REHABILITATION: THE GUERNSEY MARKET HALL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 9 February 1943, Page 2

REHABILITATION: THE GUERNSEY MARKET HALL

(To the Editor) Sir,—Hitler’s precursor, Napoleon, left Europe with a rehabilitation problem as great as ours will be—unless we seriously study it now. As soon as war ended, the springs of money, as usual, mysteriously dried up and returned men looked for work as vainly as the civil authorities looked for money to help them. For the same reason industry had “the slumps,’’ a familiar post-war disease. In Guernsey public indignation ran high and at last a Council was elected which was not so bankrupt of ideas as “loans and taxes” to solve the problem. Citizens and returned soldiers combined in demanding that (rather than digging ditches and cutting gorse!) a revenue producing public utility, a market hall, be built without loans and without taxes. They had the architect, the men who wanted work, the skill to build it, the carters, the materials—and a printer—all in the city. All the Council needed was the tickets, “money”—so the Mayor, who knew his job and his public, promptly ordered them in all denominations from Id to £lO, from the printer. These, in the name of the citizens and Council of Guernsey, he publicly proclaimed legal tender payment for all rates and dues, and all debts pub- j lie and private within the area of his government. Butchers, bakers, farmers, doctors and others readily accepted them from the workers to whom they had been paid, passing them back to the Council in payment of their rates and other dues. At that the Council destroyed them—and so the Guernsey Market Hall was built, debt and interest free, at no cost whatever—even the printer being paid with them.

Meantime, pending their being passed back to the Council and destroyed, the “tickets” had the added value of circulating freely in the district which had previously been so depressed, everyone accepting them in payment of his debt knowing them to be acceptable by the Council from him or from anyone to whom he paid them. This Market Hall, built for nothing, is still producing revenue from sub-letting. A later Council, to make a small addition to it, was so bankrupt of ideas—i.e. orthodox—as to borrow bankers’ tickets at 8 per cent, and give the entire place as security—which shows how people get the kind of government they deserve!

There is no parallel whatsoever between this correct way of issuing and withdrawing (paper) money and Germany’s deliberate scheme to defeat its debtors with (paper) money which it did not attempt to withdraw from circulation. Without distracting from the soundness of the plan, I would suggest that rather than issuing money for capital purposes, the Guernsey local government had issued it to increase the production of consumable goods and/or to retail sellers to reduce the price of them, a better purpose would have been served . . . but the point is, the Guernsey electors got what they demanded. Perhaps, one day. Nelson electors will realise and their Councillors exercise their sovereign power as those of Guernsey did and make financially possible what is physically possible without debt. Until then—ditches, doles, debt and depression.—l am, etcREAL DEMOCRACY. Nelson, Bth February.