Colchester Quakers Media release

Is your money really there? – Quakers discuss private banks

In the week leading up to the Budget, Colchester Quakers held a meeting to discuss the things many people don’t know about money – like how the government allows profit-seeking private banks to create almost all of our money supply as debt. Worse still, the debt fuels the economic growth required to find the money to pay back the interest we owe the banks. As we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet, this means that our money system is directly contributing to the destruction of the eco-systems on which we depend.

Quakers have a long-standing concern about money and two of Britain ’s best-known High Street banks, Barclays and Lloyds, started out as Quaker businesses.

Representing the charity ‘Positive Money’, Sue Holden, a Quaker expert in this topic who travels the country to hold discussions about the problem and possible alternatives, came to address Colchester Quaker Meeting on Saturday 14 March.

Peter Whiteley, Clerk of Colchester Quaker Meeting said: “This was a fascinating discussion on a subject that gets hardly any attention but makes a huge difference to our lives. Part of the solution, we learned, could be to set up an independent body, accountable only to Parliament (not the government of the day) to oversee the process of money creation. It would then be as illegal for private, profit-seeking banks to create money as it would for people to forge bank-notes. Colchester Quakers hope to hold more discussions like this in future.”

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Notes to editors

• The “Positive Money and Good Economy” discussion was held at the Friends Meeting House, 6 Church Street, Colchester, on Saturday 14 March, from 13h30 to 17h00.
• Susan Holden is a member of www.positivemoney.org – see susanholden.co.uk
• There is a longer summary of the discussion at www.qcolpm.demon.co.uk
• Quakers have been active in Colchester for more than three centuries (see history page).  Quakers do not have creeds and we will not tell people what to believe.  We are active in working for peace and justice. Quakers seek to answer that of God in all people, without regard to race, creed, gender or sexual orientation.  Our faith is lived out in our lives, not just for an hour on Sundays. See also the website of our national head office, Friends House, Euston, London.

For more information contact Robbie Spence, Colchester Quakers media contact or Peter Whiteley, Clerk of Colchester Quaker Meeting at AMclerk@essexsuffolkquakers.org