The issue of what images to put on new banknotes, and specifically of whom, has become one of the great battlegrounds of the culture wars in this country in recent years. Whenever the subject is broached there always arises the cry that the new note ought to feature a woman or an ethnic minority figure – someone who has been ‘written out of history’ – and that dead, white males have for too long hogged the limelight. This inevitably provokes the response that such special pleading merely amounts to ahistorical tokenism, a kind of retrospective, posthumous form of DEI hiring.
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has chosen the route that will cause it the least grief
The Bank of England thinks it has devised a way to obviate such a fractious debate: by not having representations of any human beings at all. As reported this week, it has announced a shortlist of 18 animal species it proposes to place on its next notes, with the public being able to vote on which creatures will replace the likes of Winston Churchill, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. In the running are pine martins, hedgehogs, basking sharks and other native British species.
So problem solved then. Well, not quite. When the Bank first made public this proposal in March, it faced a barrage of criticism from voices on the right.
