Hands Off the Money
The Bank of England's Churchill snub was a choice, not a necessity.
In its choice of bank-note design, the Bank of England displays the same dereliction of patriotic duty typical of so many of our elites. When trying to justify the Bank’s decision to drop famous historical figures such as Winston Churchill and Alan Turing in favour of assorted wildlife, its Governor, Andrew Bailey, first argued that the “foremost objective” was security. “To ensure the public can trust the money we print,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph, we have to change the design of our notes from time to time: no design can be permanent if we are to stay ahead of the counterfeiters” (“We must take Churchill off banknotes for security reasons”, 3 June).
But, of course, a change of design doesn’t require a change of subject: a different version of Churchill and Turing could easily have been chosen. Security, therefore, cannot have been the main motive.
So, the Governor moved on to another justification. He acknowledged that celebrating people who’ve made exemplary contributions to the Britain we’ve all inherited—and doing so on banknotes—is important. Immediately, however, he turned around and surrendered what he’d just asserted, apparently in democratic deference to the popular will. A poll, he said, had revealed a “clear” preference for wildlife.
Yet again, things are not quite as they appear. For, what the Governor didn’t mention was that the poll had been so structured as to diffuse preferences for history, while concentrating those for nature. History had been divided into three separate categories—figures, landmarks, and events. Because it had not been similarly divided—into, say, fauna, flora, and landscape—nature was enabled to attract the highest proportion of preferences.
What is more, the Bank had not simply deferred to the people’s will. It had not let the people choose whatever they pleased. It had asserted its authority, made a judgement, taken a stand: the people could choose between history or nature, but not between the King’s portrait and one of Mickey Mouse. So why didn’t it also make the patriotic judgement that it’s more important to celebrate the people who spent their lives building and defending the national heritage we’ve all been privileged to receive, than to showcase wildlife that would happily scurry about the landscape whether or not the British nation-state existed at all. Wildlife represents the ‘country’ only as apolitical nature, not as a political nation. It is not a symbol of national identity.
So why did the Bank choose to abandon Britain’s national heritage?
