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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JANUARY 25, 1985
the world; even its monetary mystique has passed into history.
This has not come about overnight. All through the six bruising
years of World War II, the pound held relatively firm against the
dollar. When the war ended, the exchange rate was $4.03.
The first major devaluation came in 1949, when the rate fell to
$2.80. Like the empire itself, the pound has been on the decline
ever since, with only an occasional--and temporary--upswing••..
Almost as if to underscore the decline of the pound, the British
treasury is replacing the classic green-paper banknote•••with a
coin not much larger than the British penny. And not surprising
ly, the coin has proved to be highly unpopular [as has the Ameri
can Susan B. Anthony dollar coin]. "It just doesn't seem like a
pound," one Londoner was heard to complain at a supermarket.
Actually, the pound came in coins before it was a banknote. Be
ginning in about AD 775, the Saxon kingdom in England issued a
coin stamped with a star and known as the "sterling," the Old
English word for star. The coin was minted in silver--240 coins
to the pound--and large transactions came to be reckoned in
"pounds of sterlings," later shortened to "pounds sterling." Af
ter the Norman conquest in 1066, the pound was divided for ac
counting purposes into 20 shillings and 100 pence. In medieval
Latin, the words for pound, shilling, and pence were libra,
solidus and denarius, which gave rise to the symbols "�," "s" and
"d" that are still in use•••.
In the 19th Century, London became the world's leading financial
center. Sterling became the reserve currency for many countries,
not only those in the British Empire but also many others in
Scandinavia, the Middle East and the Far East. These countries
maintained their currencies in a fixed relationship with the
pound sterling and tended to keep their foreign exchange reserves
in the form of sterling balances in London.
A Labor Party government undertook the devaluation of 1949 and
another, under Harold Wilson, engineered the next one, reducing
the pound to $2.40 in 1967•••• In 1970, Conservative Prime Mini
ster Edward Heath allowed the pound to float, to seek its own
value in relation to other currencies, and it has been doing so
ever since.... The continuing plunge of the pound has prompted
Ladbrokes, the bookmakers, to quote odds of� to! that the pound
will reach parity with the dollar ]2y February.
Still, the pound's declining value against other currencies does
not sadden all Britons. Tourist-related business is booming, and
British exporters find their products much more competitive in
the international marketplace•.•• However, columnist Jon Akass
observed in the popular Daily Express, "The one-dollar-pound
would be!! numbing blow at .21!!: self-esteem."••• In some political
circles there seems to be a lingering feeling that the $1 pound
could have a negative impact on the Thatcher government. The
pound has been!! symbol of national virility, and the Labor Party
may well try to use "the dollar pound" as an anti-government slo
gan in the next election.