ANSWCU46 7 JUNE 1990: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL GRIFFITH
I will ask you Mr Griffith, where were you born and when?
BG: I was born in Melbourne at Clifton Hill on 26 January 1921.
Where did you grow up?
BG: A number of places. I was taken to England when I was six months old. Came back to Australia when I was aged six when we came back to Queensland, Brisbane. When I was about thirteen I went to school in Victoria.
So where did you go to school before that?
BG: I first of all went to Toowoomba Boys’ Preparatory School for a couple of years. Then to the Southport school from 1931 to 1933. Following that I moved on a scholarship to Geelong Grammar School from 1934 to the end of 1938.
What did you like and dislike about school, do you remember?
BG: I don’t remember many dislikes. I was perhaps a bit of a loner. I liked school. I didn’t mind schoolwork or studying. I did have I remember on one occasion a rather sarcastic master for one subject who I wasn’t very fond of at that time. There was also another master that I well remember at Southport who used to come into the classroom saying, ‘Think of a number, add this, divide by that, take away the number you first thought of,’ etc. etc. and turn around to some unfortunate boy when he got to the front of the class saying, ‘What’s the answer?’
Was maths not your greatest subject?
BG: Oh maths was all right, but at that point my mental arithmetic abilities weren’t perhaps what they became later.
Did you like sport at school?
BG: I participated in sport, well I guess one had to, I had no option, but I wasn’t particularly good at sport. I didn’t do too badly in the athletics and I did quite well I guess in rowing, but in football, for example, I wasn’t very crash hot.
Anything that you did for recreation other than sport? Anything you go interested in?
BG: I took up photography, in fact almost when I was in primary school. I started photography when I was down at Southport and that was an interest which I kept for many years. At Geelong Grammar I took up sailing, joined the Sea Scouts.
That might have been formative for you?
BG: Yes, well I joined the navy I guess when I finished school, almost on impulse. My maternal grandfather, my mother being a Pom, he was a Captain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, or had been, he was dead by this time I guess. As a young kid I guess I was brought up with grandaddy’s sailor boys.
What about your father, did you get any influence from him?
BG: Yes. I think one parent is always an influence. Hard to define the influence. He was an Anglican Parson, or more correctly a Clerk in Holy Orders. He was disappointed that I didn’t go into the church or the fact that none of his sons went into the church. But he was very happy when I went into the navy because that was a service. I guess not only him but also at school one of the elements that was, if you like, grilled into one was that one was on this earth to be of service.
Yes I remember that sort of thing myself, but it doesn’t seem to come to the fore any more does it?
BG: Not very prominent today I don’t think somehow.
What influence do you think you got from your mother apart from the naval thing through your grandfather?
BG: My mother died when I was five, so I haven’t got really very strong memories of her.
So who brought you up in that area then?
BG: My father remarried when I was about six and I guess my stepmother, a very determined lady. But again I was sent to boarding school from 1929 when I was aged just eight. So I was at boarding school from then until I left school. In my later time at Geelong I was only home during the Christmas holidays.
Yes I understand. When you left Geelong where did you go then?
BG: I went to England to join the Royal Navy.
Why did you want to go to England to join the navy, why not in Australia?
BG: Because at that time, officer cadets were not accepted into the Royal Australian Navy after the age of thirteen or fourteen. The Royal Navy had what they called special entry which was for seventeen and eighteen year olds.
Yes I remember that.
BG: My grandmother in England was of course very pleased that I was going there.
So you went straight into the navy there. Where did you go first in the navy?
BG: To Portsmouth. I joined the navy in January 1939.
Can you remember actually joining? Can you remember what happened to you when you joined?
BG: Oh, I guess so. We were staying in London we were all dressed up in our cadets’ uniform. Said goodbye to our folk on Waterloo Station, a train load of us. I had joined up with two other boys from Australia, one in fact from the same school. We left Waterloo Station to Portsmouth where a Navy Petty Officer took us in charge and we were taken out to our accommodation which was on HMS Frobisher a vessel that was moored in the upper reaches, if you can call it that, of Portsmouth Harbour.
Almost the hulks.
BG: Not really a hulk, but I don’t remember that she ever saw service again at sea.
How did you enjoy your time there, did you find it very hard or did you manage it OK?
BG: No, there wasn’t any particular difficulty. Having been at boarding school, as had a lot of the cadets there, mostly English or Scottish boarding schools, we were most of us used to a certain degree of discipline. It wasn’t perhaps as though we were mummy’s boys just come straight from home.
The food was probably better was it?
BG: Don’t have any particular recollections of it so it couldn’t have been bad.
It was much worse at boarding school I suppose?
BG: Much on a par.
Does anything stand out about that time when you were doing your training there as a boy?
BG: No. Rowing was a little bit different in that you didn’t have sliding seats in a naval cutter. I was introduced to other sporting activities that hadn’t come my way up until then, like soccer for example and hockey, although we also played rugby.
So how long did you spend on the Frobisher?
BG: Frobisher, one term, which was about three or four months.
Then?
BG: Then to a term at sea in the Vindictive, which was a sea-going training cruiser, where we met up with our contemporaries from the training college at Dartmouth which had an intake of the thirteen and fourteen year olds under the old scheme.
So you were older than them?
BG: No, we were much of an age by this time. I mean they had been at Dartmouth for about four years.
So how long were you on the Vindictive?
BG: Well we should have had two terms on the Vindictive but we went on leave in August 1939 and well you remember what happened at the end of August 1939. We all got telegrams, I guess the Admiralty and the Army were sending out telegrams madly at that time, and at the end of August I was directed to go to Scapa Flow to join HMS Duneden. That is where I was on 3 September.
Outbreak of War. Where did the Duneden see service?
BG: Duneden we started off the War on what was called the northern patrol, that was a blockading patrol in the Orkney Islands-Iceland Gap, patrolling the sea lanes there.
Did you see any action there?
BG: Not really, no. We challenged and boarded various merchant ships, I was a midshipman that had to take one of them under armed guard into Kirkwell in the Orkney’s. It was a most interesting time and as a midshipman, which I was by this time, in charge of the cutters taking boarding crews across to vessels on some fairly bouncy seas, it was a fairly interesting time.
Cold up there?
BG: Pretty cool. This was in the autumn and early winter, but we were only up on the northern patrol for about four or five months it might have been before we were sent over to the West Indies.
So you didn’t get the white sea treatment out there?
BG: Not at that stage. I went to various ships and various theatres during the War years, but I was back in those waters in 1944 when we were taking convoys to Murmansk.
Did you, that is very interesting. Summer of winter?
BG: Again that was more autumn.
Trouble with ice at all? Building up on the decks I mean.
BG: No, no trouble with the ice. It was really surprisingly warm. I think our last trip up in those waters was about November 1944, by which time all the worst of the activities were over. But no, I remember in Kola Inlet in early November 1944 walking on deck without a greatcoat or anything, that was in harbour. So it must have been quite a nice day, cool, but no ice drops.
Before you went on the Russian end of things the Murmansk convoy, where you ever over towards Canada?
BG: No never did get, until after the War, to Canada.
So where did you go from Scotland then?
BG: To the West Indies. We were based on Bermuda.
What was the task there?
BG: The task there was to pick up or to monitor shipping and to pick up any German ships, a number of which were in what were then neutral ports like the Dutch island of Irooga.
Curacao and places like that as well?
BG: Yes. We didn’t go to the neutral places, but we were patrolling, if you like, the gaps in the chain that the West Indies forms.
Where from then? Had you seen any action by that time, apart from boarding a merchant ship?
BG: No. In the West Indies we did, after the Germans walked into Holland, take a couple of German merchant ships that had sailed from Dutch ports. I guess they were told to try and run the blockade when the Germans went into Holland. We picked up a couple of ships there, but that wasn’t the kind of action in the gunnery sense.
None of them gave you any trouble?
BG: They tried to scuttle themselves and we put a boarding party across to try and save them. One we saved, one in fact later became one of the first British escort carriers when it was converted, but the other one they weren’t able to save so she sunk.
Which ship?
BG: That was still on the Dunedin. In the summer of 1941 the Dunedin was taken back to England and we, the midshipmen, were all transferred to HMS Edinburgh. This was a ship which operated out of Scapa Flow with the home fleet. But again the home fleet saw no action except the shooting of a few aeroplanes, before we left to go and do our sub-lieutenant’s courses in the latter part of 1941.
Where were you posted after you finished your sub-lieutenant’s course?
BG: After the sub-lieutenant’s course I was appointed as a sub-lieutenant to HMS Mauritius. Now the Mauritius at that time was in Singapore, we are now in the latter part of 1941. I, with five others, joined a troop ship which took us as far as Cape Town. In Cape Town they took us off and sent us to a hotel and said, ‘We’ll send for you when we have got the next passage for you.’ So three or four of us young blokes enjoyed ourselves in Cape Town until we run out of money three or four days later when we went along to the naval place there and they said, ‘Oh we’re wanting you, you’ve got to join that ship that has just come in.’ That was in fact the Prince of Wales that was going to, as we ultimately discovered, Singapore. Not everyone knew that that ship was going to Singapore because when we got to Colombo the naval transport people took us ashore and said, ‘Ah, yes, well, now, we had better fix you up until there is transport to take you to Singapore.’ We said, ‘That ship we have just come from, where do you think that is going?’ ‘Oh.’ To cut a long story short, we were back on board an hour later. At Singapore I joined HMS Mauritius who was at that time in the Singapore dockyard. This would have been about the end of November. The ship was still in dockyard hands when the Japanese came into the War, early December 1941. It was still there for three or four weeks. Then we were sent to take a convoy to Colombo and Mauritius operated in the Indian Ocean all the time that I was in her.
Any action during that period?
BG: No. we made various sweeps in various areas and so on, but in my time there we never came up with anything we would really have to shoot at.
So where next?
BG: Well mostly we were doing convoys, convoy work. I got promoted to lieutenant. Then they were filling the ships more with reserve officers and trying to put the RN officers into billets in some of the other ships coming along. We were at Mombassa when I and another officer from the ship joined a little vessel that was to take us to Cape Town. In fact it was a ship called the Mendoza. An interesting vessel, it had the reputation of, ex-French, being involved in the white slave traffic between Marseilles and North African ports in times past. Anyway she was a pretty ancient vessel I guess and not in the best of health. If things were good down below we made ten knots and if they weren’t we were lucky to be doing five. We were sixty miles out of Durban when the first torpedo struck. Practically everybody got away in the lifeboats.
Where did it hit?
BG: It hit amidships, engine room area. There were some people killed, but the majority of people got into lifeboats. The other officer who had joined with me was in one of the last lifeboats. There were two of them left alongside some twenty minutes or more after the first torpedo. The ship was taking water but obviously wasn’t going down very fast. She wasn’t going to last but she wasn’t in a hurry to go. The submarine fired a second torpedo which hit in between the two lifeboats. My mate remembers passing the Promenade Deck on the way up. As he wasn’t a good swimmer he was in fact wearing two lifebelts, the navy blow-up type and the what you might call the civilian type. When he came to the surface he found he was only wearing one lifebelt. However, I don’t think anybody was killed from the lifeboats but we did pull some very bedraggled and aching people out of the water. In fact my mate reckons he was black and blue and he didn’t really like sitting down for a fortnight.
There was some concussion in the water was there?
BG: No, that was the force of the seat on his backside as he got catapulted into the air.
What about fuel oil?
BG: No there wasn’t a lot of fuel oil around. There wasn’t a lot of problems with that. But that was the end of the ship.
You got picked up?
BG: We gathered round the Captain’s lifeboat, the Captain was in one of the last ones. He gave us directions to, ‘Go that a way.’ So we set off that a way. The boats did tend to scatter, they had sails and some of them sailed better and faster than others I guess. Some of them were more loaded than others. My boat was picked up off Durban the next morning and towed in by a fishing trawler into Durban. I guess by next morning we were about five or ten miles off Durban. Not all the boats made it to Durban, some of them in fact weren’t picked up for another week. There is a wonderful story that a British Major told us after he got to Durban about finding himself in a boat which was mostly occupied by Free Frenchmen and they woke up in the morning to find the sun rising in the west. They decided this couldn’t be right, so they turned around and as I say they eventually got picked up. I think there were one or two boats that didn’t make it, somehow got into the Agulhas current. There is a very strong current that runs down the coast there. The weather wasn’t bad, in fact the weather was quite good, one can only suppose that they got swept away in the current and lost direction.
So what happened to you next?
BG: I had a little time around Durban, first of all guarding an ammunition dump for a little time, a couple of weeks. Then I had a month at sea in a destroyer operating out of Durban, the Inconstant, a vessel that had originally been built for the Turkish Navy but which was still building when War broke out, so was taken-over by the British. Interesting vessel in that the tallies on the telephones and voice pipes were in Turkish, so you had to know which voice pipe was which by some other means.
How long were you on that?
BG: Only there for a month when there was a request for people who wanted to specialise in what was then known as fighter direction. Now fighter direction was something fairly new. We had done a bit of it operating in Mauritius, we had practiced it a bit. A sub-lieutenant gets all these funny things that come along and I was appointed the bloke to deal with it in Mauritius. We had some exercises having one of the old original radar sets. So when this came along and knowing a little bit about what it was about I said, ‘Oh that sounds like it is for me.’ So to cut a long story short I joined the Britannic running as a transport and in fact was taking a whole heap of Italian prisoners of war to England.
Was that the White Star liner?
BG: I guess she would have been. So we went to England. I went down to Yeovilton in Somerset. Did this course which was a couple of months or more, after which I was appointed to HMS Dehli which was an anti-aircraft cruiser in the Mediterranean. We spent our time escorting convoys along the Mediterranean coast and participated in the landings first of all in Sicily, Salerno and Anzio.
Was that hard, difficult, did you get shot at quite a bit or not?
BG: We weren’t shot at quite so much. We were bombed a bit and we were there to shoot at the blokes who were doing the bombing. We had some interesting occasions there.
Did you get hit at all?
BG: No.
End Tape 1A
ANSWCU45 7 JUNE 1990: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL GRIFFITH
During the landings there, did your ship actually get hit by bombs?
BG: No. The bombings in fact didn’t do much damage. Our only thing was a small collision which occurred when we were laying smoke. One of our chores as well as shooting at the aeroplanes was to cruise around the anchored ships and lay a smoke screen so the bombers couldn’t see what they were up to. But on one occasion we came out of a smoke screen to find another vessel doing a similar job on our bow and we got a little dent, but nothing to worry about.
So where did your ship go next, or what was your next ship?
BG: After I had been about a year in the Mediterranean I was moved. Of course my job in the Dehli had been to talk to and on occasions direct the shore-based fighter aircraft along the North African coast which flew cover. But it was a policy to take fighter direction officers back for a refresher course because things moved very fast, I guess, in that field at that time. So I was sent back to England to go down to Yeovilton again for a few weeks refresher course before being appointed as the Direction Officer to HMS Tracker which was an escort carrier operating out of Scapa Flow mainly and escorting convoys to North Russia on the one hand, or flying aircraft to lay mines in the Norwegian fjords on the other.
Were you in that same area directing aircraft at that time?
BG: Yes, that was where I was directing aircraft. We did that for some months I was in Tracker before being moved doing a rather similar job on HMS Premier.
Anything of note during that period?
BG: Well on our trips to Russia, I only got ashore on the one occasion when we had an escorted tour around a Russian airfield. We didn’t get ashore until about three o’clock in the afternoon and by three-thirty it was dark. I don’t think there was really much in the airfield, or at any rate there wasn’t really much to see. We looked at some of the aircraft and so on, they these Stormaviks with the armoured underbellies and that kind of thing. But it certainly wasn’t a very active area of operations at all really. Then we were taken to be fed vodka and whatever goes with it with a Russian interpreter and two or three of the Russian officers. I guess we started that lot not long after half-past three, about half-past five our senior officer said, ‘Now, it is time we got back.’ The Russians said, ‘No, no.’ So we went on until, ‘Well really we have got to get back. There is a Russian concert party that we have got to attend on board,’ and the interpreter said, ‘No, no. Don’t worry about that, I am the interpreter for that I wouldn’t leave you up shit creek without a paddle,’ that was his terminology. So in fact I think we got on board about half-past seven, by which time the Russian concert party had been going for at least half an hour. We never did see that interpreter again. But it was a good evening.
A very hospitable people.
BG: Yes. We had some of the Russian aviators back on board. The communication was not much in English, a little bit in German for one or two folk who could get a few sentences in German. They didn’t believe the speeds, when they asked about the speeds of our aircraft, and they didn’t believe the speeds we told them. The difficulty there of course was that we were telling them that the aircraft flew in whatever it was in knots and of course that wasn’t a speed they understood. When we said, ‘Oh well, the Swordfish, yes that does about ninety knots.’ I suddenly had the brainwave to do a swift conversion into kilometres, and I can’t remember what the conversion was now, but we said, ‘One hundred and fifty kilometres,’ or whatever is was that made sense to them. By and large we got on well with them.
So where did you go next?
BG: When the War in Europe came to an end I was sent out to Colombo to join HMS Shah, still directing aircraft. She was another little escort carrier.
What was she carrying?
BG: Gosh, now you have got me.
Were they carrying Swordfish originally?
BG: Well they carried Swordfish. Not out in those waters they didn’t. We were carrying Seafires and I think Avengers, Gruman Avengers. But don’t hold me to that. We had different aircraft from different squadrons, depending upon which squadrons were embarked. I think at that point we had Seafires and Grumans. We were setting out for the Andaman Islands and that area for what was to have been the invasion of Malaya when of course we got the news that the bomb had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki so our next port of call was Singapore for the Japanese surrender.
You were actually there for that were you?
BG: Yes I was in Singapore when the Japanese dropped the first bombs there and I was paraded with the rest of the mob when the Japanese General came to leave his sword with Lord Louis Mountbatten. I was there at the time.
Was there any significant that you can remember about that occasion?
BG: Not really. We didn’t actually see the surrender itself. We were paraded, a whole mob of us, in the large area in front of the building and we say the various dignitaries drive up and Mountbatten came out at the end of it and said I few words if I recollect. But apart from being an historic occasion, it was basically another parade.
So where next?
BG: The Shah returned to England, but as I hadn’t been in those waters long enough I was moved to the Cumberland, I joined HMS Cumberland and we went down to Tanjong Priok, to Batavia as it then was, Jakarta as it now is, to start taking over the Indies from the Japanese. That was a funny situation because the Japanese were charged with maintaining law and order until they were relieved by British troops. The Cumberland was the first ship in there and we had some liaison folk we took down there and our Admiral, we had an Admiral aboard then, who organised things, I guess, with the Japanese. So we spent a while there. I visited a prisoner of war camp, allied prisoners which included Australians and in fact I met an old school friend, or a bloke I was at school with, and we stayed for lunch with them. They reckoned what they had was pretty good tucker at that point, compared with what they had been having, but I must admit that I didn’t really eat a lot of it.
What sort of condition were they in?
BG: Well they were pretty skinny, some of them. My school friend, I don’t know if he ever recovered, he had been bashed around the head and lost a fair part of his hearing. They were in good spirits and so on at that time, certainly, but they wouldn’t have been the fittest of blokes.
So how long were you there?
BG: I couldn’t tell you off hand, but a few weeks. One thing that does stick in my mind was a party we threw for some of the children that had been interned, the wives and children. There were quite a lot of them, I guess mostly Dutch wives and children, but they weren’t in bad shape. It was a terrific party and they dressed themselves up to the nines in what they had and what they could get. They put on a pretty good show. Just kind of seeing them, I guess, was really moving.
So were you sent back to Britain or where you sent out here?
BG: No, I was sent back to Britain, the Cumberland eventually went back to Britain and I was appointed to a training establishment in Wales, a fighter direction training establishment in Wales. Then another training establishment in Chatham. I joined HMS Superb in about 1951 and I went to the West Indies where we spent a year. There were various disruptions to our program. We left New York at fairly high speed on one occasion when we thought we were going to have a month in Bermuda, but we didn’t we spent twenty-four hours in Bermuda and then had to go down to Jamaica to pick up some British troops to take them down to what was at that time British Guyana because of some trouble there. Very shallow waters off there, so we had to stay quite a far way out, in fact we never got ashore there. We stayed there for a little while. On another occasion when we were at Rio de Janiro, we set off and we should of been going to Buenos Aires but we set off again for the Falkland Islands where we spent six weeks.
What year was that?
BG: About 1953 or 1954, I think. I would have to consult the archives to put you dead right.
No I was just wondering what was going on down there at that time?
BG: Well the Argentinians were being a nuisance. The Argentinian thing that came to the Falkland war had been long-running, as perhaps most people know.
I know that, I was at South Georgia on the Lars Salverson’s expedition, the last one that wintered over down there.
BG: Well we had to send some marines down there. They went down in one of the frigates that were stationed down there. We sent some marines down to dislodge a party of Argentinians that were in the area. I think the were on Deception Island actually, if I remember rightly. I am not sure the marines didn’t go down and blow up a hut that they had built on the football pitch that was down there. Anyway I do remember that we had very good, pleasant weather at that time, this would have been the middle of the year, summer time. No it couldn’t have been the middle of the year, but we had good weather. We made the most of our six weeks. After we had been there a short time I think the Admiral, William Andrews it was, sent a signal back to the Admiralty saying, ‘Everything seems all right and I think it is time we got on with our other business.’ He got a reply from Winston Churchill to the effect, ‘You bloody stay there until I tell you.’ So we spent a few more weeks there and then went back.
Did you get on to South Georgia at all?
BG: No, never got to South Georgia, never got short of the Falkland Islands. The frigates went down to these other places.
I did the last whaling expedition down there and I wintered in South Georgia. Some of them used to winter there and pull the catches up. Then that base was sold to the Argentine scrap merchants and therein lies the problem.
BG: On South Georgia? That’s right. Oh I guess there have been little fracas, if you like, down there for many, many years. The folk that are in the Falkland Islands now, and in South Georgia for that matter not that they’ve got very much in South Georgia now, but the folk in the Falkland Islands have been there for many, many years and the Argentinians have never actually colonised the Falkland Islands. It is an interesting legal problem if you take an international view I suppose. But for the folk that are there, it is their place and they reckon they are going to stay there.
So where did you go next?
BG: Oh, I had another stint back in training establishments in South-West Wales, that was HMS Harrier at Kete, near St Anne’s Head, if anybody ever knows where St Anne’s Head is.
Padgate and then Warrington.
BG: Right. Well the aircraft we operated with for training purposes they flew out of the Royal Naval Airstation at Brawdy, up towards St David’s way. I had another stint there before joining HMS Albion, an aircraft carrier. I did a trip to the Far East, it was a salesman trip. I think the Admiral’s job was to try and sell carriers to India and places.
Did you sell any?
BG: Well that I don’t know, I don’t recall now. It was a good trip through the Mediterranean.
Maybe they should have sold a few to Argentina.
BG: Not at that point I don’t think. We went to Bombay where with the Indians we had a little thing. Then we went out for manoeuvres off Hong Kong and so on. Back to Singapore and so on, around the Cape back to Britain.
How did you get back out here?
BG: After I left Albion, I volunteered for an exchange appointment with the Royal Australian Navy which brought me out for about three months to the Navy Office in Melbourne, as it was then. No, this was before Albion, going back in time, I beg my pardon. After the Albion I had appointments in training establishments. Albion time was 1955, 1956 and my next three or four years were in a variety of first of all training and then equipment layout and design work before I retired in 1961. But I missed a point. My exchange appointment was earlier on in 1948, before Mauritius come to think of it, when I had three months in Head Office in Melbourne really waiting for HMS Albatross, the Naval Airstation at Nowra to commission. So I was down at Nowra from August 1948 when she commission until I went back to England in May of 1950.
So when you retired you came straight out here?
BG: Yes, one of the things, I was married with four kids by this time.
Where were you married?
BG: I married in England in Shenfield in Essex, both my father and I married a Pom. Three of my children were born in Wales and the last one in Portsmouth. In fact she was only twelve months old when I retired from the navy, I retired in January 1961. One of the things in the regulations was that if you joined up from one of the colonies or far-flung places of empire, when you left the navy they paid for your transport back there. So even if we only came for the trip, but we didn’t come for the trip. My father by this time was retired and living in Melbourne and most of my relatives on my father’s side, the majority of them, are Melbourne folk. So we came back to Melbourne. In April, I was offered a job with BHP, Australian Iron and Steel in Port Kembla, so we came to live in Wollongong.
Was that a culture shock? Maybe not after the navy.
BG: Well, naval life makes you pretty adaptable. You get all kinds of funny little jobs in the navy I guess and you take things as they come. When you visit places, well I certainly always aimed to learn a little bit about the places that one visited. One got to meet other folk and so on. So no, I don’t think it was much of a culture shock. The shock was in fact for my wife, really, because by the time we’d been settled, and we were in a company place for almost a year before we moved into our own house, by the time we had been in our own house two or three years my wife was saying, ‘Gosh it is time we moved.’ In our first thirteen years of married life we had moved house thirteen times so she was used to that kind of a routine.
So she didn’t really put the roots down easily?
BG: Well, it wasn’t a great problem, but yes I guess it took a bit of time. A lot of advantages in this moving business. I mean in the navy in married quarters and so on, if you liked the neighbours that was good and you made good friends that you met up with and kept up with in times to come. On other occasions if you weren’t so keen on the neighbours you knew that there was an end in sight, either they were going to move or you were going to move within a foreseeable time.
So when did you first hear about credit unions?
BG: At the steelworks in Port Kembla. I joined the steelworks as a Personal Assistant to the General Manager, which was a job that I had for a time. Then I started working with Tommy Hanson who had been the Registrar but Tommy Hansen had been made I think a kind of personnel general factotum by the General Manager. He got the title of Labour Superintendent but I came to be working with him. We were approached, the company was approached if I recollect correctly, I wasn’t in on any of this particular correspondence and so, the Registry of Co-operatives as it then was, with a view to the company being interested in sponsoring the formation of an employees’ credit union. Tommy Hansen was given the job of looking at this. He thought it would have certain advantages from the company’s point of view and would certainly have benefits to the employees. From the company’s point of view, we are looking at 1962, it was a time of high turnover throughout Australia. People were moving from job to job, but even other folk were giving their notice just to collect what monies might be due to them from long service leave, or even annual leave, to pay off some rather insistent creditor.
Was there a lot of loan-sharking around as well?
BG: Well, I think largely finance companies. There might have been a bit of loan sharking but they would leave, pick up whatever and then a fortnight later they would be back saying, ‘Please can I have my job back.’ Obviously from the company’s point of view a credit union might ease some of those problems. The company was always trying within the constraints of the time to do the right thing by the employees.
So do you remember the inaugural meeting, or where you not there at that time?
BG: I wasn’t at the inaugural meeting of the credit union. There are some stories about that of course. Tommy Hansen, a well-organised bloke and knew how to organise meetings and so on, he was the bloke that organised it. This would have been in August 1982. Sorry, 1962. In August 1962 they had the inaugural meeting for AIS Employees Credit Union Co-operative Limited, as it was styled. Tommy, having gone into how our credit union could best be run, had decided that the steelworks being a fairly big place, we had twenty thousand employees or thereabouts at that time, well perhaps it wasn’t quite as high as twenty but it did get up to twenty thousand, he thought it would be a good thing to have involved with the credit union a number of folks scattered in different points. He mostly picked Chief Clerks in departments and folk of that kind, although he had a very good spread of people, so he had asked a number of people would they be prepared to be nominated. They were all prepared to be nominated, or he got the ones that were, and organised who was going to nominate who and so on. At the meeting calling for nominations, he wanted seven nominations for Directors, he got to six nominations and there was a pause, ‘Any further nominations? Any further nominations?’ Tommy’s mate, who was supposed to be nominating him, was being a bit of a whatever. But eventually old Jimmy Gifford it was said, ‘I nominate Tommy Hansen.’ Everything went off very well at the inaugural meeting and I must say Tommy had a very good Board.
Did they get pay-roll deductions straight away?
BG: They had pay-roll deductions from the beginning. That was one of the big things.
End Tape 1B: 3418 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes.
ANSWCU46 7 JUNE 1990: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL GRIFFITH
I just asked you, but you didn’t get a chance to answer because the tape ran out, when your first involvement came with the AIS Credit Union?
BG: I became involved in about January or February 1963 when Tommy Hansen I suppose wanted a little extra help and I had a bit of spare time because Gus Parrish wasn’t using me to the full. I had begun to do some accountancy studies at that point, just beginning, and I started off keeping the members’ ledgers and gradually became more involved in other things.
How many members were there at that time, do you remember?
BG: I couldn’t tell you. I know that we were only just starting to get operating. We were signing up members in large numbers. I know we had loan applications for something like half a million pounds, whereas we had deposits running into hundreds rather than thousands of dollars and obviously it takes a bit of time to build up the deposits. So we had quite a difficulty in vetting these loan applications. The first thing that we put out were those who merely wanted a loan to re-finance, we felt that that was not a top priority.
The old consolidation thing.
BG: The old consolidation business.
Did you do any counselling in that area?
BG: We didn’t get much of a chance to do a lot of counselling in that early point. Business was conducted at the steelworks employment office, through a window. It was quite common I think in organisations at that time certainly for blue collar workers to front up to a window for whatever it was they were required for. I guess the steelworks was no different in that respect and there was a window allocated to the credit union. It wasn’t really in the right place to do a lot of counselling I would say. The credit union didn’t have a lot of staff, Tommy had been given one clerk, that was Don Love.
Given by the company?
BG: By the company. The credit union was given one clerk to help him with the credit union. Tommy of course had his own what you might say full-time job. Tommy was a great delegator, he was a great delegator. Tommy would approach you and say, “Bill have you got five minutes, I have got just a little job. It will only take you about five minutes.’ Five days later you might have the answer for him. He had all the operations of the credit union compartmentalised. One of the accountancy people was the Secretary, Murray Jamieson, who became the boss-man in Head Office in Melbourne for the BHP Superannuation Organisation. Murray was the one that kept the cash books and so on and was the Secretary.
When did you first become a Director?
BG: I didn’t become a Director for many years. I was appointed as an Assistant Secretary. That was Tommy’s way of getting my involvement. I sat in on Board meetings from a fairly early stage. I am talking about 1963. By 1964 I guess I would be attending Board meetings. There was someone else by this time who was doing the ledgers and this kind of thing. In fact, we had hand written ledgers until we had up to five thousand members before going on to an accounting machine.
So who was doing that, you?
BG: No I left off those ledgers long before that. We had a retired clerk, in fact, who first started part-time and then became a full-time job for him to do these ledgers.
Did you have a Supervisory Committee on that credit union?
BG: No. The credit union is one that never did have a Supervisory Committee.
Did you have a Secretary and a Treasurer as well as a Board?
BG: It had a Secretary, Murray Jamieson was the Secretary, it had the Board of Directors with Tommy Hansen as Chairman of seven Directors. Don Love was the clerk who was appointed to it for a year, although Tommy managed to keep him on. I became more and more involved as the workload increased. I ceased to be anything to do with the General Manager and became an assistant to Tom Hansen in a number of areas but the credit union started to take up more and more time with it.
When you were at BHP, were you in the personnel area in BHP, when the company changed their industrial relations quite markedly? They were quite hardline in the old days, but they sort of turned around and became more consultative.
BG: I wasn’t involved in the industrial relations side at all, but I guess I was there at that time. The Personnel Department at the steelworks, well there wasn’t a Personnel Department when I first joined the steelworks in 1961, there was an Industrial Relations Department. The Employment Office used to come under the commercial people, but then Tommy became, and he had been an ex-commercial person I suppose, the Labour Superintendent and took over employment. Tommy was always into welfare things, unofficially if not officially. After that various other aspects, Superannuation which had always been run by the commercial people, that became another Personnel Department. Training of course was there, training was there as a Personnel Department and compensation had been run again on a commercial basis, but that became another Personnel Department. The personnel functions really got organised over the years there.
At any rate you went into credit unions from then on. Who were you paid by?
BG: I was employed by the steelworks and paid by the steelworks on the welfare side of Tommy Hansen’s job, which got greater and greater recognition.
So you were then actually a volunteer and a Director at the credit union?
BG: I was a volunteer Assistant Secretary and later Director of the credit union. The company was very good and all the work was done by company people until we appointed a Manager round about 1965, I would have said.
Did you go over to machine accounting at any stage?
BG: Yes by 1965 we had gone to machine accounting. In the latter part of 1964 the credit union employed a girl on the machine accounting side.
When did you go over to computer?
BG: Our first involvement in computers was not many years later. It would be before the end of the 1960s when we had the company doing the computer accounts on a batch arrangement.
Did they charge you for that?
BG: No. The company did not charge for that. In fact the company really didn’t charge for anything at all, ever, that I can recollect.
Not rent even?
BG: Not rent. When we got into the building in 1966, our first building which was built on company land adjacent to the Employment Office and cost the credit union twenty thousand dollars, a small two-storey building, which is still in use today, but not as the company Head Office. But by that time we had a Manager, we had two or three girls, I couldn’t tell you precisely what the staff amounted to.
When did you first have anything to do with the Association, what was it called the Southern Association?
BG: Well the Southern Association was formed about 1966, that kind of time.
Were you anything to do with its formation?
BG: I was one of the Foundation Directors. Tommy Hansen had been involved with some of the folk from other companies in the formation of credit unions there. There had been other credit unions that had been formed by the League, or had involvement with the League, although any in that Port Kembla in Wollongong area, certainly the industry ones, dropped out of the League almost straight away. Stan Arneil had been down there. Stan came down in 1963, I think it would be, soon after the formation of the AIS Credit Union.
Was he at that time Development Officer at the Registrar’s Office?
BG: He might have been.
Was he President then of the League?
BG: I think at that time, he had become President.
Well that would be 1962 then.
BG: Well, 1962, the company was approached and it might have been at the time when Stan
He was President from 1961 to 1964. In 1964 was when he was Development Officer at the Registrar’s Office and he was challenged by Don Harvey, he was stood against by Don Harvey, who didn’t approve of him being Development Officer at the same time as President of the League. He lost his Presidency at that stage in the proceedings. Do you think he might have been President at that time and also Development Officer?
BG: Well, he was certainly President at that time because I know he came and talked to Tom Hansen and told Tom what the League was supposed to be all about and left Tom various forms and bits of papers and so on, including an application form to join. In fact he invited Tom to the Annual General Meeting.
Do you think he went?
BG: Tom did go to the Annual General Meeting. He went with a cheque in his pocket for our credit union to join. But he got disillusioned by the Annual General Meeting. He was not popular at the end of the Annual General Meeting. At that point he hadn’t had any chance to make his changed views known. Stan thinking that here was the latest recruit and a good one invited Tommy to address the meeting, which Tommy did and expressed the views that he had formed during the course of the meeting which indicated that he reckoned that the League wasn’t running as such an organisation should run if it wanted our credit union to join it. So we didn’t join.
So what exactly did he object to, do you know?
BG: Well that is a bit difficult to say, and Tommy I guess is the best person to say it.
All right, I will leave it there if you like. Did you go to any League meetings before the Southern Association was set up?
BG: No, not before the Southern Association was set up. I know that the general feeling was that there was a bit of a cabal that was running the League. It wasn’t felt that it was being run very efficiently, that money wasn’t necessarily being well spent. We weren’t impressed by the various trips to America, we didn’t see the need for all the number of people to go that in fact were going annually to America in those years. CUNA maybe was paying the greater part of their expenses, but there were obviously other expenses over and above that that were being incurred by the League. Instead of being two shillings and six pence, I think it was at that time, a head for membership, we reckoned that wouldn’t be money well spent. We didn’t object to the concept that one might say the League represented, but we didn’t like the way it went about its business.
In actually fact a lot of the money was being paid by the individual credit unions at that time, for the people who went.
BG: Well that again might have been so. But we didn’t feel it was money being properly spent by the credit union movement.
Have you got any idea when the Southern Association was actually formed?
BG: I think it would have been in 1966. About this time, as I was saying, Tommy had got into discussion with people from other credit unions and we were beginning to run seminars of a Saturday on Tommy’s back verandah. A bit of a barbecue afterwards and whatever. There were all kinds of questions which all credit unions had in the early days, you know which were of great importance. We would have our own solicitor, Doug Davis. When I say our own solicitor, he was a solicitor that had stayed in Wollongong because Tommy had suggested that he would be a very suitable person to deal with credit union securities and so on, which would be a growing business. We had Doug come along and talk about Bills of Sale or Mortgages, or this kind of thing. We had talks on meetings and membership and all the questions that were pretty simple really, but a lot of folk didn’t know the answers to. One of the other organisations, I think it was Mackay of ER&S Employers Credit Union, said, ‘Well let’s have a formal association.’ That was enthusiastically taken up and so the Association of Southern Credit Unions, as we called it, came into being in 1966, don’t ask me the month.
You were a Foundation Director?
BG: I was a Foundation Director. Tommy Hansen said he didn’t want to become involved and I guess I got put on as Tommy’s right-hand man. Tommy was involved in the sense that we still ran seminars in his back yard and this kind of thing. That went on for a while.
Your version of a Chapter was it, or a weekend School, or an evening School?
BG: Well we just called them a seminar and invited all and sundry.
Did you get anybody down from the New South Wales League at all?
BG: Not for those kind of things, no. We had all the resources. You know, as I say, some of them were quite simple questions and some of them were legal.
Do you know if your solicitor had any discussions with Jack Lange over the legal challenges that went on later on?
BG: I don’t think he did. I don’t think there was that kind of involvement at that kind of level.
Were there any discussions about changing the rules towards mutuality in order to try and circumvent the taxation rules?
BG: I don’t recall any discussions about that. The Southern Association was not operating as what you might call a political association at that time. It was a mutual self-help organisation. Subscriptions were pretty nominal and the whole thing was run on a shoestring. Fairly early on in the piece the League did approach us. They obviously felt that we should join their fold. But for reasons that got expounded I guess over and over again over the years, we never did until many years later when the League had had lots of ups and downs and fights and so on and had ultimately, we considered, put its house in order.
What about the insurance battle, did you get involved in that at all? Or should I next ask you about the other various branches that you started, of the Southern Association that is, the Northern and Central branches?
BG: No we weren’t involved in the insurance businesses that the League was involved in. Our insurance was all with various ordinary commercial organisations.
Not through your Association?
BG: Not through the Association, no. The Southern Association ran no services as such.
Did they do any advertising?
BG: Not in a big way. The Southern Association as such didn’t do much in the way of advertising, no. We did things like providing forms for members. When AIS Employees Credit Union, for example, revamped its loan application form then by just leaving out the name, the Southern Association would have extra copies printed which could be made available to the other credit unions. The same for application forms and that kind of thing. The AIS Employees Credit Union did pay for a number of these little things in a round about way. But the Southern Association was more a mutual self-help association and not into the provision of lots of services. We were prepared to send people to talk to other credit unions, and we did. Credit unions that were having problems or wanted to know how to organise this or had a difficulty in knowing how the hell to get out of it. But we didn’t become involved, as the League did, in, well, things like insurances and running training things and so on. We ran our own training things on a shoestring, perhaps in the evenings perhaps on a Saturday or something like that.
What about a central banking system? Did you start one of those?
BG: No, we didn’t have any central banking. Central banking we saw the advantages of. The Central Association as it became in time, did start a central banking scheme but that was an off-shoot from the Southern Association. These are our branches I guess that you were talking about.
They were more off-shoots weren’t they.
BG: Well they became separate organisations, but they were off-shoots. We were asked first of all by people in Newcastle could they join our Association.
By who?
BG: Off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you. Bill Prince I am pretty sure was one of them. This was about the time, 1968, 1969. It would have been the end of 1969 that I was out of the scene for two and a half years. BHP sent me to Europe recruiting.
Before that, when the push up toward the Credit Union Act, was the Southern Association involved at all on a lobbying level in order to get your views put towards the Credit Union Act of 1969? The first one in Australia.
BG: I don’t remember the Association as such. Jim Wardell, who was the Chairman of the Association, and Tommy Hansen, both of whom I think were foundation members of the Credit Union Advisory Committee, I stand to be corrected on that, but they were certainly both involved in the Credit Union Advisory Committee early on in the piece, they might have had some input. I don’t recall any big deal about it.
Do you remember the Minister coming down at any time? Do you remember any transactions with firstly Abe Landa, secondly Stefan Stevens and thirdly Sid Einfeld?
BG: No. I myself had involvements with Sid Einfeld later on, but no I don’t remember any big involvement with the Ministers down in that area.
So how long were you overseas?
BG: I was overseas until the middle of 1972. When I came back in 1972, back to the steelworks in a slightly more elevated capacity but a similar capacity to what I had been in the start. This was the time that it was made official that I was Tommy Hansen’s, shall we say, welfare bloke. There was another gentleman, Peter Hilton, who looked after the employment, migrant side.
When you were recruiting overseas were you recruiting at all levels?
BG: I was recruiting blue collar workers, tradesmen and unskilled workers for all the BHP places. Whyalla in South Australia, Kwinana in Western Australia, Newcastle and Port Kembla steelworks.
When you came back that would be just the start of the insurance split in the League end of things, wouldn’t it?
BG: That kind of thing would have been going on. We weren’t very involved. We viewed from a distance the goings on at the League. In the 1970s the League was really trying to get us to join them. By this time, and I think it had happened while I was overseas really, we not only had people from Newcastle but from the Sydney area. Newcastle had decided, rightly, that it was too far to come for meetings, etc., etc., and they had set up the Association of Newcastle and District Credit Unions, I think they called it.
There was a bit more to it than that, wasn’t there?
BG: In what way?
Well Bill Prince mentioned some matter of spending of some monies by the Northern branch at the Southern Association which didn’t materialise.
BG: That must have happened while I was away, I think. I think when I came back the Northern Association had split off. When I came back and took up again as a Director of the Southern Association we had Sydney credit unions and south coast credit unions as members.
Then they split at the Sydney end of things, didn’t they. Exactly how did this happen?
BG: Well before it split we used to go up to Sutherland for meetings, that was a convenient place for us. John Kiernan was the Association Secretary. With all respects to John he wasn’t always the best organised bloke, although I was really surprised how he did have his*
End Tape 2A
ANSWCU47 7 JUNE 1990: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL GRIFFITH
I just asked you the question there about the second amalgamation, the bringing in of the Association of Central Credit Unions, ACCU, into the Association, which had already been joined by the Southern, Northern and the League, as it was, under your chairmanship.
BG: Yes the original amalgamation with the Northern and Southerners, as I think some people call them, with the old League took place in November 1982. The Central Association had problems and when it came to their amalgamation meeting the proposal got voted out, so they didn’t originally join. They decided to go their own way. They had started to try and provide services, as I said, more of the kind that the new Association or old League was providing, in particular central banking. This in the end of course caused them problems and I can’t remember the dates of it now, but it wouldn’t have been more than two or three years down the track when they found themselves in difficulties and approached the Association of New South Wales Credit Unions again. At this point their Association joined the Association. But not all their member credit unions did, if I remember correctly, though.
Who went on to the Board from the Association of Central Credit Unions do you know? You were on the Board at that time wasn’t you?
BG: I was on the Board of the Association.
Bill Prince was from the North.
BG: Bill Prince.
Who came in from the Central in 1983, have you got any idea? I was just trying to identify anybody who was from the Central Association who came on the Board in 1983. You did for a start.
BG: Well myself and Bill Prince came in.
What about Peter Garrett? He was a Southern?
BG: Peter Garrett, he was the Illawarra Credit Union who were always with the old League, although it was a south coast credit union. I don’t think anybody came on to the Board from the Central Association at that time.
I think you might be right. I thought Clarrie Stewart was on the Board just one year, but I don’t know what year. Where are we? He is there somewhere. There he is, 1968 to 1970, a long while before.
BG: I don’t remember that there was any move to put them on. There wasn’t any special meeting or resignation of Directors that I recall. Not to say that there couldn’t have been, but I certainly don’t recall it.
Well while you were on the Board of the Association, which was then the full Association, what were them main issues you remember? I mean the first thing was you had ATMs didn’t you, Automatic Teller Machines coming in?
BG: Yes, well. Automatic Teller Machines had I think already come in. That was a separate exercise altogether.
Did you have anything to do with that?
BG: Yes, our credit union was in that, AIS Employees Credit Union as I probably think it still was.
Did you put money up front did you?
BG: We put money up front. It was a separate organisation if you like. It was a separate company. Gosh now you have put me onto years. But again it was one of those things that went on over a period of time and it got set up gradually. The Manager of AIS Employees Credit Union, Brian Mackie, went on the Board of the ATM company. What was that called, I can’t remember the name of the damn thing now.
There were so many different companies.
BG: Well there was only one to start with. Sorry what were you going to say first?
Well there was FCS, but that wasn’t it I know. The other one was AFS.
BG: That’s right. AFS was the original company. Then of course it got involved in a variety of other things and started to hive other things off. But in our particular credit union, the ATMs were set up as a joint thing regardless of credit union affiliation, or association affiliation. It wasn’t all that long before the amalgamation, but I think it was at the time Union of Credit Union Associations was formed. Yes, you are stretching my memory a bit when it comes to dates.
Well I do know in fact. The company was set up in 1982, the ATMs started in 1982 and were consolidated by 1985.
BG: Well that just confirms what I was saying, that was about the time that the Union was set up, the talks and things.
The full amalgamation when the Central Association was actually 1983.
BG: I thought they went longer than that.
Well it might have been the beginning of 1984. It was the first report of that in the 1983 Report.
BG: It wasn’t long, certainly.
I haven’t looked at the Minutes on the subject. Although I have actually looked at the Association of Central Credit Unions Minutes. As a matter of fact we have them at the Co-operative now, the Historical Co-operative.
BG: Right.
But I actually haven’t had a chance to look closely at them. Now the next thing you were involved with on the Board. There is another question I would like to ask you before that, in actual fact, problems of being on the Board of the Association, the whole amalgamated Association? Did it hit your family life and your time and that sort of thing?
BG: Well credit unions always hit your family life and your time. Yes it did and it didn’t. It didn’t take up any more time than shall we say the Union of Associations had taken up. From the time of the Central Association establishing itself, when it comes to family commitments in the 1970s, until the Union of Associations I guess the credit unions didn’t take me too much away from Wollongong, so I didn’t have a lot nights travelling. The CUAC meetings between beginning 1978 to end of 1985, I had eight years on CUAC, they were mostly day time ones so that wasn’t a hassle as far as family life went. But the Union of Associations and the amalgamated Association meetings they were all at night. Though the Union ones were sometimes day time meetings, actually come to think of it, a lot of them were day time. So it did take up a little more of my time. Although meetings were only once a month for Board meetings the Executive, and I was Vice-President initially, they were again another meeting during the month. Then of course there were a lot more times away from home when the annual round of the various regions, or the regional conferences were held.
Did you go on them?
BG: Oh yes, all Directors went on them.
Were you anything to do with the setting up of them?
BG: The regional meetings? I think the regional meetings had already been established by the old League and they really continued. The format I think changed a little bit from time to time, but the kind of philosophy behind it I think was sound and it was something that was kept on.
Did you find then that they were onerous, these area meetings, these regional meetings?
BG: No. I was in a very fortunate position in all this time. In fact that is probably one of the reasons why I was able to give as much time as I did to credit unions. The company was very generous in allowing me to do my own thing. The job I had in the company did involve me in involvement with a lot of outside organisations, mainly of a welfare type, and I was really my own boss as to where I could go and what I could do.
You felt that the regional meetings were valuable did you? It wasn’t too onerous attending them?
BG: Oh no, the regional meetings I think were very valuable. One of the problems that any Statewide Association must have, I don’t care whether you are farmers or credit unions or what, must be all the folk well out who feel they are out on a limb and can’t contribute or being forgotten. Regional meetings or something of that nature are absolutely essential for an organisation like the Association.
Did you have a bit to do with any of the country Directors at that time? When you started Bert Beaufoy was on was he, or had he gone off by that time?
BG: No he went about the time that I joined.
He left as a Director yes. I think he probably stood down for one of you.
BG: I think that is right.
So the time that was involved, although it was quite considerable the different meetings?
BG: Yes, it would have been a lot of time. A lot of my credit union work could be done in the day time, but meetings didn’t worry me. By this stage my kids were pretty well grown and my wife didn’t mind being left alone at nights and so on. So I didn’t have the kind of problems that someone else might well have had.
You were on a commercial tribunal for a while, a credit tribunal?
BG: I was appointed to the Credit Tribunal when it was first formed, that would have been the beginning of 1984.
Was that from the Association?
BG: I was nominated from the Association. The Government, or whoever, asked for nominations from a variety of organisations, the idea being that they had a panel that represented the industry, the finance industry, on the one hand and consumers on the other. That tribunal got expanded and so that in 1986, I think it would have been February 1986, it became the Commercial Tribunal and not only dealt with financial problems that consumers like to take to it, but also problems in other areas, building, travel, motor vehicle sales and other things which had appropriate industry panels to sit on those kind of cases.
You were involved in a number of welfare organisations as well, weren’t you?
BG: Yes, quite a number over time.
That was from your job at Australian Iron and Steel was it?
BG: Yes, largely from Australian Iron and Steel. I had an affinity to some of them. I mean for example I was involved with Mission for Seamen at Port Kembla from quite an early time there. With my background I suppose that would have seemed appropriate. This was something that Tommy Hansen got me into. The Mission in Port Kembla was one that had in fact been sponsored, I suppose you might say, by the company in years past. Tommy Hansen had been the Secretary of it for many, many years and became the Chairman. But as Secretary, right back in the 1960s, he said I was just the bloke and took me along and I became involved in that. I became involved in building societies. Of course again in my involvement, one of the welfare aspects of our job, Tommy and I, was the providing of housing finance for all these people that the company was bringing in to the Wollongong area to be employed at the steelworks. So Tommy for many years had been getting funds for terminating building societies that could be allocated to appropriate people in the ordinary ways. Then when the Permanent Building Societies Act was passed, the steelworks sponsored the formation of the Steel Industry Permanent Building Society which we ran for a number of years, but the need for which dropped away as the expansion of the numbers of employees slowed down and other financial institutions, housing institutions moved into the area. Housing finance generally became more available and we finally amalgamated that with the Greater Newcastle Building Society. Again when Tommy Hansen retired from the Cunningham Co-operative Building Society as Chairman, who of course would he put in to replace him but me, so I had that involvement for a little while. Other organisations well, the Home Care Service of New South Wales is a kind of a welfare type operation, I guess. The Illawarra Handicapped Persons Trust, another organisation I had involvement with, and the Cringila Children’s House is a welfare activity.
How about the Credit Worthy, were you involved with that?
BG: Oh yes the Credit Worthy that is an interesting one. It was set up by a bloke called Ted Bartlett, who is an accountant, to help sort out people’s financial problems. A voluntary organisation which he ran, in fact it took over his business you might say almost, his business dropped away. He finished up by selling out to his partner the accountancy business and ran on a voluntary basis Credit Worthy full time. He is an excellent financial counselling genius.
Was it a counselling service or a ratings?
BG: No, it was a counselling service. He used to sort all these folk out on a voluntary basis. He started this support group which called itself Credit Worthy, but he had been doing this kind of work for years. Then he took on Credit Worthy full time. His wife was working and I guess she was the one that supported the family during this period. The support group gave financial and other support, secretarial and volunteer support.
You say support group, was it a group of people who were personally involved or had been counselled themselves then became involved in counselling?
BG: No, not basically. It was some church folk, one or two people such as myself from industry who had an involvement. He did have, not on the committee, but helping people that he had helped and put on the straight and narrow. They would in turn help some of these other folk that came along. But Credit Worthy wasn’t really viable under that sense and ultimately it was, if you like, taken over by the Sydney City Mission. It operates as a quite independent thing down in Wollongong and in fact Ted, as far as I know, came to run the Sydney City Mission activities down in Wollongong. But Credit Worthy is still a separate organisation, if you like, when I last heard of it at any rate, but nowadays fully supported by the Sydney City Mission.
Are you aware that there is a group which is offering counselling services in Sydney at the present moment, which is about to offer the service to a number of credit unions, independent service to a number of credit unions?
BG: Would this be Credit Line?
I don’t know. I think it might be.
BG: I mean I have had some dealings with Betty Weule of Credit Line who is on the Consumer Panel for the Commercial Tribunal. Yes I think she has involvement with some of the credit unions. Our credit union has been supporting Ted for some time. Not only our credit union but my department in the company also used to refer people to Ted.
Why do you think that it is a good idea to have a counselling service outside the credit union, rather than operate a counselling service within the credit union as part of the job of the volunteers and Directors, staff?
BG: Well that is of course one of the things that people within credit unions try to do. Now our own credit union, my own credit union which is now Central Coast, does in fact do a certain amount. But it needs special talents to get what I might call the ‘no hopers’ out of strife. You can counsel people who are not too deeply involved, but I don’t think credit unions can take on absolutely everything. Retirement counselling is another area. I mean I had to get a little bit involved in that in my work with the company. It is an area in which a credit union can perhaps point someone in the right direction, but I don’t think these areas which require a specialised expertise, are really appropriate for credit unions to take on. Unless, of course, if the credit union movement, for example, was to run an organisation like Credit Worthy or Credit Line or one of these type organisations as a separate entity. An entity to which credit union members could be referred in the same way as credit unions, for example, might refer some of their members to a solicitor or other professionals. But credit unions can’t really be all things to absolutely everybody.
Do you think the credit union movement has gone wrong in any way? Has it abrogated its principles?
BG: That is a bit of a hard one. On the basic principles that credit unions are out to help people, no. Although some credit unions, one does wonder when one sees the way some of them operate. Not particularly in New South Wales but some of the credit unions in other States give the impression that the people that were managing them are, or were, managed them merely as financial institutions. Of course a credit union when it is employing, is big enough to employ a Manager, employs a Manager to run a financial institution. So there is a little bit of a conflict there between the financial manager, if you like, who has got financial criteria that he has got to meet and the old-style original, if you like, credit union philosophy that we are there to help people. If a credit unions can get Managers that can combine both those they had better hang on to them. Those are the kind of Managers that you want. There are some Managers in the credit union movement, I feel, who don’t have that kind of outlook. They are there to not so much help people as to run a financial institution. That is a danger.
What do you think the challenge for the future is for the credit union movement?
BG: The big challenge is to stay as a credit union and not a financial institution.
What about providing more services, rather than less?
BG: The number of services that a credit union provides in my book should be restricted basically to the financial.
Couldn’t they invest in others things? For instance, I mean in America there is one area which is still fairly safe which they have invested fairly heavy in, this is co-operative housing, I mean as opposed to co-operative finance.
BG: I feel that that ought to be a separate organisation.
St George is doing it at the present moment with the Federal Government.
BG: Yes, I can see that this is a good thing but I feel it ought to be a bit separate though from credit unions. Not that credit union people as such shouldn’t be involved in them. But I feel that when you are getting into these kind of things, travel and all of these kind of things, they are a separate organisation. I would be all for links between credit unions and those kind of co-operatives and I think one of the big challenges, if you like, might be for the credit unions to become, or work towards becoming, the bankers, if you like, of the co-operative movement. That’s perhaps a different game. Credit unions are financial institutions and that is what they should stick at. If you wanted to go into travel or housing or anything else, yes have links with credit unions but I don’t think the credit unions as such should be running it. Now whether a credit union should have subsidiary companies involved in these other activities and then the credit union becomes a holding company for all kinds of services meeting the needs of people, and that is what credit unions are about to meet the needs of people, whether they should have such subsidiaries I am not sure. I think there have got to be restrictions in that area because in some cases it will work and I am pretty sure we have had one or two cases already where it hasn’t worked. Just because of a lack of expertise on the credit union side.
Do you think there is any area that we haven’t covered that we should have covered? I have had a look through what you have filled out and there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot, much that we haven’t covered.
BG: Well, one could talk all day about credit unions and the credit union movement and personalities. Give me a second while I check.
There is one thing that you did mention that you had some involvement with, or something that you knew about, the credit union’s historical co-operative, Dermot Ryan’s involvement. Were you involved at all with it?
BG: I am a member, or at least I paid my ten bucks I don’t know whether that still makes me a member.
Oh yes, that is shares.
BG: Oh, ten dollar shares. I support that and try to get my own credit union before I left it involved. I hope that they are beginning to do something down there. Dermot of course is a great bloke. We used to meet him. He was one of the League people that we used to encounter when the Southern Association would send representatives
End Tape 3A
ANSWCU47 7 JUNE 1990: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO BILL GRIFFITH
I just asked you a question about the Historical Co-operative and Dermot Ryan.
BG: Well Dermot as I say was a little bit of a character. I didn’t have a lot of dealings with Dermot directly back in the old days, but when we went to converse with the League, commune with the League from the Southern Association, Dermot was a bloke that was there. Jim Wardell the Chairman of the Association of Southern Credit Unions at that time, was the bloke that did spend a lot of time with Dermot.
It must have been when he was Vice-President of the League and Ken Miller was President.
BG: That could well have been.
Or was it when Dermot was Chief Executive Officer of AFCUL?
BG: No, I think he was with the League. I am talking now of the period probably in the mid-70s.
Well in the mid-70s he was the Chief Executive Officer of AFCUL, from 1970 to 1974.
BG: Well it might have been a little later than that. I don’t know.
He was then out of the movement totally, apart from attending a number of Schools and giving lectures and things like that.
BG: Well.
It might have been in the ’60s, late ’60s when he was Vice-President of the League and Ken Miller was President?
BG: It could have been about that time. But I do remember Jim regaling us with talk of some of the sessions that he had with Dermot. Some of these I think were at Dermot’s place and probably went on, if I guess right, fairly late into the night.
That sounds like the AFCUL era to me, 1970 to 1974.
BG: Well, perhaps it would have been. Jim of course was Chairman of the Southern Association for a long time. Actually Jim did a lot of very good work. He wasn’t adverse to going over the mountains to, and I have forgotten what it was called, one of the miners’ credit unions, for example, that didn’t belong to any association. I can’t even remember if they joined ours, I think they did in the end. But the Board were all good trade union type mine blokes and Jim would go over there. They were having problems because they were miners and they were not, let’s face it, financial experts. They were expert at running meetings according to the book. I gather that the meetings then were very much according to the book. But Jim had been a trade union bloke and was at that time an Industrial Officer, so he could talk to them in their own language. I gather their meetings there were another lot of meetings that went on late into the night. He put a lot of work in did Jim.
What about later on when the Australian Credit Unions Historical Co-operative started, were you involved with Dermot Ryan then?
BG: Only in a minor way. I mean I heard of the Australian Historical Co-operative. I and everyone else in the world were invited to become members. I signed up. My credit union got a little bit of advice from Dermot and so on, but I didn’t have any direct involvement with what I might call the day-to-day operations of the Co-operative.
Well is there anything there that we should talk about?
BG: I think we have covered a wide field. The moment you switch this machine off I will remember a dozen things I am sure. One can always talk forever on these occasions. No the tapes you should have taped I guess should have been Jim Wardell, Dermot Ryan, philosophical discussions back in those ancient days.
Jim Wardell is still available is he?
BG: As far as I know, well the last I heard of him. As I say I have been out of the scene now for a while. He was still working for Metal Manufactures. He got a rather more high powered job which didn’t give him time to do the credit union stuff.
Do you think I should interview him if I can?
BG: Oh I think so. He was the Foundation Chairman of the Southern Association.
Therefore should come into the history of the amalgamated Association.
BG: Undoubtedly.
Was he involved in the Union? No you were the one.
BG: No, Jim wasn’t Chairman. I forget what date he dropped out of being Chairman of the Southern Association. I think a bit before that his company activities were demanding him to go to Melbourne and all kinds of places. His job increased and he had to drop out.
Well I will put him on my list. The other thing is have you got any memorabilia that you can donate to the project at all?
BG: I don’t think so. I haven’t been allowed to horde much stuff. I haven’t even got a lot of photographs or things like that.
Have you got any suggestions or criticisms of the project, as you have seen it, this project of the Association of New South Wales Credit Unions Oral History Project, or History Project?
BG: Well I don’t really know an enormous amount about it, apart from the letter that I got from Dennis Rutherford. I was very pleased to know that someone at least twisted the Board’s arm enough to get a bit of money to run this kind of thing. I feel it is invaluable. My first involvement is very much in family history, and family historians are all the time going around telling folk that they should go and interview and hopefully tape all their more ancient relatives because as they say, they are a dying breed.
Well since you have now been taped, I will say thank you very much Mr Bill Griffith.
End Tape 3B