The History of LETS

The term LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes) was coined by Michael Linton, a Brit living in Canada in the 1970s, but the idea has been around in one form or another for about two hundred years, maybe even longer. Local people have exchanged skills using community-based currencies instead of banks and ‘real money’ since at least the 1830s.

By the Depression of the 1930s, local currencies were being combined with barter networks and people continued trading their goods and services even though they had little work and no money. There were networks like these worldwide and some, in Germany and Canada, became so successful in alleviating poverty and cutting unemployment that eventually the banks managed to get the law changed. (Even now it's difficult to operate a non-commercial community exchange system like LETS in Germany).

Here in Britain, the first schemes using the LETS name started in Norwich and Stroud in Gloucestershire in the 1980s. Recessions and crashes of the 1980s and 90s stirred up a lot of interest in LETS and by the mid 90s there were over 400 active groups with a total membership of 20,000+ people.

North London LETS has survived many dramatic changes, including the loss of our founders, when one of them migrated to the USA, collapse of our original computer system, leaving us with no way of keeping records, rescue by a new computer and PC based system which kept us going for several years, and eventual transfer of our data to a new online system called Local Exchange, which was coded by Calvin Priest to support Francis Ayley's mew scheme, the Fourth Corner Local Exchange, in the USA.

This was followed by a period of conflict within the management group, resulting in a change to the CES system, which failed to be adopted by the majority of members, then the loss of our office base near Archway, where we used to hold socials, and the death of much-loved key members, Helen Berenger, who used to hold the office team together, and Woody Bronson, who campaigned for the move from printed newsletters to an online system.

We are members of an international community, developing local currencies in different ways, in many parts of the world. The good news is that we are still here, being supported by LETSlink to relaunch our online system after the pandemic, and finding new ways to engage with members, eg via local socials which can also be attended online.