The Pound in Your Pocket

Available for over a year

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.