The power of 10
‘It materialised informally: Harold Wilson replied “Why not?” to Callaghan’s proposal’
FEBRUARY 15, 2021, will mark 50 years since D-Day—the bloodless decimalisation of British currency. Pounds, shillings and pence, operative for perhaps a millennium, finally yielded to a far simpler system. Decimalisation was long resisted: by 1900, Britain was the sole major global power to hold out. Ineffable national superiority and conservative pragmatism prevailed. Politicians also feared any decimal revaluation of the working man’s penny, with Herbert Asquith predicting ‘grave social disturbance’.
Decimalisation only progressed decisively in 1961, when Selwyn Lloyd, the modernising Chancellor of the Exchequer, convened(1963) advocated the retention of the pound, comprising 100 ‘decimal pence’, rather than a new 10-shilling unit, which South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all adopted.
