There’s no greater insight into the collective mind than strolling into a Middle England market square on a Saturday morning. You’ll find it all there: consumerism, conspiracy, leisure and lore. Because alongside the farmers’ markets and fairground rides, these pedestrianised assembly zones have become the frontline of British street politics.
At this point, stumbling on a protest feels almost routine. Even living in a fairly untravelled, disconnected part of the country I’ve seen them all: xr, blm, tuc, fbpe, ukip, lgbtq+ and every other radical acronym group you could imagine. At the tail end of 2022, they have become as much of a Saturday morning fixture as doughnut stalls, away fans and pound-in-a-hat crooners belting out You Raise Me Up.
However, one morning, I came upon a movement that hadn’t yet reached my radar: the campaign for the end of digital currency and the ensured survival of cold, hard cash. It first appeared to me in a procession of whistles, banners, placards, pushchairs and megaphones – all the paraphernalia of post-covid discontent. The message was loud and surprisingly clear: ‘Save cash’, ‘Keep cash’, ‘No more digital banking’. Familiar protest chants like ‘What do we want?’ had been repurposed in honour of this niche new cause. There was passion in the crowd and ideas on cardboard.
Even in that moment, it felt like I was witnessing the halcyon days of something new and fast-moving. In the weeks following, I began to pick up on other incarnations of the same cause; hashtags, podcasts, adverts for forthcoming demonstrations and pickets across the country. I noticed more and more local news stories about businesses offering sizable discounts for anyone paying in cash, with signs that told customers to leave their shitty plastic rectangles at home. I started to delve: the umbrella group behind it all appeared to be ‘Cash is King’, a small, not-particularly-well-funded, but undoubtedly growing movement.
My research led me back to one major player: a woman named Debbie Hicks, an ex-politics and social sciences lecturer from the recently trendified market town of Stroud (interestingly, also a hotbed of climate activism). Hicks has a background in the Speakers’ Corner-adjacent brand of leftist politics. During the Jeremy Corbyn era she was running a socialist action group called ‘Stroud Red Shed’, campaigning against homelessness and even featuring in a Morning Star article. But more recently, her politics appear to have muddied. Because despite the mlk quote banner on her Twitter page, Cash is King keeps some interesting bedfellows.
The pro-cash movement has clear and unabashed links with the anti-vaxx/lockdown extended universe, with Piers Corbyn appearing at several Cash is King events. Indeed, he and some fellow cash-tivists recently picketed a south London Amazon Fresh store in protest of their highly automated business model. Look through photo dumps of pro-cash events and you’ll usually spot a few ‘fringe’ concerns knocking around; references to the ‘vaccine-injured’, ‘smiley face’ symbols and so on. Much of Cash is King’s literature seems to hinge on ‘The Great Reset’ – the World Economic Forum’s post-covid recovery plan, which many have interpreted as an attempt to reassemble society in the plans of banks and Big Pharma.
At the Cash is King event I stumbled on, it was easy to miss all the other side concerns that were being pushed. But in the cold light of Instagram, the nods to bioengineering, climate change denial and lines about how the wef must be destroyed at all costs became much clearer. I noticed that Danny Rampling, the acid house guru turned anti-vaxx brigade commander, had shown his support to this obscure march in a forgotten part of the country. On Twitter, Gareth, ‘son of David’ Icke has commended Hicks’ actions.
‘Keep Cash’ is also a message that appears frequently at the burgeoning ‘Yellow Boards’ protests; the redpilled flash mobs that take over roundabouts and traffic islands, getting people to honk their horns in support for a catch-all cause of chemtrails, vaccines, digital id resistance and vague allusions to ‘freedom’. One of the more specifically currency-focused Yellow Boards events invited the rallying call: ‘Tandle & Rochdale Rebels, join us at Tesco Rochdale this Saturday 5th November’. Laugh all you want, but it’s a movement that is gathering moss.
