A&F Research Community Seminar

Title: Sterling’s saviour or latter-day Canute: Montagu Norman and the currency crises between the wars

Date: 06 July 2022
Time: 14:00-15:00
Venue: NUBS 2.13/Zoom

Zoom link: https://newcastleuniversity.zoom.us/j/81340761190

Guest Speaker:
Chris Swinson is a visiting fellow on a 3-year contract. He was a senior partner of one of the big international accountancy firms and a president of the ICAEW.

Abstract:
Exceptionally, Montagu Norman was Governor of the Bank of England for 24 years: from 1920 to 1944: years of continuing currency crisis as countries wrestled with the financial consequences of the 1914-1918 war. The paper will examine how Norman went about securing a return to the international payments system that had been in force before the war (i.e. the Gold Standard) and how he succeeded in achieving its restoration in 1925.

The paper will then examine Norman’s inability to prevent further currency crises which led in 1931 to the failure of a Labour government and Britain’s suspension of the Gold Standard: a suspension that was to prove permanent.

The paper will finally speculate on why dealing with these crises proved so difficult and how Norman’s personality contributed to the difficulty.