RICHARD RAXWORTHY TALKING TO FATHER KEVIN BURTON RE EARLWOOD CREDIT UNION

I am talking to Father Kevin Burton who was one of the pioneers of the Earlwood Credit Union.

KB:      That’s right. To recap how it came about I was the Assistant Priest in the parish there from 1952 to 1954. At the same time through that period I was also a member of what was called the Catholic Evidence Guild and we used to have public platforms outside Murdoch’s old shop at the corner of Park Street there. We would stand up where they subsequently put the Alamein Fountain and so forth. So we would be speaking there on Sunday nights and Sunday afternoons to the assembled multitude and John Gallagher and I were both involved in that. At that time, one night, he was driving me back, he was at Revesby at the time I think and I was at Earlwood, and I remember he said to me, ‘What do you know about credit unions?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘What are they all about?’ So he proceeded to give me a thumb-nail sketch of credit unions and the movement and what it was about. Then he dropped me off and I went away and thought about it. In the course of it I thought it made sense and even though the people were not in desperate poverty and so on at that time, after the War, most people were struggling but they weren’t desperate. Certainly in Earlwood they were working-class people. I thought was there a need for it and supposed there was. Then I discussed it with someone. I spoke to my mother about it. I used to go and visit her on a Monday. I said, ‘It makes sense.’ She said, ‘Yes, but what happens if we get into a depression?’ She had come through the Depression with very vivid memories and credit to her was a total anathema of course. The next Sunday night we went to the Evidence Guild again and driving home again I said to John Gallagher, ‘What happens in a depression and everyone goes kaput?’ He said, ‘Well is it better to be in a depression on your own or with a lot of other people supporting you?’ So that was a fair enough answer.

I went back to the parish then and started speaking about it to varying people in the parish and a number of men around the place, particularly. I remember there was one there, John Whelan. I am pretty certain from memory that he became the first Chairman of the Board. So then I got a group of them and again this is where the memory is not firing properly at this stage. We made contact with Jack Gallagher again.

Where was he then?

KB:      He was a Revesby I think.

That was before he went to Lidcombe was it?

KB:      I think it was after.

So he had actually started the Lidcombe Credit Union by that time?

KB:      It was in action for sure. We went to Revesby I am pretty sure.

Can you remember roughly what year that would be?

KB:      It would have been either late 1953 or early 1954. I think it was probably early 1954.

So the Lidcombe one was going then.

KB:      It was yes. That is for sure because then we went across to talk to the Board of the Revesby one, I think, or they came to us I have forgotten which. A couple of them might have come across and talked to a small group that I had, there was about six of them. Then we quizzed and questioned and tried to get the details about it. Then we also had a visit either to or from the Lidcombe people to try and get as much information as we could.

Was Miss Gallagher the Secretary at that time, Miss Rose Gallagher?

KB:      She was still with John at Revesby I think, I am not sure. After we got what information we could and I remember across, and I don’t know who gave it to me, but it was a part of the catechism, a question and answer, everything you ever wanted to know about a credit union. It was a roneoed show of about eight or nine pages of quarto paper giving an outline of the beginnings of the credit unions under Schultze-Delitzsch and Raiffeisen and so forth in Germany. Then it got on to the questions that people would ask. I found that very helpful. We duplicated that.

Then I started a series of home discussions in family groupings. That would have gone for about, from memory one a week, we organised those in different parts of the parish for about two or three months. I mean generally speaking for the most part there was a different group of people there each time. There would have been, as I say, about ten or so and they invited their neighbours in and their friends. Sat down and discussed the whole question and what was possible.

At the end of that period we thought there were about fifty or so people who were interested so we thought let’s go for it. So we called a meeting and drew up the constitution to get thing registered. So then we had to get what would you call it a geography.

A bond.

KB:      We must have got the model rules from Lidcombe or somewhere.

Well you could get them from the Registry. Did you get anybody out from the Registry to talk?

KB:      No, not at that stage. So we drew up our boundaries and we nominated them. We couldn’t stay within the boundaries of the Earlwood Parish because one of the fellows who had attended several of these meetings and was very enthusiastic lived about a quarter of a mile outside the boundary of the parish up in Campsie Parish, you see. So we looked at it on the map and made it a mile radius from the Earlwood Post Office. The Post Office was across the road from the church so it was virtually the parish but it gave us extra lee-way and it included this fellow in it. He was one of the first to take out a little loan actually. So we called a meeting and established it, had it approved and then had the first meeting. There could have been someone come out from the Registry at that stage perhaps, again from memory. I suggested to them that these would be the appropriate first Board of Directors, nominated the core group who started it, and asked for the approval of the meeting. They approved that and away it went.

So then they took their first share subscription and they came in with about fifty pounds, I think. Then they said, ‘Well we have got to get this moving,’ so the Directors then took out loans. They didn’t need them, but they took them out and then paid them back the following week. That was to get the money moving.

Were you meeting on Sunday’s then or was the credit union available at any other time?

KB:      Well at the time they would be open for subscriptions and loans on Sunday mornings after mass in the hall under church. The church had just then been finished and the hall was functioning and so forth. The parish priest at the time, Monseigneur Flanagan, he was extremely co-operative and helpful. They used to meet then in a room in the Presbytery. The Board would have their meetings in the Presbytery. They were totally independent of course but the Presbytery was made available.

Was you a member?

KB:      I was not a member, no. I stayed clear of it. I thought it was best to leave it for what it was as the sort of inspirer of it, you know. Gradually it built up and then I was transferred from that parish at the end of that year, 1954.

Where did you go then?

KB:      I went to Nullabah.

Did you start one down there?

KB:      Well Nullabah at that stage consisted of Nullabah, Matraville and Long Bay. There was a church in Matraville, in point of fact there were more people living in Matraville than there were in Nullabah. Since that time a separate parish has been established. But at the time I was Chaplain to a small discussion group on social issues. I used to look after them each week so I endeavoured to get a credit union started and them thinking about it down there. But what happened the parish priest was not entirely supportive or enthusiastic about the concept. His argument was, ‘If you go what happens, I am left with it.’ So unless you had the full-blooded support of the parish priest there was no chance of getting it established.

Unless you were Father Gallagher of course.

KB:      That’s true. I had more than enough on my plate, in any case, in the parish. I was Chaplain to the parish hospital, Prince Henry, and Long Bay Gaol and the Cemetery. At the cemetery we used to have eight funerals a day, apart from Long Bay Gaol. It was at the height of the hepatitis and polio epidemics so we had more than enough to do at the hospital.

Interestingly enough in the group that I had at Matraville there was one young man then, I can’t remember his name for the life of me, who was a chemist at ICI which was down the road. I took them through the study of the credit union concept and ideals and he then told me subsequently, some years later he wrote to me, that whilst it hadn’t got off the ground in the parish it wasn’t entirely fruitless.

You know what that one is now, don’t you?

KB:      No.

Well it is now called Dependable. It was Matraville for a while and ICI before that. Dave Palmer was the Chairman. Graham Humphreys is the Manager there, a leading light at the present moment.

KB:      Who did you mention before him.

The Chairman was Dave Palmer.

KB:      No, that wasn’t his name.

Well Dave Palmer used to run it rather autocratically for a number of years. He was a gadfly to the League. He was the Chairman of the Supervisory Committee out at the League and he used to ask awkward questions and generally be a nuisance to all and sundry. I tried to interview him. He is retired out at ????

KB:      Well if I could think of his name, because he told me that he had gone to the management and put up the idea. They said, ‘If it’s good support it, if it is anything else squash it.’ The order came from Melbourne up to Sydney ICI. He submitted it and then they said, ‘Support it.’ So they supplied and office within the works and supported it and encouraged it and it got off the ground. So that was the end result.

I think Dave took it out of ICI, because it is now bordering on the edge of a flat area of units right next to ICI now. It is not within the buildings anymore. Of course they have got problems now of course because ICI is closing down all sorts of places. But they have already got themselves out into the community so they should be all right.

KB:      Well that is the background to it.

That is good. Any more? Any other credit unions?

KB:      I didn’t take it any further, no. I was just totally swamped at Nullibah Parish. I just went from there and subsequently into the communications work over the last thirty years. I have always had a soft spot for the concept.

Incidentally before we starting recording you mentioned that you were at a seminary with Father Gallagher and that he was talking about things there, about credit unions.

KB:      I remember he spoke at this society night about Antigonish. That is what I recall. I think it was the first thing I had heard about Antigonish. Then there was the Catholic Truth published at the time on the Antigonish movement.

Yes, I have some of those magazines here.

KB:      Right. Subsequently then after we got off the ground at Earlwood the John and Rose came across. He was trying to get us to belong to whatever this group was.

The Australian Antigonish Association.

KB:      Yes, but he had another name for it. That is what it was.

Oh yes, the Association of Antigonish Credit Unions wasn’t it?

KB:      No, it had one word. It was a sort of an acronym. ?????? some name like that, but it wasn’t that. So one of the Board members simply asked a simple question about something to do with it. It was on that second level of the buying co-op and my view of it was that you established the credit level first and then stepped onto the next level of co-operative. But the credit thing had to be well and truly under control first. So there was a distinction of policies there. They decided not to join this group and they just ran independently, even though the initial inspiration had come from them. That was they way it was, they had their own fortunes and misfortunes subsequently. I think that is about as best I recall.

Well that is very helpful too. As I say it was Clarrie Murphy who gave me your name. I don’t know if you remember him at all?

KB:      I do. Yes I remember him, he was a stockily built, dark-haired man at the time.

Yes, well he is a stockily built white-haired man now. After he moved out of working in aircraft, which he was at the time, I think he got his first job in the credit union movement at Earlwood. I think he did.

KB:      He could have after I left.

He has worked most of the rest of his life in it. He was the first Manger of the League. Of course he went to America, he and Keith Young the Anglican, they went to America as the first students sponsored by the Americans. He came back and he got the job as the first League Manager. After that the first credit union he worked for was Earlwood. No he was selling credit union insurance for a while and the first credit union he went back to was as Loans Officer at Earlwood. After that he has been at Railways and back at Earlwood and a number of others. He has spent the rest of his life working in credit unions. He is retired now and works as a volunteer.

KB:      The Earlwood one flourished there for a time, for a number of years. I had a brother who was the Assistant Priest who followed me in Earlwood. I had a brother who went out there about twelve months after and he used to you know cast a friendly eye upon it. He told me a few of the practical stories that came out of it. It was spinning along quite well anyway at that period up until the end of the fifties. I don’t know where it went after that.

They had a good Manager named Ken Byrne who is now at Berrima District Credit Union, up near Moss Vale. Then there was a difference between the Manager, Ken Byrne, and the Chairman at the time. I think they had a basic disagreement about how the credit union should be run financially. Ken either left or was fired, one of the two. I think he left actually, resigned. From there they had some financial problems. This sort of dragged on for years and years and eventually it has amalgamated with Oatley.

KB:      Was it Canterbury?

Now it is, but it was with Oatley. George’s River it is called the credit union.

KB:      I see.

But that was Oatley originally.

KB:      I see. So it is still in existence but it is absorbed.

Yes they were amalgamated, well they were what shall I call it, put under direction, under management and the Board was sacked. It was stabilised as they say and amalgamated with George’s River. George’s River has now been amalgamated with something else. But it is still going. It has still got its building ???

KB:      the last physical contact I had with it was when they bought that bank.

That’s right. It is still there.

KB:      It’s still there is it. I think Don Arivero.

Well he is Chairman of George’s River now.

KB:      I see. Oh good.

He’s come back into it. He has been out of it for years but he is back in.

KB:      Well Don was one of the originals. I am pretty certain he was one of those.

Well Clarrie has recorded him.

KB:      Great. Well he could confirm that. But I think Don was one of those original family groupings, you know, where we had all the discussions. Don came in and was one of the original members of that. He took a definite interest in it all.

One of the things that concerned me, I understood that they were providing loans with money borrowed from banks of something, I don’t know. It was money borrowed from outside the savings. I don’t know but it strikes me from memory that something like that happened. It was certainly opposed to the principle that we had espoused in our little family group meetings that the only money that would be lent would be money that was saved.

Well the arguments I understand were mainly about the principle of deficit budgeting. It is all right as long as you are deficit budgeting to put things on an even keel. But if you just keep running a deficit, and I think that is what happened, it is just going to catch up with you sooner or later. But if you plan the whole thing as deficit budgeting to get the thing off the ground then that is all right because you plan to gradually to get yourself on an even keel. A lot of them used to do that. They used to borrow ten thousand pounds off the League to start them off. They would gradually budget then to get on a fully even footing.

KB:      Well that was contrary to everything we had discussed. What we were on about was lending only what you had and not to borrow from outside sources.

Well that was a standard thing. I have just been doing Bankstown and that is the principle they operated on. They started off and of course they were going along very small until they went to one of the League meetings and the President lent them ten thousand pounds. After that they never looked back. Their first year they had forty thousand pounds assets and they now have forty million dollars assets and six thousand members.

KB:      It is a tremendous movement for putting power back in the hands of the people. That was the general philosophy or inspiration that we had to try and get people to control their own destinies. I felt later on there was a necessity, somehow a need, to be able to maintain that initial basic inspirational momentum in family groupings or new members coming in who had not been through that routine of the ideal, you know. It could be reduced to nothing more than simply to a credit savings level and if it works on that well ??????

In your experience did you ever come across any of those early parish savings groups or banks?

KB:      I knew of them, but they were on the level similar to that one you spoke about.

Oh they didn’t charge or pay interest?

KB:      Well they used to. But what they would do would be to pay something like a percentage, 1 per cent or something above bank interest or something, or one per cent less than bank interest for a deposit and something like that for loans. So it was really people making a donation of 1 per cent that they would have got at the bank. A number of those have functioned that certainly I have heard of.

Have you any idea where?

KB:      Now that is a good question.

Because I haven’t come into contact with any of those yet, although I have heard about them.

KB:      No. Gee, I did hear about the odd one that was functioning.

Did you hear of any of those that became credit unions later?

KB:      I didn’t no.

End Tape 1A: 3463 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes.