Britain's banknotes should symbolise Britain's diversity and help to increase public knowledge of our history, says leading historian of Britishness Linda Colley in a wide-ranging interview on on identity, history and citizenship for the Fabian Review Britishness Issue, published ahead of the Fabian Society's Future of Britishness conference with Chancellor Gordon Brown on Saturday January 14th 2006.

"There are all sorts of practical things we might do to improve historical education and notions of citizenship here … Why, for instance, are the people on British banknotes always white? Why not have Olaudah Equiano, the great 18th century anti-slavery writer and big enlightenment figure on a note? Or the first Indian MP? We had Indian MPs here in the nineteenth, but most people don't know about it", she says in an interview on identity, history and citizenship for the Fabian Review Britishness Issue, published ahead of the Fabian Society's Future of Britishness conference with Chancellor Gordon Brown on Saturday January 14th.

Colley says the change should be part of a series of measures to deepen awareness of British history, enabling people 'to think more about how ideas of citizen rights, ideas of equality and ideas of liberty have been developed and contested in these islands over the generations … This notion that citizenship isn't really British, that we don't do documents, is a very ahistoric idea. We had a Bill of Rights before the United States did. The idea that these things are un-British is bad history'.

The call for change is backed by the Society's General Secretary Sunder Katwala, who says the public should play a greater role in deciding who appears on our banknotes:

"Our national symbols should reflect the nation that we are today. Deciding how we should do that could be a really positive way to capture and increase the growing public interest in our history.

If a small country like Scotland can have a variety of images and people with a range of versions of the different notes, does England have to stick to having just one person for each of the four notes? The Bank of England could be more imaginative and have a range of two or three people or images for each note next time around. Why not let the public play a much greater role? Few people know how these things are decided, or how somebody like Sir John Houblon, the first Governor of the Bank of England, was chosen to be the face of the £50 note.

What I would like to see is a 'Great Britons-style 'Great British Banknote debate' hosted by the BBC. We could decide to have a set of categories including arts, science, literature, Britain's global links and pioneers of democracy, and then argue about how we could best represent these. We would all learn some surprising things about our history. Personally, I would be arguing for Shakespeare to come back for his unique contribution to England's global language, a leading suffragette to remind us of the struggle to give women the vote and a leading anti-slavery campaigner as we prepare to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 2007. The image of the Windrush arriving in Britain would be another great way to capture our history of diversity and immigration. Just as Florence Nightingale was on the ten pound note from 1975 to 1994, nursing pioneer Mary Seacole could be a symbol not just of our history but of the diversity which is today at the heart of our most cherished national institution, the NHS.

We shouldn't fall for the myth that these things are set in stone and can not change. British history is full of creative adaptation to update our traditions for every age. Few people seem to realise that putting the Queen on our banknotes - which we are not proposing to change - was a new development as recently as the 1960s. No previous Monarch had appeared on our banknotes before that. In the 19th century, towns each had their own banknotes illustrating a vast range of local and regional scenes. We should look at how we could recapture the spirit of that tradition and bring back some scope to capture both our ethnic and regional diversity, as already happens in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in our national banknotes today'.

The Fabian Review Britishness Issue also includes calls from senior Labour MPs Gordon Marsden and John Denham for an overhaul of the school history curriculum. They argue that a fear that teaching the rise and fall of the British Empire will prove divisive is preventing school history from explaining well enough how Britain became the diverse nation we are today.

John Denham MP writes that 'We need to learn to tell our history so that it explains why so many people have roots in other parts of the world. Telling the story of empire as fact rather than good or bad thing has an important role to play. A greater honesty about our migrant history would bring surprising unity among those who currently see themselves as divided between the naturally British and others'

How to get The Britishness Issue

All Fabian members received the Fabian Review free in their members' mailing this week, along with David Coats' acclaimed new pamphlet Raising Lazarus: the future of organised labour.

Individual copies of Fabian Review are £4.95 - contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 020 7 227 4900, or send payment to Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street, London, SW1H 9BN.