Talk:Gnomes of Zurich

Untitled
Surely the date 1956 is wrong. 1965 is much more likely.

Dick Pyle


 * I don't have the reference to hand, but I did confirm the date last time someone corrected it. He coined the phrase in 1956 (when Shadow Chancellor), but it later became prominent during the 1964 sterling crisis and its aftermath, which is where 1965 comes in...
 * Now I look at it though, it may be garbled - it reads as though we've the 1956 date but have attributed it to the 1964/5 speech... hrm. Will look into this when I have the references handy. Shimgray 11:54, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I have found an external (BBC) article dating the phrase to 1964: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8534936.stm
 * Disparaging references to Swiss bankers had already been heard in Britain in the 1950s. But it was the intervention of the leading Labour politician George Brown in November, 1964, that made headlines. Emerging from a crisis meeting at which the Labour government discussed the plummeting pound, Brown snapped: "The gnomes of Zurich are at work again."
 * Mr Brown, famous for forthright utterances, had created a new catchphrase. Soon it was on many other lips, including those of the prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson, promising to resist the gnomes' "sinister" power.

And a second reference to 1964: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gnomesofzurich.asp
 * A term used by British labor ministers during the 1964 Sterling Crisis to refer to Swiss banks.

•Λmniarix• (talk) 12:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The phrase "gnomes of Zurich" was used by Nigel Birch, the then Conservative MP for West Flintshire, in a House of Commons debate on the Finance Bill on 6 May 1963. See Hansard:  https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1963/may/06/finance-bill   Dannyno (talk) 11:40, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Gnomes of zurich in literature?
Suggestion: adding Harry Potter's allusion to this.... I forget what critter runs Gringotts', it's a pretty good allusion to the Gnomes of Zurich...? D.valued 21:08, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Grijalvo seconds this suggestion - 29 January 2021 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.153.133.130 (talk) 17:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)


 * In the movie it was "goblins". --193.11.177.69 15:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

David Brin has gnomes polishing their atom bombs under the alps in his work earth —Preceding unsigned comment added by Coraxofcambell (talk • contribs) 03:22, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

The classic game in a box Illuminati (with the Megabucks) uses the Gnomes as one of the conspiracies. AThousandYoung (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Allusion in 1958
In British Economic Policy Since the War by Andrew Shonfield (published by Penguin in 1958), the following sentences are found (p 285) giving an allusion to “gnomes of Zürich”:
 * ”At the moment, we have manoeuvred ourselves into a position where our liberty of choice as a sovereign nation in the field of social and economic policy is constricted by the views of a marginal holder of sterling in Zürich or some other foreign capital. Worse still, since there is little accurate factual knowledge about his views, the decisions of the Government are guided by fears of what his reactions might be. Hence the tragedy of the autumn of 1957, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer adopted as his guide to action the slogan: ‘I must be hard-faced enough to match the mirror-image of an imaginary hard-faced little man in Zürich.’ It is tough on the Swiss that William Tell should be displaced in English folklore by this new image of a gnome in a bank at the end of a telephone line.”

I hope this is both useful and inlightening, and that it may in some way be incorporated into the page even though it may constitute original research. Emma May Smith (talk) 18:32, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Gringotts
What if the Gnomes of Zürich were the inspiration for J. K. Rowling's Gringotts Bank? Grijalvo --79.153.133.130 (talk) 17:08, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Also inspired the title of the 60s sitcom The Gnomes Of Dulwich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gnomes_of_Dulwich https://web.archive.org/web/20070308085325/http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/g/gnomesofdulwicht_1299001276.shtml http://www.curiousbritishtelly.co.uk/2018/08/the-gnomes-of-dulwich.html 92.17.138.205 (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

India Education Program course assignment
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The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 19:59, 1 February 2023 (UTC)