05 May 2016
The Gold Aureus of Carausius
What an ancient coin can tell us about Brexit’s potential
by Neil Tidmarsh
The UK gives £50 million to the EU every day. That’s £350 million every week. £18¼ billion every year. Staggering sums.
The EU does gives some of it back again – there’s that hard-won and grudgingly-surrendered rebate, and numerous grants to bodies and organisations around the country – but that just makes the whole thing even more puzzling (why take, if you’re just going to give back?) and rather ridiculous (isn’t this financial to-ing and fro-ing a waste of time and effort?) and slightly insulting (can’t we be trusted to dole out our own money?). And it doesn’t account for all of it, by a long shot.
And those figures remain staggering. £50,000,000 (each day); £350,000,000 (each week); £18,250,000,000 (each year).
Where does the money come from? Where does it go to? Why?
The first question is easy enough to answer: from us, you and me, the British tax-payer.
The second question is not so easy to answer. We don’t know where it goes, not all of it, anyway. Why not? Because the EU’s annual accounts have not been signed off for over 21 years. In other words, the auditors who have looked at them are unwilling to approve them as honest, reliable and accurate. Which leaves us free to suspect fraud, inefficiency, corruption and the involvement of organised crime on a massive scale. Any business with such unapproved accounts wouldn’t survive for a second in the market-place; it would have police investigators crawling all over it, and would asphyxiate through lack of credibility and trust, if it wasn’t shut down first.
The third question is – why? The EU would have two answers: first, the political and bureaucratic institutions of the EU have to be paid for; second, the less developed member states need help to improve their infrastructure and restructure their economies, a sensible investment which will pay dividends in promoting demand for other states’ goods. The reality, however, is epic waste and fraud in both cases.
Let’s think about the cost of the EU’s political and bureaucratic institutions. Every month sees shocking revelations about chronic waste and corruption. This week, the EU’s diplomatic corps were criticised for over-spending on buildings. 85 out of 140 delegations exceed the office floor space cap of 35 square metres per individual: the 25 officials in the delegation to the UN in Geneva have 2,600 square metres; the 57 officials in the delegation to the UN in New York have 4200 square metres; each excess square metre is estimated to cost EU tax payers €1.3 million. If my maths is correct – and the amounts are so staggering I can’t help feeling I’ve made a mistake somewhere – that comes out at an over-spend of €2,242.5 million in Geneva and of €2,866.5 million in New York. A villa in Tanzania costing €25,000 a year has stood empty for the past 7 years. EU office buildings in Botswana and Gambia have been unoccupied for 12 years. Ambassadorial residences in South Africa and Cape Verde have been unused since 2012. Also this week, a former Labour MEP was jailed for four years for fraudulently claiming more than £100,000 in expenses while he was at Brussels. And last month… well, you get the picture, I’ll stop there in case boredom takes the edge off the more valid reactions of shock, anger and indignation. (If you really want more, see “Pot and Kettle” in Shaw Sheet issue 38 and “The EU – Decline and Fall?” in Shaw Sheet issue 21.)
Let’s think about the investments made by the EU in its less developed member states. When Spain joined the EU, funds were poured into building motorways, bridges, airports, etc. A financially responsible government and an enthusiastic and conscientious populace did everything the EU asked of it. And what happened? The straightjacket of the Euro ensured that the credit crunch impoverished the people and more or less bankrupted the government. Much of that EU-funded infrastructure – including a whole airport – is now rotting away, a huge investment largely wasted. And when Greece joined the EU… Pouring EU funds into Greece was an act of folly and irresponsibility from the start, given that its eligibility figures were questionable (to put it politely) in the first place. And the EU money that poured into the country – where did it go? What happened to it? Its disappearance triggered the crisis for which the EU still has no solution apart from pouring even more money into the black hole in the form of loans and bail-outs which everyone knows can never be repaid.
Britain has been part of a continental European political system for large chunks of its history. It was part of the Roman Empire for 350 years. It was part of the Norman and Angevin empires for two centuries in the Middle Ages. And the story is always the same: Britain – a fertile, stable, peaceful and therefore prosperous land – was seen as a cash cow to finance the vanity projects of distant political elites and fund the dynastic violence endemic on the continent. In the third and fourth centuries, wealth poured out of Britain to feed, pay and equip the armies of competing emperors, and disappeared down the drain of continental battlefields, completely wasted. Money, corn, livestock, arms and armour were extracted from a productive but over-taxed province and funnelled to the Continent through the great coastal depots we now call the Saxon Shore Forts, to be squandered by the vain, futile and bloody imperial ambitions of Clodius Albinus, Marcus Postumus, Magnentius, Magnus Maximus and other megalomaniacs. It was the same story in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries; silver poured out of Britain to help the Norman and Angevin kings – very few of whom spoke English or spent much time in the kingdom – to defend their continental homelands. Henry Plantagenet, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland had no interest in Britain, their wealthiest and most stable property, other than as a source of taxes to buy the mercenaries, alliances, material and sustenance for their armies to defend Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, Maine, Lorraine and Aquitaine from the growing power of their rivals, the Capetian kings.
It’s no wonder that Britain in these periods seems to have been dormant, weak and insignificant, with hardly the name of a single British individual registered in the histories and chronicles. With the resources of the country draining into the continent, what was left to invest in the country itself, to develop its arts and crafts, to give its people scope to develop their own talents and abilities? Is it a coincidence that as soon as the province of Britannia won its independence from the Roman empire at the beginning of the fifth century, named British individuals began to appear on the world stage? The AD410 Brexit promptly gave the late classical world one of its biggest bogeymen, the rebel British philosopher Pelagius with his dangerous doctrine of self-help. It gave the world possibly the biggest of all heroes, the semi-legendary figure about whom more books have been written and more films made than any other – Arthur, King of the Britons. Within a generation or two of the sixteenth century Brexit – the Reformation’s break from Rome coinciding with the loss of the last of the kingdom’s continental possessions – a massive return of resources to this country saw huge investments in education (the founding of grammar schools), social welfare (poor relief), industry (mines, iron works, land recovery), commerce (ship-building, limited companies, voyages of exploration and trade), the arts (Shakespeare and the Elizabethan theatre). Is it any wonder that this country took off like a rocket, leading the way into the modern age with the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution and the politics of democracy?
Historically, the quality of a country’s coinage is a good indication of the health of that country’s economy. The coinage of the Anglo Saxon kingdom of England, which the Brexited Roman province ultimately became, was valued throughout Europe as possibly the most sound and best regulated of any, with a high and reliable bullion-content. The English silver penny in particular was universally welcomed. Under King Edgar, all coins were withdrawn at regular intervals and reminted, to preserve and protect their quality. In the decades following the Norman Conquest, however, English currency rapidly became debased, with a lower bullion content and much less regulation.
Similarly, among the most impressive Roman coinage is that of Carausius, the swashbuckling, piratical naval officer who rebelled against Rome and set up an independent Britain at the end of the third century. It didn’t last long, however. The Empire wasn’t going to let one of its most valuable assets slip out of its hands without a fight. At first it tried invasion, but was beaten by Carausius in a sea battle; then it tried conspiracy, and successfully bribed Carausius’s finance officer Allectus to assassinate him (prime ministers have good reason to be wary of their chancellors of the exchequer); and then, when Allectus himself promptly defied it with independence, it tried invasion again and this time it was successful in re-conquering the rebel province and bringing it back into line.
Nevertheless, the coins Carausius struck here in Britain during the few years in which it enjoyed independence were far superior to those struck by the emperors he defied. His silver coins had a higher quantity of silver in them, and he even stuck gold coins – a splendid gold aureus – which none of his rival emperors ever did. This is a reliable indication that an independent Britain was far more prosperous and had far greater resources at its disposal than a Britain shackled to a demanding and wasteful continental system.
Carausius’s magnificent gold coin represents the potential of Britain as an independent political entity, freed from the demands and restrictions of a continental system. It is a literal representation of the country’s economic potential, and a symbolic representation of the cultural, artistic, scientific and political potential of its people.
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