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COUNCIL for PARITY DEMOCRACY

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Honorary Secretary

Raymond Lloyd

20 December 2000

Parity Democracy & Political Integrity

Letter 119 to Citizens & Leaders in Open Polities

To Governors of Central Banks in relevant Commonwealth Countries

In the 1970s I created the world's first international coin issue, that promoting food production and rural women's advancement, carried out under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Some 100 countries took part issuing billions of coins, which in many countries continue both to circulate and to be refreshed with new designs. Earlier, in 1963, I had organised the world's largest stamp issue, that for Freedom from Hunger, in which 153 countries took part, including, for the first time, all 40 or so dependencies in the Commonwealth.

In 1980 I resigned from FAO and the UN to work for their democratic regeneration, and to propose new goals of parity democracy, where women and men share in the responsibilities of government and administration, parliament and political parties, the judiciary, and the media. Parity democracy is both an end in itself, and a means to a world where every girl, as well as every boy, from Antigua to Zimbabwe, receives adequate nutrition, secondary education, and the expectation of gainful employment and an independent income.

In the 1980s I continued my work on "Women's Advancement and Money", now proposing the portrayal of distinguished women of history, or women in the modern economy and society, and sending annual letters to some 320 Ministers of Finance and Governors of Central Banks, up to Letter 14 of 16 October 1991. I then changed to papers prepared to coincide with my attendance at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, my most recent being No 7 for the meetings held in Prague in September 2000. Several of those papers have contained proposals for issuing money commemorating major anniversaries or institutions of democracy. In between meetings there have been many letters and visits to individual Central Banks, all totally at my own expense, with no commercial interest, and inspired only by my ideals of parity democracy and political integrity.

Twice I proposed an international banknote issue, one in Letter 36 of 14 February 1991 in this series for the 50th anniversaries in 1994/1995 of the IMF and World Bank, the other in Letter 81 of 22 May 1994 for the 50th anniversary of Unesco and the 25th of its World Heritage sites in 1996/1997. The IMF sat on my letter for three years, before returning my sample notes, and Unesco did not bother to reply. I have not tried since, because there has been no anniversary of universal significance. I have however tried in the Christian world to see commemorated the bimillennial of the origins of Christianity, from the 2000th anniversary on 25 March 2001 of the Annunciation to Mary to the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity on 25 December 2001.

In this letter I am proposing a banknote issue of interest to the Commonwealth, that is, on or around Wednesday 6 February 2002, in 15 months' time, when we shall celebrate the 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's becoming the Head of the Commonwealth of Nations. Many countries will issue stamps and coins for that occasion: here I am suggesting the first international banknote issue, among those 20 countries which now have one or more banknotes bearing the Queen's portrait. Specifically I am suggesting three methods of note issue.

The first is a special inscription, overprinted or imprinted, such as

Queen Elizabeth II Head of the Commonwealth 1952 – 2002

on notes denominated, where they exist, in units of 5 or 50, such as the following:

Country Denomination Country Denomination Country Denomination

Australia 5 dollars Eastern Caribbean 5, 50 dollars Falklands 5, 50 pounds

Bahamas 1 dollar A Antigua & Barbuda Gibraltar 5, 50 pounds

Belize 5, 50 dollars D Dominica Guernsey 5, 50 pounds

Bermuda 5, 50 dollars G Grenada Isle of Man 5, 50 pounds

Canada 20 dollars K St Kitts Jersey 5, 50 pounds

Caymans 5, 50 dollars L St Lucia New Zealand 20 dollars

England 5, 50 pounds V St Vincent St Helena 5 pounds

Fiji 5, 50 dollars M Montserrat

U Anguilla

- 2 -

These notes are all illustrated in colour in the MRI Bankers' Guide to Foreign Currency, of which the quarterly 37th edition for December 2000 has just been issued by the Monetary Research Institute Post Office Box 3174 Houston Texas 77253-3174 tel + 1 713 827 1796 email info@. Here, to demonstrate my point, I have cut out the illustrations, mostly in the lower denominations of 5 dollars or pounds (A).

My second suggestion is a note specially designed for the occasion, which would allow other monarchies in the Commonwealth to take part, including those countries or note-issuing banks whose notes do not or no longer bear the Queen's portrait, namely

Barbados N Ireland Scotland

Jamaica Bank of Ireland Bank of Scotland

Papua New Guinea First Trust Bank Clydesdale Bank

Solomons Northern Bank Royal Bank of Scotland

Cook Islands Ulster Bank

Similarly the Golden Jubilee might be the occasion for the first ever banknote issue by islands within the Commonwealth which so far have issued only coins bearing the Queen's portrait, including

Tuvalu Alderney Ascension Br Virgin Islands Niue Tokelau Tristan da Cunha Turks & Caicos

where appropriate, using an overprint on the notes of the metropolitan country circulating in the islands.

My third suggestion is a note with serial numbers beginning with, say, (Q)E 50, as was done by the Bank of England with QM10 0 on a £5 pound note issued for the 100th birthday on 4 August 2000 of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, or as the Bank of Jamaica did at my suggestion in 1973 with FA 0 on the 2 dollar note issued on 25th Human Rights Day 10 December 1973. A practice run for such serialization could be to number notes QE75 for the Queen's 75th birthday on Saturday 21 April 2001.

The 50th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession, while a happy public occasion, is a sad one for the Queen herself, because it is simultaneously the 50th anniversary of the death of her beloved father. Any specially designed note therefore might also carry a vignette of George VI, who took the Commonwealth through World War II, and whose portrait appeared on various notes issued up to 1952.

Nearly all the above-listed countries have issued commemorative banknotes of one or both of the first two kinds, and some have taken advantage of a third option, to time the issue of a permanent note with an anniversary. All three types of note are included in my latest list of some 200 commemorative notes, from which I have extracted analogies from the countries listed above, or similar jubilees from Sweden and Thailand (B).

During her near 50 years as Head of the Commonwealth Queen Elizabeth has witnessed many steps in women's advancement, including women presidents or vice-presidents in Gambia, Guyana, Uganda, Sri Lanka; prime ministers in Bangladesh, Britain, Canada, Dominica, Guyana, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka; governors-general in Barbados, Belize, Canada, New Zealand and Saint Lucia; and central bank governors or deputy governors in Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Ghana, Guyana, Malaysia and South Africa. Their names may be found on the website Indeed, with women as governor-general, prime minister, leader of the opposition, chief justice and attorney-general, New Zealand has joined Finland and Sweden among the world's three parity democracies.

Also, after the dark 1970s and 1980s when many Commonwealth countries were taken over by military and other male dictators, the Queen remained a symbol of constitutional order as most countries returned to democracy. According to the 2000/2001 Index of Political Rights and Civil Liberties released today by the New York-based Freedom House at research/index.htm non-pluralist democracies among the 55 Commonwealth countries have been reduced from 30 to 15: Brunei, Cameroon, Fiji, Gambia, Kenya, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As stated earlier I have no commercial interest whatsoever in this proposal, any more than I had, say, in my efforts since 1980 to get out the 20 pound note portraying the Queen Mother and eventually issued last August by the Royal Bank of Scotland. I shall therefore leave the idea with you, returning to it only if, say in mid 2001, I have enough to report on what various countries may be doing. I will not write again solely to report on coin or stamp issues, because I expect most Commonwealth countries, monarchy or otherwise, will issue one or both.

With best wishes for 2001, and 2002

Raymond Lloyd

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