Illegal Tender

I was pretty appalled this week when I discovered that the Royal Mail was producing a special £2 coin to mark the anniversary of the First World War. I have nothing against marking this as such as I think it is important that such anniversaries are remembered in an appropriate way. Unfortunately, the image they chose was a propaganda poster featuring Lord Kitchener. To put it mildly, I find this a bit tasteless.

Lord Kitchener was one of history’s unpleasant characters. Aside from various imperial adventures he was one of the leading proponents of the concentration camps during the Boer War – after burning the farms of the Boers, the men would be deported and the civilian woman and children sent to concentration camps where up to 26,000 of them died through general neglect. There was also the case of Breaker Morant, an Australian lieutenant, who was convicted and executed for war crimes – the warrants were signed by Kitchener despite the claim that the Australians were acting under Kitchener’s own orders. Overall, an unpleasant man and not one I would want to see in any way celebrated.

The image used on the coins is actually a very iconic image of a propaganda poster from the beginning of the First World War. There were various themes to cajole young men into signing up either through patriotism, sense of adventure or blackmailing through accusations of cowardice. Initially, many young men did join up and my grandfather was one of them. He served until the beginning of January 1916 when he was shot in the arm at the end of the Gallipoli campaign. He was only a few months past his 18th Birthday. He carried his wound until he died in his 90s but it is worth noting that when he joined up in 1914 he was underage – only just 17. Due to the disastrous tactics used by military commanders they needed a steady flow of manpower and were happy to turn a blind eye to Kitchener’s recruitment of boy soldiers.

The image of Kitchener and of the other propaganda posters is of historical significance and possibly issuing these as a series of stamps may have put them in some sort of context as an educational tool. However, the image used on the £2 coin is devoid of context and, unlike a stamp which will be in circulation for a few weeks, these coins are likely to be in circulation for years and without any obvious reasoning – a nasty man and a nasty piece of propaganda. Those who I have spoken to feel the same – my mother has said that she will refuse to accept these coins in change and I have much the same feeling myself. As far as I am concerned it should be treated as illegal tender.

I suppose the question should be what would be a suitable image for an anniversary coin? At first I thought either a simple poppy or possibly one of the war poets would be appropriate: Sasoon or Owen for example. However, I think what would show the enormity of the events on ordinary people would be to produce coins with the names of the battles and the number of casualties: Ypres, Gallipoli, Marnes, Verdun, Somme, Arras, Passchendaele… the list is depressingly long.