Second Thoughts on Decimalisation
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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT
• much as the old penny will confuse every house- wife in the land—even those in the stock- broker belt. To mint it in bronze (plain edge)— the same size as the old sixpence—and to say that it is worth 2.4 old pence will be regarded as an insult. Try to tip a taximan with the ridicu- lous new bronze coin (plain edge) called 2 New Pence (value 4.8d.), which is the same size as the old halfpenny, and you will hear a volley of 4.8-letter words. Who will really believe in these bastard new pennies?
But absurdity does not rest there. There is to be a new halfpenny (value 1.2d.)! This, they say, is needed under the 100 £ system, although, they admit, it involves much additional work when it has to be written or printed, whether expressed as a half or as a third decimal place. This will drive most shopkeepers mad when they have to give change and make entries in their books. The new halfpenny will be ignored by the clearing banks, for their Systems and Purposes Committee have so informed the accounting machine manufacturers. But it can't be ignored by the accounting machines themselves. It will mean adding an additional column on all cash registers and adding machines, so that they will not be suitable for the export trade. In fact, the new halfpenny will sacrifice one of the big advan- tages of decimalisation, namely, uniformity with the US and the continent of Europe. No other country uses the half-cent (or halfpenny)—except South Africa which felt it had to cater to its submerged black population.
The case for decimalising on the 10s.=100 cents basis is overwhelming if you will ignore, as I contend we may, the so-called 'international case' for the E. The Halsbury committee of inquiry fully admitted that for domestic pur- poses the 10s. is the most convenient system. It will be much simpler to understand in the transitional period. (To think of 3s. 6d. as 35 cents under the 10s. system is easier than to think of it as 17f cents under the £ system.) The 100th part or cent would be 1.2d. which is the most practical minimum unit of value for the shops, public transport and public lavatories which take toll of our daily life. Moreover, the 10s. system has been adopted by other Commonwealth or ex- Commonwealth countries which have decimalised or are about to decimalise the £. South Africa and Australia have adopted the 10s. unit: New Zealand is about to do so. They are calling their minor unit a cent and their major unit (10s.) a dollar—South Africa calls it a Rand—but it is alleged that 'cent' would not be a popular name in the UK and that 'dollar' is unthinkable. What evidence has the Government got—apart from a few cranky letters—that 'cent' would be dis- liked? It is a good old English name derived from the Latin `centum,' meaning hundred, and could not be bettered for our decimal coinage system. As for the name for the major unit (10s.), if you dislike 'dollar' what is wrong with calling it a 'tenner'? People would understand precisely what decimalisation meant by 'tenners and cents,' that is, provided you dropped completely the names of the old coins.
Now for the so-called 'international case' for the £ as the major unit. The White Paper correctly states that besides being the domestic currency of the UK, the £ is one of two great international currencies used in world trade for the settlement of commercial debts (sterling is about one-third of the total) and that in a few countries (mainly Commonwealth) it is held as a monetary reserve. The £ is also used for pricing certain international rates, as in shipping and some metals, and in com- mercial insurance. (The claim that London is the world's largest insurance market is surely exaggerated: we have already lost the South African business thanks to the 'war' with Rho- desia.) Well, let us all agree that the £ is a sym- bol known throughout the commercial centres of the world.' Then continue to use it in interna- tional trade and in international monetary settle- ments. (Fractions of the £ will, of course, be ex- pressed in decimals.) Everyone will know that for internal domestic purposes we will be using the new tenners, divided into a hundred cents, and that two tenners make an international E. When we travel abroad our banks will convert our ten- ners into international £s for traveller's cheques, or into dollars or any other currency we like, and that when tourists visit the UK they will buy our tenners for domestic use. Nothing could be simpler. The international standing of sterling is unaffected: our domestic convenience is also unaffected. Did the Government not think of that?
If we really want to be forward-looking in an international monetary sense we would couple this coinage reform with a company coinage re- form and make our shares of no par value. Then dividends can be expressed in fractions of an international £ if the company is an international trader or in fractions of a domestic tenner, if the company is purely domestic. Labour has opposed this reform simply because it likes to see dividends expressed meaninglessly in percent. ages on nominal capital in case they might suggest, to the ignorant, excessive profits. But is Labour in this matter of decimalisation of the coinage really forward-looking? Does not this clinging to the penny and the £ make it backward- looking? I am surprised that for their ridiculous new halfpenny (which, they say, will be dropped when we are more affluent!) they have not re- surrected the groat.
If Mr Callaghan is really planning a coinage for a thousand years, then let us have a non-party vote or a national referendum. The 10s. decimal system would, in my view, be overwhelmingly popular.
Correction.—The figure 11,000 million' in my article of December 9 should have read 11,000 million.'
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