The leverage that comes from centrally controlling the overall money system, applied by protected, monopolistic private interests that obtain that leverage by consent or conquest, is arguably the most powerful force in the temporal world.
Other fonts of natural and man-made power come and go, and they do not have absolute reach. Active volcanoes, which only exist in certain regions, sooner or later will erupt and spread ash and probable ruin, though in limited areas. Earthquakes, when they are severe enough, will cause considerable ruin that is still largely limited to known earthquake-prone areas. Tornadoes and hurricanes will temporarily wreak major havoc on whatever communities lie in their path, exacerbated by flooding, in the case of the latter.
Even the man-made institution of war, terrible and perverted though it undeniably is, unless it was to erupt on a worldwide scale with the worst of weapons mercilessly unleashed, doesn’t quite measure up to the relentless chronic hardships, including suicides, family breakdown, and myriad other social ills and chronic degradation induced by putting virtually everyone on earth on the proverbial financial treadmill; it is an ever-accelerating treadmill that gets steeper by the day. It is a colossus of social control on a scale beyond normal comprehension.
The late Australian-based economics writer Bryan W. Monahan had this to say in his essay, "Neither Do They Spin":
‘The purpose of defeating an enemy . . . is understandable; heroism, [the] sacrifice of one’s life that others may live, [is a demonstration] of the priority of spirit over matter. [But] there was nothing understandable about the [1929] “great” depression. It was absurd. Even the explanations of economists, like that which attributed the phenomena to unusual sun-spot activity, were absurd. The suicides from sheer despair had nothing whatever in common with heroism or sacrifice. They were the index of unbearable suffering’.
Perpetual Agony
Seeming to break a basic principle of nature, the prevailing financial system amounts to being a perpetual motion machine that can be felt everywhere at all times. There can be no escape, no refuge, unless, once and for all, we come to grips with what it is, what it’s doing, and resolutely put a stop to it for good.
Via this formidable apparatus, which buys and owns the media, politicians, judges, and others of influence like the average person buys candy bars, there is an ever-present barrage of actual misinformation and disinformation to protect this hyper-usurious money racket at all costs. The current obsession by the powers-that-be to punish ‘disinformation’ is nothing more than an attempt by this monetary-information consortium to use its own disinformation to attack any sources of information that are truthful enough to damage or challenge the status quo. It is pure deflection and misdirection.
The financial City of London, the infamous ‘square mile’ where the Bank of England is located, has since 1571 even sent an emissary, The Remembrancer, to look after the City’s interests, in part by carefully observing Parliament’s legislative proceedings in order to report back to the City if any legislation affecting that financial district, especially the Bank of England, comes about.
The Guernsey Revolution
While those of us sufficiently informed about the grim ‘big picture’ of high finance often feel powerless when facing this modern universal slavery machine and wonder what to do about it, looking back may help us look ahead toward a much brighter future. As the saying goes, ‘for one brief shining moment, there was Camelot’. That well-known quote certainly is relevant to the outcome of an emancipating monetary experience on the small island of Guernsey, located in the English Channel some 70 miles from Britain’s southernmost shores. While it is a Crown Dependency, it is closer to France than it is to the UK. Another similar island just to the east, Jersey, never adopted the monetary reforms that Guernsey did, though it was reportedly envious of those reforms and may have worked to undermine Guernsey.
The people of this self-governing Crown Dependency, for about 20 years from 1816 to 1836, enacted some relatively simple monetary reforms and pried themselves free from the brooding, grasping money-changers of their day. What happened stands as a testament to what could happen again, if we can gather together the proper knowledge and workable ideas, and above all muster the sheer courage and tenacity that would be required to reinstate a Guernsey-like approach in a better and more enduring manner, anywhere and everywhere possible.
What Was Done
In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Guernsey, which is about 25 square miles in area, was in dire straits. The merciless ocean eroded the island’s sea defences. Joblessness and poverty were at an uncomfortably high ebb. According to the Network for Monetary Diversity (NMD), a research organization which is among the world’s few sources on the almost-forgotten Guernsey monetary experience, ‘The main town of St. Peter Port desperately needed a building for its market traders [where the islanders could exchange their produce] who had to stand outside in all weathers’.
NMD further explained:
‘Private banks were charging high interest rates for loans to the island’s government. The far-sighted Governor of the island decided to bypass the banks and issue interest-free currency to pay workers to do the necessary public works. The islanders keenly accepted the notes, which circulated freely.
Once the new market hall was built, the market traders paid rent in the new currency which went back to the government to pay off the debt created by issuing the original notes. By 1837 … notes [valued at] £55,000 were in circulation on the island. Many public works were accomplished, including building a new college and new schools. No interest had to be repaid and the debt was always retired when notes came back to the government and were destroyed’.
One of the few other available sources on the island’s exodus from despair to prosperity is the newsletter The Fig Tree, a quarterly that was edited by the late Economic Democracy author and British engineer C. H. Douglas. A September 1938 edition noted that the island’s trade before its emancipation ‘was practically extinguished and the people were in despair ... there were practically no roads, [and] public buildings were in disrepair’.
That newsletter added:
‘It was impossible for the Government to finance these necessary improvements out of revenue, as this only amounted to £3,000 yearly, all of which was required for ordinary expenses and the interest charges on the island's debt of £19,000. Nor could the necessary finance be obtained by borrowing; the Government sought indeed to raise a loan, but such was the poor state of the island's assets that the only would-be lenders demanded the prohibitive [interest] rate of 17 percent, per annum’.
As the island’s plight reached a critical point of possibly no return, it became self-evident on the basis of sound principle that since any government theoretically has the power to issue its own currency without incurring interest charges or debt, that option ought to be exercised. It also was perceived that there is no reason whatsoever for any government to become dependent on private finance and burden future generations to the point of peonage.
The idea that Guernsey should issue its own money gained ground daily. With labor and materials both available, it was absurd for improvements to be held up simply because of a lack of money.
Thus, noted The Fig Tree, ‘Finally, after various setbacks and considerable opposition, the adherents of Guernsey creating its own state money [prevailed]. In 1816, the government printed 4,000 notes of £1 each that were paid out for the most urgent needs’.
Over the next 20 years, Guernsey’s Government authorised notes to the extent of £80,000. This enabled the debt-free construction of the new Market House, schools in every parish, roads all throughout the island, and St. Elizabeth's College, whose stately architecture still stands as a testament to what can be done when the shackles of the supreme swindlers in banking are finally removed.
‘These Government notes were redeemed, as the economic circumstances of the island justified, from earnings derived from the collection of market rents, customs, duties, etc., and in 1836, when the scheme ended, there was a balance outstanding of £55,000 Government notes’, The Fig Tree also chronicled.
The Library: Only One Book
This UK Column writer, upon visiting the library system of Guernsey via the internet on 11 February 2025, as far as could be determined, found only one modest booklet in the entire library archive about the island’s monetary miracle, entitled ‘How Guernsey Beat the Bankers: The Story of How the Island of Guernsey Created Its Own Money, Without Cost to the Taxpayer, and Established a Prosperous Community Free of Debt’. Edward Holloway authored the 1981 booklet.
The booklet says that the wheels first started turning toward the island’s economic revival exactly 210 years ago in 1815; it quotes a revealing document presented by the States (as the island’s Parliament was called) that was sent to the Privy Council to explain the state of affairs at that time. Regarding the already-mentioned threat the raging ocean waters posed to the island’s vulnerable sea banks and increasingly desolate inland property, the letter, referring to the year 1813, stated:
‘The sum required to avert the [shore] danger was estimated at more than £10,000, which the adjoining parishes subject to this charge were not in a condition to raise. The state of the finance was not consolatory, with a debt of £19,137 and an annual charge for interest of £2,390, the revenue of £3,000 left only £600 for unforeseen expenses and improvements. Thus, with little or no disposable revenue, no inducement for the affluent to continue visiting the island and no prospect of employing the poor, something had to be done and fast’.
According to Holloway, a committee created in 1815 examined the situation, concluding that ‘further taxation was impossible’ and that the alternative of borrowing money from the banks was a non-starter, since it would entail the payment of a high rate of interest, which the island clearly could not afford, ‘particularly in view of the fact that these interest payments would continue for years …’
Holloway added, ‘Fortunately for the people of Guernsey, they had at that time among their leaders some honest men of keen intellect, who put forward the revolutionary suggestion that [they] should take advantage of their ancient prerogative and produce their own notes’.
The ‘ancient prerogative’ of localities and governments to issue their own money has been exercised in different places and in a variety of ways, along with other relevant developments, including:
- The issuance, even before the Guernsey miracle, by American colonists of their own interest-free ‘scrip’ money that ushered in considerable prosperity for a time, as documented by Benjamin Franklin.
- The UK’s short-lived but instructive Bradbury Pound experience, wherein at the outbreak of the First World War, amid associated public unease about the economy, there wasn’t enough gold on hand to offset an expected run on the banks. So the British government authorized the Treasury to print its own national notes, signed by Treasury Secretary John Bradbury, based on the nation’s material wealth and its capacity for productive creativity. And the people accepted the new debt- and interest-free ‘Bradbury Pound’ notes, as they came to be known, in exchange for their interest-bearing Bank of England notes. So, good money began to drive out bad money.
- Between 1861 and 1865, backed by the wealth of the U.S., President Abraham Lincoln issued U.S. currency known as ‘Greenbacks’ so he could pay for the War Between the States without borrowing from the banks at punishing interest.
- The move by President Andrew Jackson in 1833 to dissolve the Second Bank of the U.S. by removing U.S. funds from the bank, thereby ‘ending the Fed’ of his day. When the bank’s charter came up for renewal in 1836, that renewal was voted down. Considerable prosperity followed until the bankers started instigating ‘panics’.
- The rise of the Social Credit movement (which preceded and has nothing whatsoever to do with the current Chinese surveillance and social-grading system). This movement came to power in 1930s Alberta, Canada, under its 7th Premier, William ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart. He was a country preacher who successfully ran for office and managed, as leader of Alberta’s Social Credit Party, to sharply turn the province’s fortunes around for nearly a decade, amid vicious attacks by the media and banking fraternity that eventually halted Aberhart’s effort to end the bankers’ monopoly of credit.
- The rise of the radio priest Father Charles E. Coughlin in Royal Oak, Michigan, near Detroit. Between 1930 and 1942, the Canadian-born cleric’s radio sermons reached well over 30 million listeners per broadcast at their peak, exposing the banking cartel while expounding on possible solutions. As was the case with the protestant Mr. Aberhart, who also was a radio preacher, the press and its banking bosses furiously attacked Catholic Coughlin because he was awakening the masses and overcoming the regular media’s hold on public opinion.
- And as Holloway added, there also were monetary experiments in the towns of Swanenkirchen in Bavaria and Worgl in the Austrian Tyrol region, which took place in the depression years following the 1914-18 war. And another ‘amazing development … took place [on] the island of Gosaba off the coast of India’, Holloway wrote, while noting that these and similar experiments had one factor in common: ‘A depressed and unproductive community was changed in a comparatively short [time] into an active prosperous and happy community'.
Given these assorted attempts at monetary freedom, most of which saw some measure of success, we can encourage ourselves to take further action. Guernsey’s efforts stand out as the most long-lasting example of successfully thwarting a money power so pervasive and deeply rooted in time that Jesus Christ’s earthly commission some two millennia ago included his only direct physical action that involved force: using a ‘whip of cords’ to drive the money-changers from the temple.
As monetary reform author and public speaker Oliver Heydorn remarked when asked about Guernsey:
‘The Guernsey monetary experiment exemplifies how a community can harness its own physical resources for the common good, bypassing the constraints of traditional banking systems. By issuing its own currency for public works, Guernsey managed to fund infrastructure without the burden of interest, keeping wealth within the local economy.
This approach not only prevented the draining of financial resources through debt but also ensured that the benefits of economic activity were more equitably distributed among the population. It can thus be considered as one possible application of the basic principles of economic democracy via the social control of financial mechanisms’.
The End of a Dream
Another source, Positive Money Sheffield, noted that eventually, Guernsey’s liberation sadly sun-setted, noting: ‘In the 1830’s the first commercial banks moved in; after some years of persuasion, Guernsey left this interest-free source of funds for public works and switched to interest bearing debt from the banks’.
But as The Fig Tree noted, there was more to it than that:
‘The opponents of State issuance of money can usually be relied upon to raise the bogey of inflation. It must be remembered that inflation depends on the amount of money issued relative to the goods for sale . . . . In the case of Guernsey, when the State first issued money, if [there] had been inflation there would have been either a shortage of commodities or else a rise in prices, and there is no record of either of these until 1836’.
Until that year, Guernsey’s government gradually and continuously increased its note issue, ‘and it is reasonable to suppose that the net increase of money approximately corresponded with the island's increasing productivity’, The Fig Tree noted, while adding: ‘In that year, however, the banks deliberately brought about inflation, flooding the island with [debt-based] notes, with the inevitable result that, as there was no corresponding increase in goods for sale, prices began to rise and a panic ensued’.
In Conclusion
Justin Walker wrote the following in a 2012 UK Column article:
'If our government were to go down the path of a new Bradbury Treasury Note (as well as pursuing the banksters with Common Law for their crimes against humanity) then our debt burden would be removed overnight … Under Common Law, all debts involving the use of fractional reserve lending by the central and private banks will be written off, as they were arrived at by the use of fraud. Money would be immediately made available by HM Treasury to meet the essential needs of the country … We would have Gross Domestic Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product dictating humanity’s future’.
Finally, a word about the media: the ‘legacy’ media cartel as it stands today represents the single biggest obstacle to creating more Bradbury’s and more Guernseys in the world. This is why it is crucial for truly independent news outlets like UK Column to greatly succeed over the long haul, as the orthodox press loses public trust more and more with each passing day. With a proper new media, we can win the day and permanently restore the monetary sanity of which we have only had some significant glimpses so far.
It is time to take this to the next level beyond temporary escapes from the money power. It can be done. It must be done.
Cover image: @guernseyweb | Creative Commons
Book image: Internet Archive | Creative Commons
