Why did decimalisation happen

In a new 50p coin was introduced to replace the old 10 bob shilling note. The banks were closed for four days before changeover to prepare.

Currency converters were available for everyone, and prices in the shops were shown in both currencies. This went some way to alleviate the feeling many people had, that shopkeepers might use the conversion from old money to new to increase prices! Cafe price list circa with prices in shillings and pence. For a short time the old and new currencies operated in unison, whereby people could pay in pounds, shillings and pence and receive new money as change.

Originally it was planned that old money would be phased out of circulation over eighteen months, but as it turned out, the old penny, halfpenny and threepenny coins were officially taken out of circulation as early as August In comparison to the rest of the world, Britain lagged behind in the decimalisation stakes. Whilst Britain and our nearest neighbour Ireland did not convert to decimalisation until , this was not the first time Britain had considered decimalisation.

As far back as Parliament had considered decimalising the British currency. In ,the Decimal Association was founded in support of both decimalisation and use of the SI metric system, the international standard for physical measurements which had been adopted by France in the s and has since been widely introduced across the world although interestingly the metric system has still not been fully implemented in the UK.

NatWest faced even bigger challenges. It had not even existed as a single bank when planning began. For these banks, the late s were a time of planning and building a whole new bank, ready for launch on 1 January Decimalisation thus came at a time when much other work was also underway. The legacy systems of three different banks had to be taken into account when preparing for the changeover. In November NatWest created a dedicated Decimal Currency Office to handle internal planning and external liaison for decimalisation.

A monthly Decimal Currency Digest was circulated to staff, and three programmed learning booklets were issued: Brush up your Decimals, Expressions of Amounts and Conversion of Amounts. Cashiers also had to study a further booklet, Decimalisation and the Cashier, and complete six practical training exercises.

NatWest staff also played a part in preparing the public for decimalisation. Booklets and leaflets were also issued to customers in the run up to D-Day.

To enable bank staff to undertake all the necessary preparations, all banks were closed for business on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 February They would in any case have been closed all weekend, so their next day of trading was Monday 15 February; D-Day itself.

The closure of banks was potentially inconvenient for customers. Fortunately cash dispensers — a relatively new innovation at the time — were unaffected by the change, since they only dealt in banknotes, and were therefore able to continue in operation over the closed period. Do you remember the tanner, shilling, florin and half crown? If you do, you must be at least in your 40s, because it was back in February , 40 years ago, that Britain "went decimal" and hundreds of years of everyday currency was turned into history overnight.

On 14 February that year, there were 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. The following day all that was history and the pound was made up of new pence.

Decimalisation - having a currency based on simple multiples of 10 and - had been a long time coming to Britain. France and the United States had gone decimal in the s. Britain first thought about doing the same in the s but the idea did not gather momentum.

Prior to , the closest Britain came to decimalisation was in with the introduction of the florin - a coin worth two shillings 24 old pence or 10 new pence which was one-tenth of a pound. It was the historic way the Romans used their money and divided up the [librum, solidus and] denarius which was where the d in L. Quick decision. But remarkably it took the government only seconds to decide to get rid of the currency that had served Britain for thousands of years.

The economist Peter Jay, who was also Mr Callaghan's son-in-law, recalled: "They talked for about 20 seconds and Wilson said 'well why not' and that is how the decision was made