On the 15th of February 1971 Britain went ‘decimal’. Centuries of tradition were wiped out and pounds, shillings and pence were replaced by pounds and pence, where one new penny was the equivalent of 2.4 old pennies.
Needless to say, I thought it was a shame and I didn’t think it was an improvement. For me, it was one of the first examples of a ‘dumbing down’ process, a very costly exercise with no provable benefit and caused inflation as many shops simply converted 3s 0d into 30p instead of 15p.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I don’t remember the actual day since we were living in the USA at the time, but when we came back a few months later I found it quite hard to translate odd numbers of pence into shillings and pence. As someone has pointed out, we lost a lot of historic coins. I can just remember farthings and I loved the old silver threepenny bits which my mother used to put in the birthday treat of Clootie Dumpling. Even now I find myself sometimes saying “Oh, it’s only 48p.” Then I remember that that is almost ten bob!
Boadicea – Your last sentence says it all and I heard the same sentiments expressed in Germany and France when the hateful Euro was introduced.
Nighty night
OZ
There was something about traditional English coinage. There was a distinctness about it, a tradition to it. A decimal currency might be more practical in some ways, but it is not necessarily a superior system. My mum, a hard-nosed Teuton obsessed with practicality and I have often clashed over both the virtues of a fractional versus decimal currency as well as the metric system — she being in favour of both, my being opposed to both. I have a number of the old issues and they are simply superior in all ways. Furthermore, one knows exactly what it is. It is simply full of Britishness — it is completely distinct and unmistakable.
Checking on my Red Book aka AFB 108 which is a record of Toc’s military career, I note that I was in Tidworth Wilts. At the time, I thought it a pain. What I didn’t realise was that it would be the thin edge of the wedge!
P.S. Anyone remember the big five pound note?
Tocino: from about what time?
I used to get one of these at Christmas from one of my aunts:
OZ
As far as I remember all the prices were changed overnight – some idiot decided that it would be better if only the new price was shown. That allowed businesses to profiteer and there was no attempt to stop them taking advantage of the initial confusion.
Here in Oz both prices had to be shown for some time and there were checks to make sure that shops didn’t take advantage of the change.
Christopher
I agree! I also happen to think that 240 is a far more flexible number to deal with than 100.
I remember the old ‘five jacks.’ (Anyone know why it was called that?) Never owned one, too young, though I remember being allowed to carry one once – pinned to the inside of my raincoat – when my Granddad bought me a new Raleigh after a nice little win on the gee-gees.
PS. I agree with Chrisopher and Boa – and the decimal currency is also more inflationary than the old £.s.d – consider all the small price increments you could apply under the old currency, even without farthings.
I am afraid that I am not one of those who believes that the old system was better than the new. While I agree that a certain amount of useful mental dexterity was required to work with £. s. d. I cannot see that this in any way outweighed the benefits of decimal currency. ‘Dumbing down’ would have happened regardless of whether or not Britain had made the switch. That came about through the liberal agenda of the Labour Party and its acolytes. Britain still works in miles, yards, feet and inches, but I guarantee that the majority of school children have no idea how many yards there are in a mile, let alone the number of chains there are in a furlong.
The arrival of computers and calculators made decimalization inevitable. Britain would have been left even further behind had it not made the change. No doubt systems could have been created but they would have been cumbersome and inefficient compared to those being used by other nations.
As for the inflationary effect, while this may well have occurred, it would only have been a temporary anomaly. Market forces would have rectified it eventually. That is the nature of capitalism. If inflation persisted, it had little to do with the currency switch but inept economic policy. In Britain’s case, the transition was followed closely by the 70s Oil Crisis together with Labour’s disastrous nationalization policies and the rise of the Trade Unions.
I find it baffling that Britain has not gone the whole hog and fully adopted the metric system. It is ridiculous that one buy’s petrol in litres but measures fuel efficiency in miles per gallon. The Imperial system has out-lived its usefulness.
Sipu: why not simply switch to selling petrol by the gallon, then? The metric system is too sterile, too Napoleonic. What sounds better, “I’ve walked a thousand miles” or “I’ve walked 1,000 Km”? Other than its intrinsic lyrical qualities and the fact that the Imperial system works just fine, the fact that the metric system was imposed on France by Napoleon, on Germany by Hitler, and on the UK by the EU gives me a certain distaste for it.
Christopher, Thomas Jefferson, someone who I am sure you agree does not fall into that list of villains, was one of the earliest and most vocal advocates of a metric system. He devised his own and it might have worked had he got the nomenclature right and had the expansion of the US into western states not happened so rapidly. (The impetus of his initiative was lost when pioneers crossed the Appalachians). As ambassador to France, he was influential in the choices made by the new Republic. I sometimes wonder whether you are taking the piss with your unstinting support for all things British. I would be greatly amused if you were.
Sipu
Nonsense. I work in £, s, d every day – and I use Excel and Access. It is neither ‘cumbersome’ or ‘inefficient’.
The ‘temporary’ anomaly of some prices rising by 240% overnight wasn’t temporary – as you are well aware once prices rise they rarely fall. There were many items of food that were ‘suddenly’ far too expensive for my limited purse.
Decimalisation. I remember it well. 1971, in primary school chanting all those tables and measures to imprint them on our brains was part of the daily grind, but I still didn’t find them easy to remember. What joy when it changed.
Australia ‘went decimal’, from the old ‘cumbersome British Sterling system with its pounds, shillings and pence with twelve pence to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound.’
(http://www.essortment.com/history-australian-currency-21175.html) in 1966.
I seem to remember Dad arguing that the decimal system should have been organised to make the value of an new penny more equal to the value of an old penny and then the prices wouldn’t have escalated. I think his system was just to change a pound to 200 pence instead of 240 d
Australia, Pseu, sensibly chose ten shillings to become $1, thereby answering your Dad’s requirement by making one cent equal to 1.2 old pennies. 🙂
I had a feeling that was true, bearsy, but not sure, so I didn’t say it!
Sipu: yes, and the first decimal currency was used, ironically, in Russia under the orders of Peter the Great. Realising that Russia was tremendously backwards in most ways he theorised that by being the first to decimalise he would show the world that Russia was not simply a backwater to be ignored and could, in fact, be revolutionary and forward-looking. The United States would also be one of the first to utilise a decimal currency system — some wished to create a new fractional system, but it was Benjamin Franklin who won out in the end after he proposed a decimal system.
Am I am ardent Anglophile? Yes, very much so. One of the main reasons why is because Britain has always been filled with so many eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. I find the Imperial system delightful because it has some spirit, some cultural value to it. I recognise that the metric system is simply more practical, efficient, and vastly less prone to error. However, it is too sterile for me. The fractional currency system was also more distinct, more eccentric. It is the same for the red post boxes, running down a hill after rolling cheese, and Morrison Dancing.
The world is becoming less and less interesting, less and less distinct. It doesn’t matter if I’m in my native Germany or Taiwan, the streets are marked in kilometres. It doesn’t matter if I’m in France or Japan, the milk I buy would be sold in litres. If I enjoy the fact that one or two countries insist on having something a bit different, I revel in it. It makes them more interesting and does not necessarily make them “backwards”.
Sipu: I would also like to add that I prefer traditional Chinese character over the simplified ones and that I prefer classic literature and music to virtually everything that is being produced now. It’s the tradition that matters most to me, not simply ease or “practicality”.
Rhodesia, like Australia, set the dollar at 10 shillings, in 1969. This had some unintended consequences. Indigenous Rhodesians were often named after units of currency. Penny, Tickey (3d piece). (The Queen was given a necklace of tickeys when she visited Rhodesia in the 50s. She wore it at a recent jubilee.)) Sixpence and Shilling. With decimalisation their names were changed to One Cent (deflationary), Two-and-a-half-cents (from whence came the TV sit com with Charlie Sheen), 5 Cents and Ten Cents respectively. I feel confident that the Shillings of that period preferred being called Ten Cents as opposed to Five Pence, which would have indicated a loss of status.
Of course the name of US Rapper 50 Cent, raised no eyebrows in this part of the world, except perhaps for the loss of the final ‘s’.
Christopher, eccentricity definitely has its attractions, but they should not appear in technical fields. Britain has had its fair share of disasters in that respect. One only has to look at some of the cars Britain has produced. The Austin Allegro springs to mind. Even those beautiful and iconic cars for which Britain is famous, are mostly impractical. Cheese rolling is one thing, but square steering wheels is something else. Besides, Germany has its fair share of eccentricities. Lederhausen!
Boadicea, I worked as a stockbroker in the late 70’s. The horror stories related to me by older staff about having to deal in the old currency, especially across international borders, left me in little doubt that the move was a good one. I agree prices seldom come down, but they may stay the same for an extended period or wages will rise to compensate or the currency will devalue to offset the effect. In any event the effect due to the currency change alone will be reduced. However, inflation may have continued, but that as I say was down to poor economic policy. The 240% rises of which you speak, would only have occurred at the ‘penny’ level and even then it would have been a rare occurrence seeing as the 1/2 penny existed.
Sipu: South Africa also had a 2.5 cent piece. Unless I am mistaken, the banknotes simply had their value changed during decimalisation — 5 pounds became 10 rand in ZA or 10 dollars in Rhodesia.
For a time being the decimal coinage retained the fractional value as well, at least in Rhodesia.
Many tourists visiting the US are annoyed because all banknotes are the same size and the denomination of the coins is not clearly marked, rather, it is written in small letters.
Engineering is one thing, walking half a mile to buy a pint of milk is another thing altogether.
Lederhosen are a Bavarian thing, not a general German thing. Many things people say are “typically German” are Bavarian. I am not a Bavarian.
Christopher, you are right re fractional coinage. Hence, I said that a piccanin called Tickey had his name changed to Two-and-a-half-cents. For a while, before we made the change, in fact even before it was confirmed that we were going to change, we used decimal coinage interchangeably with sterling. I believe that this had something to do with the fact that SA had already moved to decimal and they were pressuring us to follow suit. Quite frankly I can’t b arsed to investigate.
You may not be Bavarian, but nor are most British people from Gloucestershire, Jan, not withstanding.
Sipu
Odd that – I worked as the ‘researcher’ in a fairly big firm of stockbrokers in the City pre-decimalisation. I had no problems with the currency, and I never heard anyone complaining about it either.
As to your comments regarding the 240% increase being only at the penny level – I do wonder whether you actually read my post. I know that 3s 6d (17½p) would not buy very much today – but it certainly bought enough of one of my favourite foods, gammon steak, for a meal before 15th Feb 1971. After that date, at 36p very nearly 2 and half times the price, it went “off my menu” – I, along with quite a few others, could no longer afford it. Not everyone could accommodate such price rises – and that was but one example of how the currency change affected inflation.