Campaign for Elizabeth Fry
Campaign to keep Elizabeth Fry on the £5 bank note
A campaign to keep Quaker social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the £5 bank note is gaining momentum.
Last month Mervyn King, outgoing governor of the Bank of England, decided to replace Elizabeth Fry with Winston Churchill on the £5 note. A petition to get the Bank of England to reverse this decision has gained more than 22,000 signatures in ten days.
Rhiannon Redpath, a Quaker Peace & Social Witness peaceworker who is working with Gender Action for Peace and Security, backs the campaign.
She said: ‘This matters because the people we put on bank notes promote awareness of our history… The histories we choose to tell become lessons, and lessons become ideas about the world, and ideas become actions.
‘There are many great women on the list of names to be considered – teachers, nurses, suffragettes, philanthropists, scientists, doctors, writers and poets. There are no shortage of peaceable women who have made a “lasting contribution” to society, whose stories we could celebrate. When will we choose to tell our history through the lives of women, as well as men, and through peace, instead of war?’
Rhiannon added: ‘This petition has been picked up by national press, national and local radio, generating much support. It is available at: http://bit.ly/WomanOnBanknotePetition.’
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