How social media helped me get Jane Austen on to £10 notes
How social media helped me get Jane Austen on to £10 notes
The internet is now a key part of any protest campaign – including the battle to ensure Bank of England cash featured a woman other than the Queen
Caroline Criado-Perez and campaigners at the Bank of England
Katie McCracken as George Eliot, Caroline Criado-Perez as Rosalind Franklin (front), Vicki Beeching as Boudica and Lucy Holmes as Emily Wilding Davison at the Bank of England in July
Until I saw reports about Winston Churchill being introduced as the new face of the five pound note, I’d never given bank notes much thought. But on reading that he’d be replacing the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry I realised this meant that, other than the Queen, there wouldn’t be any women on sterling at all.
It was only a few months since I’d set up the Women’s Room, which explores female representation, and I was acutely aware of how often women have been excised from our history in the past. I didn’t think there was any Machiavellian intent in the Bank of England’s decision but the oversight made me angry and I wanted to make a stand.
I started tweeting about it and set up a petition on Change.org. Then the media picked up on the story and I started getting requests to do press and TV interviews. A lawyer contacted me saying she thought the bank’s decision breached the Public Sector Equality Duty and put me in touch with a solicitor, Louise Whitfield, who helped me draft a letter of complaint. The Bank was surprisingly quick to respond, but its letter was very dismissive. It said women had been considered in the selection process, and seemed to imply that was enough.
Pre-internet, that might have been it – I can imagine a situation where I’d have been very disheartened by that response and not known what to do next. Instead, I was able to post a screenshot of the letter and publicly mock it. This added fuel to my campaign – as the letter was reposted across the internet, the number of petition signatories rocketed and we presented over 30,000 signatures to the bank.
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http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/how-social-media-helped-jane-austen-banknotes-caroline-criado-perez#img-1
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