This introductory chapter outlines the transformation or modernization of the Bank of England in the twenty years after 1979: how governance and accountability were transformed, and communication was accorded a greater role, as the Bank moved to policy autonomy or operational independence from the UK government. The process amounted to what might be described as an informational revolution. The transformation of macro-economic management may also be considered as part of a broader process of globalization. Central banks everywhere became much more aware of international activities and developments, and policy-makers reflected more on how the UK was affected by what went on beyond its frontiers. There was also a greater legalization: a need for legislation to define what was involved in banking, and how to regulate banking. Finally, the nature and definition of money and of monetary stability became the subject of a political debate.

After 1985, the UK first assigned a ‘greater importance‘ to exchange rate objectives, without specifying any rule; then followed between early 1987 and March 1988, an unannounced policy of linking the pound to the deutschemark at the rate of 3 DM/£ was pursued. That policy, undertaken without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, eventually led to a sharp political conflict between Thatcher and Lawson. Subsequently, the exchange target was abandoned. All three phases of the new exchange rate regime were conceptually incoherent, and the lack of monetary control in the second half of the 1980s eventually produced not only rapid growth (that looked like a policy success and was termed the ‘Lawson boom‘) but also a new upsurge of inflation that increasingly concerned the Bank. Eddie George emerged not only as a key architect of Bank strategy but also as a favoured interlocutor of Margaret Thatcher. A background to the policy debates was the increased attraction, to the Treasury and to some figures in the Bank, of the European Monetary System as a way of securing the deutschemark as an anchor, and international coordination on exchange rates became more central to monetary policy management; Thatcher and George were critical of that vision.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Robin Leigh-Pemberton, played a surprisingly prominent role in the drafting of the Delors Report 1988–1989, a report that laid down a blueprint for a three stage move to European Monetary Union. The Treasury was very sceptical of the plan, and Margaret Thatcher was appalled: she never forgave Leigh-Pemberton for what she saw as a betrayal. Leigh-Pemberton pressed for a premature conclusion of the Delors Committee meetings and the publication of the report in April 1989 because he feared that a Financial Times leak of the draft would make his position unsustainable in face of the Prime Minister’s opposition. There is a large measure of irony in the way in which the Governor of the Bank of England became a key architect of the single European currency, the Euro.

In October 1990, after a sustained campaign from the Treasury, the UK joined the European Monetary System’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. The move was heavily supported by Leigh-Pemberton, who persuaded the US central banker, Alan Greenspan, to persuade Margaret Thatcher that the ERM was a modern version of the nineteenth century gold standard. UK entry into the EMS ERM was accompanied by an interest rate cut, but the consequences of German unification and of German interest rate moves led to tightening of monetary policy at a moment of UK recession. In September 1992, the UK’s exchange rate became unsustainable as very large speculative flows bet on a UK exit from the mechanism (September 16). The result was initially seen as a massive humiliation for the UK and its monetary policy-makers, Black Wednesday, but quite quickly opinion shifted to considering it as a liberation that allowed policy reform, White Wednesday. The UK’s ERM experience thus became a game-changer in thinking about monetary policy and exchange rates.

Chapter 1 describes the path that brought to the current European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In contrast to a common tradition and culture, based on largely similar philosophical and religious foundations, Europe has a history of fierce opposition and wars among national states that culminated in World War II. An important impulse to some kind of European cooperation came exactly from the attempt to counter this tradition of conflicts, even if the past was still weighing. This largely explains the long process through which European institutions have reached their current state as well as their “incompleteness.” The cooperation evolved from the European Coal and Steel Community (1951), having a limited coverage, but active inter-country coordination and cooperation and limits to free market, to the European Economic Community (1957), with a larger coverage, but a free-market orientation in all fields. This partially changed with the Maastricht Treaty (originating the European Union(EU) and the EMU), with the introduction of common monetary policy and some constraints on national fiscal policies (1992). The former now gathers 28 countries. The latter had only 11 members when it started in 1999 and has now enlarged to 19.

This chapter traces the origins of the European monetary unification project. The 1957 Treaty of Rome called for monetary policy coordination within the EEC. To achieve this, a committee of governors of the EEC central banks was created (1964). The governors chose the BIS in Basel as their meeting place to underline their independence from the EEC in Brussels. In the 1970s, after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, the committee played a key role in the attempts to restore stable exchange rates within Europe, leading to the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS). In 1988–9, the BIS hosted the Delors Committee for the study of monetary union in Europe. The conclusions of the Delors Committee provided the basis of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which set the EU on the path of monetary union. Once this decision had been taken, the role of the BIS as host and agent of the EMS came to an end, and the committee of governors – soon recreated as the European Monetary Institute (EMI) and then European Central Bank (ECB) – moved from Basel to Frankfurt. The chapter ends with an assessment of the euro crisis of 2011–12.