The Pound in Your Pocket

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The Pound in Your Pocket 

Archive on 4: The Pound in Your Pocket

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Frances Cairncross tells the inside story of the devaluation crisis of 1967.

November 1967. Harold Wilson's government devalues sterling and the country panics. Frances Cairncross tells the inside story. From 2017.

Fifty years after it happened, Frances Cairncross looks back at the story of the Devaluation crisis of 1967.

It was one of the iconic phrases that will always be associated with Harold Wilson's premiership: in a TV broadcast, a day after his government had decided to reduce the value of the pound sterling by just over 14 percent against the dollar, Wilson assured the nation that, nevertheless, "the pound in your pocket" was still worth the same.  

As a young journalist, Frances Cairncross covered the story - her father, Sir Alec Cairncross, was a senior Treasury official closely involved in the discussions before and the consequences following the November 18th move.   He wrote in his diary "at 10.35, I saw the TV screen show a £1 note with DEVALUED printed across it..."

With: 

Peter Jay
William Davis
William Keegan
David Walker
Robin Butler
Professors Robert Neild
Kathleen Burk

Featuring readings from Alec Cairncross's diary of the period.

Producer: Simon Elmes

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2017.

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