Positive Money at Love the NHS-Rally in Shrewsbury

Report by Ingrid Prosser from Cheltenham & Gloucester Positive Money local group:  

Positive Money was present in Shrewsbury’s town centre outside the Old Market Hall, as part of the town’s Love the NHS Rally on Saturday 25th April.

Three members of Positive Money’s Cheltenham and Gloucester group (there being as yet no local group in Shrewsbury) drove up with pasting table, books and flyers, and a passionate enthusiasm to talk with as many people as possible about monetary reform, and specifically on this occasion, about how Sovereign Money Creation will help the NHS.

The problems with which the NHS is beset, and the present financial and political turbulence, were perfectly mirrored by the day’s chaotic weather – large fast moving clouds, short periods of sunshine in a patchy blue sky, and cold temperatures seeming to reach through to bone after several hours standing in it. The threatened rain held off until just after we arrived to set up – what fun to be two people trying to put up a gazebo (four people required) in a downpour, while vainly attempting to protect books and flyers from the wet!

Fortunately, nothing we encountered was able to dampen our enthusiasm; or our conviction that amongst the various presenting organisations (Trade Unions, Defend the NHS, the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Communist Party) struggling to find a way through the current financial mire, it is monetary reform and Positive Money’s suggestions that provide the answer!

Saturday shoppers uninterested in political matters would easily have been able to avoid The Square with our stalls beneath their dripping gazebos. So, those who approached were already motivated towards action and change. There was a fair amount of bemusement on encountering us, but only one or two people managed to resist opening lines such as “Can I talk to you about money?” and “Do you know where money comes from?”. Many people signed the Positive Money petition, and we gave away numerous flyers, with exhortations to visit the website. We also sold some copies of “Modernising Money” – the buyers tended to be those with some understanding of the subject matter already, including one lady who very firmly told us how money was created before we could tell her!

Every half an hour or so during the afternoon, there were a couple of 5 minute addresses given by speakers from the organisations present, amplified over the whole Square. One of our group had her opportunity late in the afternoon, standing before the elegant Elizabethan Market Hall, beneath a statue I gather to be of Richard, Duke of York – father of Kings Edward IV and Richard III, and great-great grandfather of Elizabeth I. They lived in turbulent times of a different sort – but no less is history being made by those of us today seeking an economic system which allows every member of society to live a decent life in a condition of dignity.