The early 1970s saw hyperinflation as a direct result of decimal currency. True, other factors had a role (the quintupling of oil costs, the miners’ strike, the three-day workweek), but decimal money was unquestionably a factor. Under pressure from the City of London, the government decided to maintain the old pound as a reserve currency.
Who was responsible for decimalisation?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, stated on March 1, 1966, that the centuries-old sd system would be phased out in favor of a decimal currency in which the pound would be divided into 100 pieces.
It was a shift that had been in the works since the mid-nineteenth century, when the decimal lobby gained enough clout to obtain the introduction of a one-tenth-pound currency. Other countries, long dedicated to the sd, had been less hesitant to risk the temporary disruption that decimal coinage would bring, and by 1966, Britain was on the verge of being the world’s only major country without decimal money.
The choice to adopt decimal was seen and justified as part of Britain’s overall development. The decimal system’s improved simplicity would provide a significant boost to productivity, making money calculations faster, easier, and less prone to error, thus benefiting both machines and people. Not having to teach youngsters the nuances of sd would save significant time in classrooms.
Recognizing the magnitude of a change that would effect every business and home in the country and wipe away generations of engrained money practices, the government suggested a five-year transition period before the switchover in 1971.
Why did we switch to a decimal system in 1971?
Wilson liked the sound of anything that would make him look fresh and modern after promising to construct a ‘new Britain’ in the ‘white fire’ of the technological revolution. From new road signs, postcodes, speed limits, and breathalyzers to reforming divorce, abortion, and homosexuality laws, his government was preoccupied with the new.
He reasoned that becoming decimal would demonstrate to French President Charles de Gaulle how enthusiastic he was about all things European.
Wilson merely nodded and answered, ‘Why not?’ when his Chancellor, Jim Callaghan, approached him about decimalisation. an incredibly rash and undemocratic manner of approving such a significant shift.
When the Cabinet met a few days later to examine the topic, it was unanimously approved with little debate. So, without ever asking the British people for their input, the coins that millions of Britons had known and loved over the ages were sentenced to the scrapheap in a matter of seconds. But what should take their place? The majority of banks and enterprises want a shilling system, with the base unit being ten shillings. The Bank of England, on the other hand, was emphatic that Britain must continue with the pound in order to maintain sterling’s worldwide reputation.
By 1968, the transition had begun. The original 5p and 10p coins were introduced in April of that year, and they were larger than they are now, with the same size and weight as the old shilling and the florin or two shilling coin. The hexagonal 50p coin, which replaced the ten-shilling note, joined them a year later.
The ancient coins began to vanish over time. The old ha’penny was phased out in 1969, while the much-loved half-crown, which had been a part of English life since Henry VIII’s reign, was phased out a year later.
All of this, however, was just a warm-up for the major switchover on February 15, 1971, dubbed “Decimal Day” because February is often a slow month for banks and companies.
By this time, a new Conservative government had taken power. However, Edward Heath, the new man at Number 10, was arguably more radical than Wilson in many ways.
Heath was preoccupied with modernising Britain, and if that meant trashing the past’s legacy, so be it.
Heath’s ministers went to great lengths to promote the new currency in the run-up to Decimal Day, including commissioning an unforgivably bad song by Max Bygraves, Decimalisation. The BBC broadcast a series of five-minute instructional broadcasts called Decimal Five, while ITV broadcast Granny Gets The Point, a horribly patronizing play about a befuddled elderly lady learning how to use the new coinage.
The transition went off without a hitch on the big day. Most big stores were prepared, and British Rail and London Transport had gone decimal a day early.
To assist bewildered shoppers, Harrods had an army of ‘decimal pennies,’ girls dressed in rakish boaters and blue sashes, while Selfridges had a battalion of females dressed in’shorts and midi split skirts and other suitably mathematically costumes.’
Despite significant public protest, decimalisation, like so many other transformations of the late 1960s and early 1970s, went through despite widespread public opposition, from the demolition of ancient city centers to the elimination of hanging. Polls showed that only four out of ten people approved, and ‘anti-decimal terrorists’ distributed flyers in London’s West End criticizing the government’s refusal to consult the population.
Many people were concerned that switching decimal would allow stores to raise prices in stealth. This was almost definitely an urban legend, as prices were already increasing due to inflation, which was already at an astounding 9.4%.
However, it’s easy to see why so many people were outraged. The elderly were skeptical about the new currency. Many people insisted on carrying ‘Decimal Adders’ about the stores to figure out the difference between old and new, despite the fact that they were absurdly clumsy and cumbersome by today’s standards.
Nonetheless, for millions of people in the early 1970s, decimalisation was just another sign of a world that seemed to have cast aside all tradition, all comfort, all reassurance, all order: a terrifying world tormented by inflation, terrorism, crime, and delinquency.
Orwell’s ‘distinctive and recognisable’ England was, in fact, vanishing.
Heath’s government ripped up the map of the British Isles a year later, destroying old counties like Rutland and creating new, wholly fictitious entities like Avon and Cleveland in the process.
On New Year’s Day 1973, one of the most significant events in our country’s history occurred when Britain joined the European Community’s decimalized partners. The Union Jack flew for the first time outside its Brussels headquarters appropriately, upside down.
Decimalisation was an expensive business, costing an estimated 120 million (approximately 4 billion today), just as its opponents had predicted. And, as they had predicted, it turned out to be simply the tip of the iceberg.
The distinguishing traditions that had defined British life during Orwell’s lifetime began to fade away one by one. Metrication quickly followed decimalisation under European law, with kilograms and metres gradually displacing pounds and feet.
Most of us take our decimal currency for granted nowadays. Nobody born after the late 1960s can recall the old coins that preceding generations were so familiar with. Few people remember that the pound used to be worth 240 pence instead of 100 pence for hundreds of years. It may appear to be a minor adjustment. Yet, as the eurozone’s fiasco in Greece and Portugal has demonstrated in recent months, a country’s currency is its lifeblood.
The men behind Decimal Day, like the planners who were leveling our old city centers at the time, sacrificing tradition on the altar of modernity, were unconcerned about public opinion or the weight of history.
Not only did decimalisation drive a gulf between generations, giving millions of elderly people the impression that they had been relocated to another country. It also helped to cut us off from our history in a deeper, symbolic way.
Of course, we will never return to the old money, not least because the decimal system is far easier to understand, even for traditionalists.
For better or worse, we’ve become a far more European country, with duvets and wine bars, pavement cafes and continental breakfasts, international vacations and Italian restaurants.
Change, on the other hand, is never free. And there was undoubtedly much to lament in the demise of George Orwell’s Britain, the place where the coins were always heavier than anywhere else.
We might have gotten a gleaming new streamlined currency on that gloomy, drizzly day 40 years ago. But we also lost something far more significant: a piece of our country’s soul.
What was the purpose of decimalization?
What is decimalisation, and how does it work? Our current decimalised currency system was introduced to make money tendering more easier and to bring it in step with other similar currencies throughout the world, making international trade easier. The new currency was based on a 100-penny-to-pound exchange rate.
Have prices increased since decimalisation?
The new system permitted businesses to raise prices 2.4 times quicker than the old system. Worse, decimal money shattered the British people’s will to oppose inflation in the 1970s by eliminating any prices that they deemed familiar and reasonable.
Did decimalisation raise prices?
Britain abandoned its conventional pounds, shillings, and pence in favor of a decimal currency 30 years ago today. The much-touted simplicity of decimalisation, which swept away the prized idiosyncrasies of threepenny bits and half crowns, contrasted sharply with the complex rows and near-panic that the move produced among ministers.
According to newly published official records, the Labour administration considered delaying decimalisation day – or D-Day as it was called – barely a year before it was scheduled to take place.
Harold Wilson’s administration was concerned about the change’s high cost, public disapproval, and widespread conviction that it would drive inflation.
Europe was at the center of the problem back then, as it is now with the discussion over ditching the pound for the euro. Britain’s attempts to enter the Common Market at the time were inextricably related to decimalization.
Wilson resisted calls to abandon or postpone decimalisation in the papers documenting the rocky path to decimalisation. However, in a typical slick maneuver, he decided to maintain the most popular of the old coins, the sixpence, as a sop to public opinion and to try to persuade voters that the switchover was unrelated to rapidly growing prices.
Within six months of the 1967 Act mandating decimalization, lobbying to postpone implementation began to mount. Labour was seeking budget cutbacks at the time, and a Whitehall report for Chancellor Roy Jenkins showed that postponing D-Day until 1975 or 1976 could save up to 10 million per year.
The cost of decimalisation, on the other hand, was estimated to be 128 million for business and 23.5 million for the government, with 1 million going to advertising and publicity.
Wilson and Jenkins were warned that if they halted the transition to decimal money, banks and businesses would sue, so they chose to go forward, despite without informing the Cabinet of their plans.
Wilson was considering deferring the shift again in January 1970, with only a year until D-Day and expense and inflation concerns. Treasury Minister Bill Rodgers advised him, however, that such a step would be perceived as “dictated by fear of significant price increases following decimalization.”
In February, Wilson came up with the’save the sixpence’ concept. In a note to Jenkins, he argued that if vending equipment, such as phone booths, parking meters, and London Transport ticket dispensers, only accepted shilling coins rather than the smaller sixpence, it would ‘be a built-in component in boosting prices and levies.’
Even after Wilson was defeated in Edward Heath’s Conservative election triumph in 1970, efforts to use the sixpence’s propaganda worth grew. Ministers questioned officials in September about ‘the extent to which the decision to keep the sixpence as legal tender for at least two years after D-Day could be used publicly to reassure people about the impact of decimalisation on pricing’.
Despite their attempts, prices began to rise after February 15 as inflation took hold. And many people blamed the switchover as the root of the problem.
The shift was later tainted by a ‘undercurrent of suspicion,’ according to key authorities.
Officials expressed concerns that the Queen’s death might have jeopardized the switchover if she died “before 4,150 million decimal coins bearing her image have been produced.” ‘The demolition of Llantrisant Mint (where the new coins were being minted) by Welsh nationalists,’ according to the documents, and public rejection of the seven-sided 50p piece were also concerns.
It was feared that bus drivers might refuse to accept the additional money.
There was also a threat of industry strikes due to a disagreement between unions and management about decimal prices for tea and coffee from machines.
Instead of the traditional picture of Britannia, Prince Philip advocated that decimal coins should be decorated with “flowers, weeds, and vegetables.”
‘My sense is that there are already quite a number of crowns and things…,’ the Prince, who was chairman of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, wrote, expressing an unexpected love for plant life. Flowers, weeds, and veggies may provide a solution.’ Britannia, on the other hand, survived and was featured on a 50p coin produced in 1969, two years before the full decimal switchover.
Why is a bob called a shilling?
Bender – A sixpence was called a bender because it could be bent in the hands due to its silver content. This was a common practice for making ‘love tokens,’ and many of them are still in collections today. A sixpence was also plenty to become properly inebriated, as bars would frequently allow you to drink all day for tuppence. The phrase “going on a bender” was coined as a result of this.
Bob – The origins of this nickname are unknown, but we do know that the term “bob” was first used to refer to a shilling in the late 1700s. According to Brewer’s 1870 Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ‘bob’ is derived from ‘Bawbee,’ 16-19th century slang for a half-penny. The term ‘Bob’ was also used to refer to a set of changes rung on church bells, which could have been the origin of the nickname because the word’shilling’ comes from the proto-Germanic word’skell,’ which means ‘ring.’
Florin – The early florins were named after coins that were originally struck in Italy and went on to become the most widely used trade currencies in Western Europe. Edward III sought to create a six shilling gold currency that would be adequate for trade with European superpowers of the time, but they were swiftly removed due to their underweight for their face value.
The groat, sometimes known as the fuppence, was a big four-penny currency used in medieval times. The term is derived from the Dutch word ‘groot,’ which means’large,’ and refers to the coin’s size. The word entered the British vernacular in a variety of forms, the majority of which have since become obsolete. Because of its significant medieval association, the groat is frequently mentioned in fantasy and historical literature.
Tanner this alternative name for the sixpence is thought to have originated in the early 1800s and is derived from the Romany gypsy word ‘tawno,’ which means’small one.’
In SD, what did the D stand for?
The pounds, shillings, and pence system has a weak connection to Roman coinage, although it was invented by Pepin the Short, a French king, in AD 755.
Although Libra, Solidus, and Denarius are all Latin names, and Solidus and Denarius are also Roman coins, they were not used in the same way by the Romans. Ten asses were worth one silver denarius (plural denarii) (an as was a bronze coin). A solidus (plural solidii) was a gold Roman currency that was produced after the denarius. The aureus, its forerunner, was worth 25 denarii.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the solidus became the currency of most of Europe.
Pepin the Short, the French King (or King of the Franks), was unable to produce gold solidii due to a scarcity of gold. As a result, in AD 755, he devised a new system based on a new silver denarius weighing one 240th of a pound of silver. As a result, there existed a connection between pounds in money and pounds in weight.
He also maintained a connection to the former money. One solidus was worth twelve denarii (or sou in France). The solidus was solely used by the French as a monetary unit.
England was divided into different Saxon kingdoms at the time. Mercia was the dominant country, led by King Offa, who is famous for Offa’s Dyke. His people traded with Europe and used the same gold solidus as the Europeans. Offa implemented the same approach throughout the districts of England where he wielded power.
The silver denarii were referred to as pennies by the Saxons. They were introduced to replace previous Saxon silver pennies that were not part of the sd system.
The letter ‘d’ stood for denarius, which is why we used it for pence. Of course, the letter’s’ can stand for shilling or solidus, while the letter ‘l’ can represent for ‘libra,’ the Roman pound. So one solidus (‘s’) equaled 12 denarii (‘d’), and twenty solidii equaled one pound (‘l’).
When did the United Kingdom adopt decimalization?
Britain went decimal on Monday, February 15, 1971, but it was time for a refresh 40 years after the first decimal coins were issued. Find out where Matthew Dent gets his ideas for his new designs.