Is it time to put Margaret Thatcher on our banknotes?

Spectator

2 days ago

The Bank of England wants to rethink banknotes and has announced a public consultation in order to generate suggestions about what to put on them. 'Banknotes are more than just an important means of payment,' declares Victoria Cleland, the Bank's chief cashier, whose signature is on notes. 'They serve as a symbolic representation of our collective national identity and an opportunity to celebrate the UK.'
So, who should we put on our next banknotes? My vote, 35 years after she left office, would be to put Margaret Thatcher on the ten pound note. The 'Maggie' would become the go-to note. How better to celebrate a free-marketeer and our first woman prime minister – a committed monetarist at that – who also helped defeat Communism, than with a note of her own? Talk about putting money where her mouth was.
Putting Thatcher on our banknotes would ensure that we continue the tradition of being able to gaze upon the scrunched-up visage of a noble or great personage from our past, every time we reach into our pockets to pay for something, however mundane. Consider Sir Christopher Wren, bewigged and magisterial on the old, enormous, copper-coloured fifty (from 1981 to 1994). Or what about Charles Darwin (2000-2018) on the less recently out of date tenner? Then there was Wellington (1971-1990) on the old grey fiver, the one that had the Queen in seventies Silver Jubilee pomp. These were banknotes that fizzed with pride and self-assurance.
In the years since, our currency has worn Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Fry, Turner and Churchill. Every one of them made you feel slightly better about the world, one financial exchange at a time.
So good they have been, in fact, that you might argue that choosing who to put on the banknotes is one of the things that the Bank of England has actually got right in recent decades.
But now they think we might want something different – not necessarily people, though they are good enough for our American friends and their precious Greenbacks. Is this a desire to ape the bland architectural motifs of the euro notes? Or is it that in our modern times, since so many figures of English and British history have been 'problematised', it's simply easier to do without them at all? Erasing the past is easier than understanding it.
After all, if like public museums our notes need to be 'decolonised' that poses problems for figures such as Sir Francis Drake or even good old Sir Winston – and just remember what he did to the French navy, too … tut-tut, that's no good for Anglo-French relations either.
Then there's the inevitable issue of diversity that comes from history. It was back in 2013 that people were upset about the lack of women on our notes – except for the Queen, of course, who was on all of them. So that got fixed, thanks in part to Jane Austen, who arrived on the tenner in 2017. But still, women are represented in proportion to the demographic reality.
And what about representation from Britain's ethnic minorities and the disabled?
The problem is that, with only four notes to go with, you can't possibly tick every box, so someone gets let down, unlike – say, the casting of EastEnders or the television news where you can scrupulously try to enforce a quota so everyone feels included.
There are, however, potential solutions without resorting to bland pictures of road and rail infrastructure: you could introduce more notes, such as a £100 note to account for inflation (about which I've written on Coffee House). Perhaps even a £200 note; that way you have more notes to go around to represent different groups.
Or you could, of course, just retreat altogether and decorate banknotes with something else, like Mini Metros or pictures of new towns like Harlow or Milton Keynes, or public buildings, or HS2 or even ships. The Titanic would be popular.
The fact is that none of it quite floats the boat like the human connection with great individuals and inspiring lives. 'Things' are not what make our nation great, it's the people – the statesmen, artists, scientists, the writers, the businessmen.
So, who should join Thatcher on our banknotes? Would it be acceptable to adorn the £5 note with Mahatma Gandhi? He's a pretty different successor to Sir Winston in the fiver slot, wouldn't you agree? He was, after all, a British subject for 77 of his 78 years, and if we wish to appropriately cleanse ourselves of our colonial past (which, of course, we do), then who could be better than the visionary who successfully drove the British out of India, armed only with a spinning wheel? It would surely also be popular with many Britons of south Asian descent, too.
And if we want to celebrate the role of women in our society, why don't we put JK Rowling on the £20? She isn't just a global literary phenomenon, but she's a philanthropist of the highest order. She is also unarguably a determined champion of women's rights. It would be a positive move for the union, too, for the Bank of England to go for a Scot.
That leaves us with the £50. My vote would be the Queen. Not the current Queen, much as I like her, but the Queen that made us and whose reign still defines us. A 'QE2′ would be a fine fifty.
But whatever we end up doing with our bank notes, we shouldn't resort to profiles of bridges or the outline of buildings, drawings with all the soul of architects' models. That's what you do when – unlike Britain – you don't have a unified national story to celebrate.
The faces on our banknotes are like those on Mount Rushmore. The good news is we can change them from time to time. Like them or not, these are the people that made us and that made us great – and sometimes angry. If we take the people from our banknotes then, know this, we'll De La Rue the day.