Leatherhead Matters

The Daily Mail reports today that ‘Britannia’, the trident wielding helmeted goddess, is to be scrapped from 50ps – and that Gordon Brown himself approved the decision. She is to be replaced with a “representation of modern Britain”.

Britannia first appeared on the farthing in 1672, followed by the halfpenny later the same year; the model used, then and later, was Charles II’s mistress, the Duchess of Richmond. She then appeared on the penny coin between 1797 and 1970, and on the 50 pence coin since 1969. When the Bank of England was granted a charter in 1694, the directors decided within days that the device for their official seal should represent ‘Brittannia sitting on looking on a Bank of Mony’ (sic).

Perhaps the best analogy is that Britannia is to the United Kingdom and the British Empire what Marianne is to France or perhaps what Lady Liberty is to the United States of America. Like Lady Liberty, Britannia became a very potent and more common figure in times of war, and represented British liberties and democracy.

During the 1990s a new term, Cool Britannia (a pun on the poem ‘Rule Britannia‘ by James Thomson [1700 - 1748], and the song adapted from it, which is often used as an unofficial National Anthem), was used to describe the contemporary United Kingdom. The phrase referred to the fashionable London, Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester scenes, with a new generation of pop groups and style magazines, successful young fashion designers, and a surge of new restaurants and hotels. Cool Britannia represented late-1990s Britain as a fashionable place to be.

So Gordon has presumably deemed that Britannia is now un-cool, particularly since it’s associated with the Blair era.

The Mail notes that the decision was taken last June while Brown was still Chancellor. So now we know why he took his eye off Northern Rock at a critical moment and why he was distracted from securing our data at HM Revenue & Customs. He was dealing with important matters of State like redesigning the 50p!