11 FEBRUARY 1992: VCCA6: RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO KEITH GLOVER
I will ask you Mr Glover, where were you born and when?
KG: I was born 14 October 1922 in the suburb of Burwood, New South Wales. I spent all my youthful life in the next suburb, Croydon.
What sort of influence did you get from your parents? What was your father?
KG: My father had studied law. He had a lot of trouble with eyes and resultant troubles what I will not go into fully. But I had a very good influence from my family. It consisted of myself, two brothers and three sisters, a family of six altogether. A good family life based on community spirit. Involvement in church life and good examples being set by a very happy family.
Where did you go to school?
KG: Well I suppose I went to local schools in the Croydon area. I ended up having my secondary education at one of the most famous of them all in Sydney, Fort Street Boys’ High. That continued, of course, until about the mid-thirties, which was a very bad Depression time, something akin to the time we are experiencing now.
Did that affect your life, the Depression, do you think?
KG: Oh it did affect my father’s life, certainly. Probably as a teenager you don’t realise just how seriously, but it certainly did affect his life.
What about likes and dislikes at school? What were you good at?
KG: Oh goodness me, that is delving back isn’t it. Academically I enjoyed history and English I suppose. I disliked mathematics, especially algebra, I didn’t have that particular bent at all. I wasn’t particularly happy, I suppose, with some aspects of trigonometry and into parts of the sciences. I was more a person who was interested in the humanities and of course I had my first taste of dramatic art. At Fort Street Boys’ High was a previous member of the J C Williamson staff who taught dramatic art to the boys who were interested. So I had an interest in singing and music. Singing I should hasten to add after my voice broke because a chap named Leonard Burtonshaw, who taught Latin at Fort Street had me in the choir and my voice broke I think at the end of my first year, quite early for some boys. He said, ‘Glover I can hear you seriously out of tune, remove yourself,’ and of course when the teachers says that you do. But fortunately I got a voice fairly quickly, which amazed some people, and I continued with singing in certain boys’ production things and the dramatic art part. I suppose my first prize at a Speech Night was for Dramatic Art, so that is how much interest I had in it which was good.
After you left school, did you go to a university or college?
KG: Now I had hoped to go to university but in the days of the thirties you had to win your way or your parents paid. My parents certainly couldn’t afford to pay and I didn’t win my way at the time. I got a job with a Perpetual Trustee company and started tertiary education with the Australian Accountancy College and started studying for my Accountancy Degree. I was only half way through when the War came so that rather shattered that.
So what happened to you during the War?
KG: Well I started with the infantry, with the Second Fourth Battalion. They had been involved in the Middle East and I suppose we were to be a refurbished, or newly trained troop to add to their strength, a reinforcement as they used to term it. But I teamed up with some people who were on the periphery of the entertainment world that I knew before I went in and as I had a voice and sang I joined the local Brigade Concert Party doing things in our spare time. So I sang with them and I acted as a foil in the sketches and before we moved overseas I was recruited to be part of a Divisional Concert Party under the original one of Jim Davidson. So they wanted reinforcements. I ended up with a chap that you probably wouldn’t know, but was well-known by Melbourne people, named Happy Hammond, who was a children’s compere. He and I formed a comedy team, I sort of acting as his particular stooge, foil, and I ended up doing singing as well. I became Staff Sergeant in charge of the administration. So I ended up doing something I probably liked doing but as it so happened, I saw more front-line action than I had as infantry replacement or reinforcement. By that time we had to be equipped as infantrymen and we went away complete with our twenty-one, twenty-five piece entertainment unit, but fully equipped as infantrymen with our rifles and all the rest of it, gas masks and the lot. We didn’t get away from it.
Where did you go?
KG: When I say get away with it, we weren’t intending to get away with it. We served mostly in the South-West Pacific. All over the islands. Served mainly I suppose in the Solomons towards the end. We were in Bougainville when the peace came. I was in the first wave of troops as an entertainer infantryman that went into Rabal. Saw the Japanese still riding round in staff cars while we were trying to round the rest of them up. The officers still riding around in their staff cars. So the War itself throughout the Pacific had various stages and various worries for us, but overall it was a most exhilarating time I suppose for us, when we can look back in retrospect. The highlight of all the visiting stars that came was a visit from Gracie Fields who performed with us muddy stages and showed what a marvellous trooper she was. But I better not start reflecting too much on that.
Where did you go after the War?
KG: After the War I went back to work in Sydney, thinking I might go back to the Perpetual Trustee company. But before that Happy Hammond had asked me would I audition for him for a season on the Tivoli circuit in both Sydney and Melbourne. We got into an army show, put together by David Martin. We took part in that for about a year serving with people like Edgley and Durian, the Edgley of course the father of the young Edgley who has done so well as an entrepreneur in recent times. That ended after about twelve months because theatre is one of those sort of lives, but can’t be assured of more than about forty weeks in a year. Happy was married, I was engaged probably to be married. We settled into lives in radio. He went to commercial radio and I was fortunate to get one out of about fifteen to twenty thousand applicants for twenty-five jobs that besieged the ABC at that time after the War. So I got one of those jobs.
What did you do in the ABC?
KG: Well I was recruited as a voice. I did interviewing, I did sports broadcasts. I did the type of contact they have with their audiences, what limitations there were to that. It varied over the years of the ABC when I can look back over my thirty-eight years with them. But I ended up as a senior announcer with Radio Australia. So broadcasting was for me my chosen career. I had longed to do it, probably as a boy, as a young fellow. I can even remember when I left school saying to my father I would like to be in radio. He said, ‘Not before you have got your tertiary qualifications under your belt.’ So that is why I was working at a Trustee company and studying law and accounting. But of course the War interrupted all that.
I know we are here to talk about credit unions, but can you give us a few ABC stories before we get into the credit union bit.
KG: Well I suppose I could give you quite a lot. I would have to censor myself for one or two of them, but the behind the scene things were sometimes the things that made the funny stories. I can remember one chap being arbitrarily dismissed for the use of a word that today is mild as we enter the nineties, we are now in ninety-two. You think of the four letter words that pass in the plays and presentations and even sometimes get past newsreaders and presenters, it just absolutely is mind boggling to me because you couldn’t say the word bloody in those days. I can well remember one story, to give you one, a chap in Queensland was reading the weather report. His job after giving the forecast was to read the rainfall. He started off by saying, ‘Mount Isa, thirty-two inches, Townsville, fourteen inches,’ and everything he read was inches instead of points. After he had done about half a dozen of these there was a pregnant pause and after that he said, ‘Good Lord, I have flooded the bloody places.’ So we never saw him the next day, he had ended his career very smartly. Of course you had the funny things that happened in television in its early days too. I was a television newsreader before they had colour. I think it was my falling hair, really, that lost me that particular job. But in those days the people who were brought into studios did things live, they weren’t pre-recorded. I remember once being the anchor person for a program that had a religious discussion. There was a Minister and about three or four laymen there. This Minister, or Priest, disappeared with two of the laymen in the break when they said, ‘Fifteen minutes to transmission. Time to have a cup of coffee.’ But one laymen, one chap sat there absolutely exhausted, sweat pouring out of him, and he said, ‘Mr Glover, do you mind if I open that window over there? It is stifling in here.’ He opened the window all right but it just led on to a brick wall in an enclosed studio. He sat there for ten minutes during the break and just when they announced five minutes to go, everybody in their places please, he closed the window again very religiously, not meant to be a pun. He got it all fixed up and got himself settled and he turned to me and said, ‘Thank you very much, that was a great relief.’ It proved of course the old adage that it is mind over matter isn’t it.
When did you first hear about credit unions?
KG: Well I knew about credit unions, I suppose, at the end of the War. I had colleagues who came back from Canada, like some of our esteemed ones who entered into the business. They talked about this new branch of banking as much as anything when they referred to it.
So who was there amongst that lot?
KG: Oh people who are not known today. They were just old friends of mine who talking about it. I couldn’t recall all the names even. But it wasn’t until we the met the Yates of this world who would actually want to bring this back into practicality. So I then applied myself to learning a bit more about it and learning the philosophy. The great story of how the stream of people who can claim to be ardent credit union people today can look back at three diverse groups really. There was the man in Germany of course who had that rising amongst the peasant group, the Protestant group. Then we have the Catholics in Canada and the Jewish man, Desjardins, the final one in Boston you know. So we learnt about the real true brotherhood of man and people caring for each other and that is why I joined. I heard about this starting in the ABC and when they talked about it coming to Melbourne I thought to myself, ‘Good heavens, I’ve got plenty of colleagues who don’t know how to manage money,’ and I was only in my late twenties or early thirties myself by then. Some of them married, paid on a Thursday by the following Tuesday I don’t know what their wives managed to survive on for the next couple of weeks because they had spent it all on gambling or drinking or something.
Who did you actually hear from?
KG: The main stories I heard from people like Stan Arneil and Hugh Duff, both from the ABC, who then introduced me to others whom I heard.
Stan Arneil, did he come down to Melbourne?
KG: Oh yes, the ABC allowed him to come down, and Hugh Duff who was an internal auditor. They both came down to Melbourne, addressed a group of interested people in the ABC with the blessing of management. When we signed the people up, the first person we signed up was Hewitt Chappel, who was the then Manager for Victoria. I think I was number five on the list.
Was that at a particular meeting? Do you remember it?
KG: That was a meeting in Magella, which was the name of the property, on St Kilda Road, which was the management building for the ABC. The year would have been 1959, I can’t remember the exact date. I can remember a lot of the people who were there such as Bill Newnham, who was a program director, Mr Duncan, who was an administrator, Jack Duncan. John Muldoon, one of the heads of Radio Australia and program supervisor there. I think I may have been the only announcer on the group. But it was a very diverse group of people who then signified that they would be willing to be a working party to start it all off. Then we had Directors elected after that.
Where did the working parties actually meet?
KG: In the management area or in one of the studio areas, depending on where it suited them on a particular day.
Did you have a formation meeting?
KG: Yes, but that is the date I can’t remember for you. I am very sorry. We might be able to check that another time. But it was some time in 1959, because the earliest of the reports I have been able to dig out from the ABC archives is the second Annual Meeting in 1961. But I well remember it was 1959. I had only been in the ABC in Melbourne for a couple of years at that time. It was within two or three years of the Olympic Games here.
Was there separate formation and inaugural meetings, or was it just one main meeting?
KG: It was one main meeting. Notices went out after the inaugural interest meeting, telling people about it, inviting people to join up. Then we went out as sort of ambassadors into our various work areas and talked more about it. No-one to look after things. Like all credit unions in the early days it was all volunteers. When we made our first loans I think the first one, the loan given, was for three hundred pounds when we had enough money. It had to be paid over fifteen years. I have forgotten what the repayment rate was. It worked out it was a very low repayment over fifteen years so we made another rule then that all repayments must be at least fifteen shillings per pay, that is per fortnight. So when you think back and thing of today’s money, they were very small beginnings, but that is how everything begins. We had all sorts of applications for the money in the first place, but you had to have a good reason to borrow. That was what credit unions were about. It was about people saving together to get a reasonable rate of interest for themselves. But also to lend to each other at reasonable rates of interest. I can remember having one chap, if I can give you one for instance, who came to me in the first twelve months of the organisation knowing that I was a Director and he said, ‘I want to borrow five hundred pounds.’ I said, ‘Well that is the absolute limit, we have only just upped it to that.’ I said, ‘Here’s the form, just fill that in, bring it back to me tomorrow.’ He came back to me the next day and said, ‘I filled it all in except that line.’ I said, ‘What’s that line?’ He said, ‘It says the reasons for borrowing.’ I said, ‘Well your reasons for borrowing, whatever they may be, will not be disclosed beyond the four walls of our room where we have the meeting and are only known to the Directors.’ I said, ‘You have to fill it in.’ He said, ‘No, I don’t want to.’ So I said, ‘Well I want you to go back and think about it. You are only a young man, you are nineteen, you must know that we have to have responsibilities for the money we are handling on behalf of members like yourself. It has to be filled in.’ So off he went. Came back to see me two days later and he said, ‘I haven’t filled that in yet.’ I said, ‘Well I can’t do very much about it.’ He said, ‘I will tell you why I want to borrow it.’ I said, ‘Certainly you can tell me. We will find a way to put it on the form.’ He said, ‘Oh we’ll think about it. My father said if I could borrow five hundred pounds at five per cent I should get into it because he could make twelve per cent quite easily.’ So we had a very good lesson early in the piece, I suppose, that people had to borrow for worthwhile purposes. I think it was very worthwhile from his father’s point of view, but it wasn’t necessarily going to help that young man.
That is a good one. You were on the Loans Committee from the early days?
KG: Yes, I was on the Loans Committee. Actually the Loans Committee, I suppose, just consisted of a group of four out of the seven Directors. But that is how it operated.
Did you have a representative system?
KG: In the earliest days I would have to say to you the representative system, Richard, had to be that you were your own representatives for an area. As I was working in radio and partially in television, because television had started by then, 1956, I had to race around in my spare time seeing these people, getting their forms filled out. I can well remember getting one chap to sign up for his cheque, that I had made out earlier that day, in between rehearsals of a television show. He was a rigger and he was up the top and I had to call him down and ask him could he come down in the break and sign his forms. Our representation in those days was based essentially on the people who were the original volunteers who were doing the job of being Directors. Of course after two or three years we widened that scope and we had other people. We had a part-time secretary working in a little office.
Who was that, do you remember?
KG: Yes, she is still associated with us in two ways. Her name was Nancy Emms. Nance Emms is a figure I suppose we can classify as being part of our credit union for over thirty years because now her daughter-in-law has replaced her in working in the extension office that we have for the credit union out at Radio Australia in East Burwood. But Nance I see comes in if her daughter-in-law wants a day off occasionally, Nance will come in for a few hours, so she is still there.
How did you get the people in the country stations in?
KG: Well we didn’t have the network, of course, that New South Wales had of country stations. The ABC only has about three or four spots, or did in those days. One out at Sale and two or three other spots. We didn’t have anything at Ballarat or Geelong because the ABC’s own network got to those stations. So we did all of that by correspondence or by telephone call. We still service them.
Did you have anything to do with Chapters in the early days?
KG: Well I was one of the original people that helped start the Melbourne Chapter. I must say that I did it by organising other people to do most of it and getting them to accept office. I didn’t accept office myself for that. When you worked the shift work that I had, it was all right when I had Board meetings because sometimes, especially when I became after the fourth year Chairman of the Board for a few years, they all understood that I could organise the Board meetings to suit my timetable. You can’t do that with a Chapter. So we had a Chapter that met in the city. It is a very interesting Chapter today that takes in the whole of the credit union movement throughout Melbourne. Because of the organisation of their Treasurer, who was the Manager of the RACV, which is like the NRMA in New South Wales, he organised us to have big rooms at the RACV building in the city. We had a meeting a couple of nights ago. It is a very worthwhile thing. I think there are a few still around. I can remember the early days when maybe I twisted an arm or two to get them moving on it, although as I say I can’t take great credit other than doing the twisting of arms for that.
Did you attend credit union Schools from the start? Where were you first an attendee?
KG: Oh the first one, of course, was in Sydney, one of the famous Newport Schools. I am trying to think of the date of that for you. It probably was about 1967, or 1968. They were great Schools because colleagues in Sydney brought out the people from Canada and the United States who were some of the pioneers. Some of the people of course were associated with organisations like CUNA Mutual and had interests in seeing the extension of the movement from the purposes of insurance. But they had the money to spare to be able to send some of the experts out to talk to us. I can remember some of the people I worked with in those. I enjoyed those Newport Schools and I think I went to two or three of them. That is before we started with two or three volunteers the big Schools here in Melbourne, which were mainly at Warburton. In the famous old Chalet which is now reduced to ash and rubble. I was part of probably a trio who did a lot of the organisation of that. I am not blowing my own trumpet about it by any means, but just to tell you the history. Graham Benson was the great catalyst who got those things really moving, supported by one of his wonderful workers, Norm. I did the MC’ing, compering and entertainment and helping to keep those things moving. We felt that if you were going to have something in an educational sense, when people go to it, it must be professional from whoa to go. It has to keep time: It has to show people that you are interested in them and you are not leaving them alone to their own devices, yet at the same time not over-organising them. So there were things available for them to do.
Do you remember the Warburton Weekly?
KG: Yes I do. I don’t know that I have got any copies of it. But it had some slanderous things and all sorts of nonsense at times. Have you seen copies of that?
My word I have. I will tell you why, Beresford Calverley.
KG: Oh, Beresford would have had those left amongst his bits and pieces, I am sure.
The Historical Co-operative has three boxes of stuff which came from Beresford Calverley’s estate. If we didn’t have those, we wouldn’t have had anything from the other States at all hardly.
KG: Is that right. Well I am must say that we have got some bits and pieces. I am sure we can drag together, and I don’t mean that rudely, but we can put together in the future some bits and pieces that will relate to those Schools. I don’t know that we will be able to get down to the Warburton Weeklies. But you will be able to gain from that of course news of some of the lecturers were like Jake Schroder from Canada, and people who came over to us.
Also there was one thing with each of Beresford’s kits that he had from the various Schools was a list of attendees and where they came from.
KG: He actually had those intact as well?
He had the folder with everything that went on at the School.
KG: I remember Beresford very well of course, because he was the greatest attendee of conferences I have ever known. I remember his mother. His mother was alive at those early Newport Schools I went to and I met her several times. He was a man, of course, who was unmarried so he didn’t have a wife who was telling him, ‘Get through those boxes and get rid of some of the stuff.’ I had better not speak too loudly, but we all have to get rid of stuff occasionally and reduce it. But I think that is wonderful for the Historical Society to have all that. That must be great resource material.
It is. It is a pity there isn’t more around somewhere. I don’t know whether there is.
KG: There is some.
Graham Benson has got a garage full, but he is hanging on to it for the time being.
KG: Well I am sure much of what Graham has will eventually come the way of the historical society. He may well have his own reasons for wanting to go through a bit more of it as well.
It might be also that they want to keep that down in Victoria. If they could find a suitable place for it, that would be a very good idea I am sure.
KG: Well of course Graham was on in the beginnings of the Historical Society, so you may know more about that than I do. I still am in contact with Graham and Florence occasionally. I don’t see them regularly because they are up the Valley, but we see them in retirement days.
When did you first meet Graham Benson?
KG: Well I first met Graham Benson I suppose at the inaugural meetings of interest of credit unions who wanted to form a league or an association in Victoria. There was a group and I am not sure whether the initials were exactly the same, VCCA, but it was a Catholic group. They were the pioneers of the credit union movement in Victoria, there is not doubt about that. They did some wonderful work. I can name some people like Leon Magree and Arthur Carter who that are still very good friends of mine. Some of them have probably passed on, but they were great people.
How about Ted Long?
KG: Ted Long, of course. Well Ted Long was part really of the wider movement of co-operatives as well. He had more to do, in my day, although he was still a Director of the credit society, he had more to do with the co-operative society. Ted of course has been recognised and honoured for his work for co-operatives over long years. Then people like Peter Hodgkinson, who already belonged to the Catholic group, but made a very active and worthwhile contribution to getting the amalgamation working. So it was a matter of convincing our friends who were in the existing group, and the burgeoning number of credit unions, that we should be unified within Victoria to be able to speak with one voice. I am one of the few people left in the credit union movement who remembers being a delegate to a New South Wales League meeting. When they met at Kempsey one year I was up there. To go through all the people, ABC Sydney was there, ABC Melbourne was sitting there. So we were part of it because we wanted to feel that we could get to government. Not necessarily to be lobbying but to know what was going on. To be contributing to discussions and the work overall.
Was Clarrie Stewart involved at that stage?
KG: Clarrie was involved then.
Do you know where he is?
KG: Clarrie to my knowledge is somewhere in the Geelong area. I can certainly put you on to his brother, because his brother still works in the movement too.
I have been trying to find him to interview.
KG: We will do something about that if we can.
If you could do that.
KG: We will find some way to do it. Yes. So the whole business, I suppose, if you look through the Minutes of this earlier society, Benson and I would have been appointed to the Board through elections when they did amalgamate about sometime in the 1966, 1967 period. You might have the dates.
I have you down here as from 1967 to 1978.
KG: Well 1967 would be the beginnings of the wider association. Then I remained on the VCCA for those ten or eleven years, until 1978.
Then I have you down from 1976 as a Trustee of the Foundation.
KG: Well I suppose you know the history of the Foundation, Richard, and you don’t want me to go through it.
Oh, I do want you to go through that.
KG: Well I think, Richard, with all due respect, that might be the subject of another tape sometime. But can I just give you a very brief outline, because it all started in 1971 with the meeting in the Newport area, one of those meetings. They decided that they wanted to have a Foundation. I think the original Trustees, and there were only three of them in those days, were Dermot Ryan, Jack White, from the ACT, Jack Byham White, and I think Beresford Calverley was the other one. Peter Hodgkinson was a Trustee later on. So they started this and right at the outset we were trying to raise enough money so that the Trust could survive on the income generated. It wasn’t until a few years later that we hit upon the idea of having Trustees raising money by asking donor credit unions to put in one dollar per member for all time. But they mightn’t have started off like that. If you had fifteen hundred members you put in five hundred dollars the first year and built it up and then sustain it with your own growth. Now that sustained us quite well. I suppose today the capital fund amounts to about $571,000. It is not enough money for us but we have a lot of pass-on schemes now, where people donate money specifically to help a group in Thailand or another group in Hong Kong, or in Fiji. So the whole scheme for the Foundation has evolved over the years. I became a Trustee in 1976, I think it was. I was elected as Chairman the first year and I remained as Chairman for fifteen years. I have only decided to signify to my fellow Trustees at the end of 1991 that I no longer wish to remain as Chairman. I thought it was far too long, probably, and certainly long enough. But in the transition that the credit union movement is undergoing at the moment, they had an election for Trustees in a different way in this past year.
End Tape 1A: 5411 Words: 2 hours 10 minutes.
long, long time and his association not only State-wide of course, but in the Australian context. Don Harris was a Director before he became the Executive Officer with the VCCA. Don Harris is in private practice again now and I see him occasionally. But you get back to people like Vin Barker, who for nine years was on the Board of the VCCA and served for the Bentleigh Credit Union in particular, and was a great worker for the credit union movement overall. Oh, you have got Vin Barker’s oral history already, so I don’t have to say anything about him.
No, I haven’t. That is just a photograph. Well it is a front page of an Annual Report with his photograph on it, which has been highly blacked up I suppose for art work purpose.
KG: You have got someone like Gordon Farrer, he has passed away from us now.
Unfortunately he was one of the people he was not recorded.
KG: Not recorded, that is quite right. Yet Gordon was one of the people who went out in the same way that Dermot did, who we have missed out in recording I know. He was able to talk to the people in their language. The work that he did on behalf of the SEC in their early days, in convincing them of the value of being a credit union member, invaluable. Gordon Farrer’s funeral, which I was able to attend, was a great tribute to a man who played a most important part.
Now it looks as if we are going to just about finish this interview. I will ask you if you have any regrets, or is there anything in particular that your are proud of in your period with the credit unions, which is not finished yet?
KG: Well some might think it should be finished. No, no regrets, no regrets at all. I have enjoyed my association. I love my fellow man, I suppose, or fellow humankind. To be associated with people, and credit unions are about people not dollars. I think Roy Bergengren might have said it far better than I did, but it is about people and people’s experiences with their money and how they handle it and how they can be helped with each other. My time with the credit union has been my time, my own time that I could probably have spent in other ways. I don’t think my family regrets my association. My wife and a few of the other wives might think they are credit union widows at times, but that goes with any particular occupation.
End Tape 1B: 5019 Words: 1 hour 55 minutes.