A DENT man who is championing the return of a wartime monetary unit that helped finance the Great War has been invited to speak to some of Britain’s top brains at a Cambridge conference.

Justin Walker believes the nation should go back to the the Bradbury Pound – a form of interest-free currency created by Parliament in 1914.

Named after John Bradbury, the Government’s chief economic advisor at the time of the First World War, the pound was approved by Act of Parliament on August 7, 1914.

It followed concern that the British people might respond to the uncertainty of war by withdrawing their savings in gold from private banks – triggering a run on the banks and creating a disastrous financial crisis just when the country was mobilising for war.

Mr Walker, whose uncle Sir Henry, later Lord, Pilkington, was a former director of the Bank of England, believes reintroducing the Bradbury Pound could help us fight modern financial conflicts such as indebtedness, recession and unemployment.

He will make his case at the 33rd International Mensa at Trinity College, Cambridge, on Saturday (August 23). Mensa - known as the ‘high IQ society’ - has more than 21,000 UK members with IQs in the top two per cent.

“A new version of the Bradbury Pound would have immense benefits, enabling Britain as a sovereign nation to issue its own debt free of interest,” said Mr Walker, who is co-ordinator of the Bradbury Alliance, a campaign group set up to ‘bring back’ this special pound.

He is convinced that creating money free of interest based on the credit and wealth of the nation would eliminate the need for a nation to go to the private banks for loans.

Mr Walker, an advertising representative with The Westmorland Gazette, will be among nine top speakers from the financial world to address the conference.