was convicted in 2008.

A campaign for the group to be pardoned was launched on 4 July this year by Herron, Thoburn and her brother Jay Thoburn to coincide with the 21-year anniversary of the day the Trading Standards officers and police entered Thoburn’s stall.

Georgia Thoburn, who is now in her third year of a nursing degree, said the government’s recent announcement “completely vindicates” her father and the Metric Martyrs campaign.

“My dad was just an ordinary market trader who became an extraordinary, reluctant hero,” she says.

“My mam was his rock and supported him all the way despite the initial concerns.

“I have picked up the mantle and take forward the call for the pardon with Neil to finally clear my Dad’s name.”

Asked whether the stress of the conviction and being in the public eye may have contributed to Thoburn’s death, Herron says: “That’s what we will never know.

“We will not rest until Steve’s conviction is quashed.”