Hidden Agendas?: New Bank Note (Turkish) & ringing up Clause 3

The UK Labour Party's public agenda for nearly a century contained Clause 3 (rescinded under the leadership of Tony Blair) that expressed the aim of taking into public ownership the heights of the economy, though after the '50s more observed in the breach than the observation. The crisis of Britain's banks has resuscitated this political corpse as a hidden agenda with the possibility of government taking a commanding ownership share of leading banks (though only if existing shareholders do not take up the bulk or all of the preference shares that 4 UK clearing banks are about to issue)? The reality may be more symbolic than having long term political consequences. So long as UK banks only survive by government guarantees government dilution of existing shareholders' rights seems only fair (and the conditions such as no more "rewards for failure", and banks must not reduce lending to small businesses or first time home-buyers). It's not really fascinating therefore, as many journalists are suggesting, to wonder how Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling square this having long abandoned youthful left wingism. Paradoxically, the same is happening in the USA. In recent decades, it became axiomatic that whatever happens in the USA is copied in the UK afterwards, rarely beforehand. Nonetheless, there is a symbolic change going on in the social dimension of the role of money. In the realm of symbolism, with the popular mind ever seeking after archetypal storylines about the credit crunch, asking who are the good guys and the bad guys, journalists seek out poetic truths for which, for example, the demonic looking image of Richard Fuld (ex-CEO of Lehmans) is very satisfying. It is another sign of the times that in Turkey a secular revolt is splitting the republic over placing the image of a "previously obscure" woman on new banknotes? She is Fatma Aliye (d.1936), Turkey's first female novelist, illustrated without the Islamic headscarf! The integrity of money is at the centre of politics, never more so than today, but rarely as a battleground between religious conservatives and feminism. Aliye was the daughter of a senior Ottoman bureaucrat and historian. New notes are being minted for issuance next January to mark the inauguration of a fresh currency to replace the existing New Turkish Lira. The central bank committee also chose a mathematician, a composer, an architect and a 13th-century Sufi mystic. These are all departures from the established practice of notes carrying political figures. Having women depicted on banknotes other than merely for allegorical purposes is very rare. Other countries have political female figures such as England's Queen, Mrs Bandaranike, Indira Gandhi, and Israel's ex-President Golda Meir (below). Placing non-political women on banknotes is rare. England had Florence Nightingale on the back of a ten pount note. Last year North Korea also for the first time placed a woman on a note (below). The new Turkish note echoes a Chilean note (above) showing Gabriela Mistral, pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, feminist, and first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945. My vote for the world's greatest ever banknote is the Clydesdale £10 for reasons I explain below. Scotland has 3 sets of sterling banknotes (issued by 3 banks) and Northern Ireland gloriously has 5 sets. Except for the Hong Kong dollar, these are the only regional banknotes left in the world (all the result of a freedom won by Sir Walter Scot's defence against moves by the Bank of England in the 1820s to impose only its banknotes on the UK). All this is against the background of de-nationalised Euro notes that only show 'bridges' as communitaire symbols, though if the UK does join the Euro zone the Irish and Scottish banks in the UK will gain a unique right to design the back side of their notes.
The Clydesdale note is unique for showing Africans on the reverse and a map of part of eastern Nigeria! Other than its predecessor that had David Livingstone in Africa have there ever been any countries' banknotes that show images from foreign countries? The current note shows Mary Slessor whose story is told in all Nigeria's schools. She was a Scottish presbyterian missionary who went native in Calabar and in time stopped the Nigerian tradition of rejecting twins as a curse, which was an immense age-old tragedy in a country with the highest birth rate of twins in the world. The bank note looks African and has no Scottish references or symbols other than the names Clydesdale and Glasgow. I consider it the Clydesdale note as the greatest medium of exchange. But, who today thinks of money as having symbolically important, educational or political dimension on a par with the most scandalous of contemporary art? There is the story of French PM Lionel Jospin, who on his first meeting with PM Tony Blair objected to the Bank of England note depicting the Duke of Wellington on the reverse of the £5 note with the Battle of Waterloo. This note, like the choice of Waterloo as the terminal for the Chunnel train connection between London and Paris, was a humorous studied insult that coincided with the opening of the Channel Tunnel rail link. After the meeting it was replaced with a subtler points-scoring, with a note depicting George Stephenson and the world's first railway just to remind the French tourists who invented railways. I suppose these themes are capable of expressing hidden agendas, of the sort that nationalisation of banks are being suspected of by died-in-the-wool conservatives, though how hidden can they be when handled by millions? In Turkey, Bedri Baykam, an artist and member of the pro-Atatürk Kemalist Thought Association, says the new Turkish note is part of an AKP-driven hidden agenda. "I have no problem using historical figures on bank notes but I don't trust the motives," he told the Guardian. "They will infiltrate through the currency names or images that at first look harmless but the next step will be to introduce gradually more conservative figures until you get people who negate the values of the republic." Well, for now, anything thought-provoking and culturally radical I can only celebrate, though why except for Golda Meir, the other women depicted should all have to look so glum I have no idea. I'd prefer the image that this blog begins with for Mary Slessor with her adopted twins on the Clydesdale note.