Animal picture proposals for our currency strike a sour note
The motivations of those who believe that people like Winston Churchill - without whom British Jews would not be here - as 'problematic' deserves a response
I have nothing against hedgehogs. Or field mice. Or puffins. Or otters. Frankly, I’d rather spend an afternoon with them than the people who have helped to determine the future of Britain’s banknotes.
As an animal lover, I am perfectly happy to see British wildlife celebrated, but I object to them replacing Winston Churchill, Jane Austen and Alan Turing.
The Bank of England recently announced that future banknotes could move away from historical figures and instead celebrate nature. The decision follows a consultation that attracted around 44,000 responses.
That sounds impressive until you discover that before those responses were gathered, a focus group of just 119 people had already helped frame the debate. It was at the focus group that Churchill was deemed problematic by some participants. One reportedly described him as “boomer”, “imperialistic” and disconnected from younger generations. Historical figures generally were criticised as “divisive”.
The thing is that I would not be writing these words if not for Winston Churchill – nor would the paper I am writing them in likely exist. In fact, the likelihood is that the British Jewish community, some 250,000 of us, would not be here.
When Britain stood alone against Hitler in 1940, Churchill refused to surrender. We know exactly what the fate of Jews here would have been had Britain fallen. Without him the consequences for European Jewry would have been even more catastrophic than they already were.
Of course we owe everything to the soldiers and allied armies who liberated the camps, but it was Churchill who ensured Britain stayed in the fight and refused to accept defeat.
Churchill isn’t on the £5 note because he had a good turn of phrase- but because he lived up to the words – “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” that sit beneath his image on the banknote.
The man had his flaws, undoubtedly – but the people who now dismiss him as “divisive” do so from the comfort of a world that exists because his generation fought for it. There is something breathtakingly entitled about those who enjoy the freedoms secured by previous generations while simultaneously sneering at the people who secured them.
Then there is Jane Austen. Frankly I don’t care whether she had a Jewish connection or not, because not everything has to be viewed through that lens.
Jane belongs on a banknote because she was one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. More than 200 years after her death, her books are still read around the world, translated into dozens of languages and adapted over and over again. And let’s not overlook perhaps her contribution to British culture in the 1990s: Colin Firth as Darcy emerging from a lake in a wet shirt.
Then there is Alan Turing, who will likely be replaced by a puffin.
It’s not enough that he helped crack the Enigma code, shortening the war and saving countless lives, but he was also a gay man persecuted by the country he helped save. Yet he too is being dumped.
What strikes me most about all this debate about notes is how detached it is from reality.
How many of the people demanding these changes even use cash? Most younger people – all people – buy everything with a tap of a phone or Apple Pay. They probably spend scrolling than they do looking at a £20 note. Even buskers on the tube now take contactless payments.
Yet somehow, we are expected to believe that Churchill’s face being replaced by that of a ferret is a pressing national concern.
The only pictures of someone that matters to me in my wallet are those of my late parents, but that doesn’t mean I want to see an otter swimming across a £50 note in place of Alan Turing. Historical figures on notes are part of our national memory and reminds us of the sacrifices of the generations that came before.
44,000 consultation respondents appear to have forgotten that a hedgehog didn’t write Pride and Prejudice and a field mouse didn’t rally a nation against Hitler.
So I don’t want a fiver without Winston, because I know what he meant to the Jewish people. If gratitude is no longer fashionable, this is not our finest hour
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