[Reblogged from WeekWoman]
What a couple of weeks it’s been!
We not only reached, but have actually passed our fundraising target of £13,000, which means we are now in a position to take the Bank of England to court if they continue to refuse to take equality into account when deciding who features on our banknotes. Following on from the letter signed by 46 Labour MPs and peers, we’ve had both Maria Miller and Ed Miliband come out in support of our campaign – we even had Mervyn King backed so far into a corner on the issue that he was forced to name the ‘contingency candidate’ he previously refused to reveal, citing what we must now consider to be spurious security concerns.
And now Mark Carney has used his first public statement as Governor of the Bank of England to address the #banknotes issue. This is fantastic; but it is by no means the end. We still have no firm guarantee that women will remain on banknotes. We also have no firm guarantee about the Bank’s future public decisions being made under the auspices of the Equality Act. Until we have these, the fight continues. (My full statement can be found here)
And our first step is to START THINKING about an outfit! At 11am on Friday, we will be gathering outside the Bank of England to hand in the petition signed by over 30,000 people, dressed as our favourite women from history. It should be a great day and a wonderful opportunity to highlight the wealth of choice the Bank has when it comes to choosing women for our banknotes. Fancy dress is optional, but any nods you can make to your favoured candidate would be great! I will be there at 11 sharp, along with my puppy adorned with a suffrage sash – I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible! Feel free to bring friends etc along – it would be brilliant to have a really strong showing there to demonstrate to the Bank the strength of feeling on this issue. I realise that since many of you don’t live in London you won’t be able to make it, but I have plans for this too! If you can’t make the protest, please take a picture of yourself dressed as your favourite female historical character and tweet it @bankofengland under the hashtag #WomenonBanknotes – make sure they have us coming at them from all angles! But if you possibly can find a way to make the demonstration, even if only very briefly at the beginning, it would be hugely appreciated.
Look forward to meeting loads of amazing women from history very soon!
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