25 FEBRUARY, 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH TED LONG
I wonder Mr Long, if I can ask you first where were you born and when?
TL: I was born at Mosley, a small town in central Victoria not far from Bendigo, on 1 July 1921.
Right, and did you grow up around there?
TL: Yes, my parents remained in Mosley, they were farmers, and they remained there until after I left and went to work in Melbourne when I was about seventeen.
Where did you go to school?
TL: Firstly I went to Mosley State School until I completed my Merit and then I went to secondary college at St Patrick’s College, Ballarat as a boarder and I went there from 1935 until early 1938. I left in 1938 to take up an appointment with the Commonwealth Public Service in Melbourne.
What did you like or dislike about school?
TL: I enjoyed school both at the State and at the college. I didn’t mind the school work and I loved the sporting activities.
Is there any influence particularly on you at school, any of the masters influential with you or any of the teachers at all?
TL: Yes at St Patrick’s College, Ballarat the Christian Brothers as a group were a big influence and one Brother in particular, Brother O’Malley, who was sportsmaster there and also a prominent teacher, had a temper which was pretty hot at times, but he was a lover of sport and he got on very well with the boys.
What influence do you think you got from your parents?
TL: My parents were loving and caring, I was the third eldest in a family of eight of their children. They provided for us to the best of their ability and they made sacrifices to see that each of us got some sort of secondary education. They were strong Catholics and their influence on me and my brothers and sister in that regard was pretty strong.
So there was no possibility of you going on in your education? You had to leave school to go to work?
TL: Yes, there wasn’t room on the farm for all of us to stay home and when I was appointed to the Public Service I accepted that. I did commence a part-time university course at Melbourne University in a Bachelor of Commerce in 1939. The War of course started in 1939 and I was employed in the Department of Air, and that put me into an essential service, a reserved occupation, and we had a lot of overtime at the time. So between the overtime and my becoming interested in the Youth Movement which took up a lot of my other spare time, I did give the university course away in 1942 after I had a pass in five subjects. I never got back to resuming it.
Now, you spoke of the Catholic Youth Movement did that include co-operatives?
TL: No at that stage it didn’t have any content of co-operatives. It was the Young Christian Workers Movement, a new movement as far as Australia was concerned, it only started in 1941. I was boarding in Kensington in Melbourne and became interested in the Catholic Boys’ Legion because of its football competition. Then when the YCW came in and took over from the Catholic Boys’ Legion, it had a formation program and a program of action covering preparation of worker youth for their future. I was invited to become a leader in that and became very involved with it in my spare time.
Who was behind that movement, who were the leading Catholic people?
TL: The dominant personality, in fact the founder in Australia, was Reverend Father Frances Lombard who was a curate in a parish at Northcote in Melbourne at the time, and he got several other young priests interested in developing a positive youth organisation. They then started groups in a few parishes and gradually got together a Diocese committee to sponsor more parish groups. I was invited into that Diocese committee in 1942 and became President of it and from there we ran sporting competitions and other recreational activities, leaders’ programs, holiday camps and we did study needs of young workers. One of the needs we were looking at was how they were preparing for their future, economically.
And had you any contact with the National Catholic Rural Movement by that time?
TL: Well I knew the National Secretary of the National Catholic Rural Movement, Mr Bob Santa Maria. I suppose that is a well-known name in Australia and he still writes in the Australian and he is still a leading figure in another movement. But at that time one of his roles was in the Rural Movement and they had established a few credit unions as did also another Catholic organisation, an adult movement called National Christian Workers Movement who had a few credit unions in Melbourne suburbs.
Now I notice in a work done not so long ago by Susan Pepper that she quotes a report of 1945 National Catholic Rural Movement and it mentions that they reorganised their credit unions in 1945. Now according to everything else I have read, there were no credit unions around before 1945 in Victoria. But it seems that this is incorrect, that there were.
TL: Oh yes there certainly were a number of credit unions in Victoria prior to 1945. I learnt of the Rural Movement say in the late 1930s, not long after I came to Melbourne, and whilst it wasn’t a widespread movement where it did start in a country parish it became quite active and one of the things it did start was credit unions. Now they had obtained information on credit unions I understand from America and they had established a few of these. Then, through a close association of the Adult Catholic Movement in Melbourne, National Christian Workers I can recall that they had credit unions in the parishes of Richmond, Oakleigh, Moreland, Clifton Hill, Northcote, that is five that I can think of. They were unregistered, because in Victoria there was no legislation provided under which you could register a credit union. So they were loosely run, but being closely-knit in a parish they were quite safe and they were well run.
And the Co-operative Development Society, did you hear about that in those early days or hadn’t it been formed?
TL: No the Co-operative Development Society hadn’t been formed until 1961. As I mentioned a moment ago, the YCW Diocesan Committee was interested in developing services to meet the needs of young workers and one of the services we established of an economic nature was a savings scheme. This was run voluntarily in parish groups and money was collected off the young workers each week and banked in a savings bank account, the idea being this was teaching them the habit of saving. This was in the War years and in 1942, I think it was, Mr Chifley, then Treasurer, advised us when we asked him for some approval to do something, he advised us we were breaking the law and the savings scheme couldn’t be run under the Banking Act or something. So we had to wind that up. This caused the Executive to look at getting something legal which would help encourage savings. Our inquiries took us to look at New South Wales legislation and we looked at termination co-operative housing societies. We acted here to get that introduced into Victoria. Our representations along with those of some other people helped bring in the Co-operative Housing Societies Act into Victoria in 1944.
Can you remember who was on that Executive?
TL: On the YCW Executive, yes, the lay-founder of the Melbourne YCW plus the Australian YCW was Frank McCann, a young worker who gave up his job and became full-time National Secretary to it in 1943.
Was he any relation to Father McCann?
TL: Yes he is a brother of Father Charlie McCann and they are a great family.
It sounds as if you knew them well.
TL: Yes, in fact after boarding in Kensington for a few years I did a short stint when the landlady there sold up her residence and I had to find somewhere else to board, I finished up getting an offer of accommodation with Frank McCann’s mother and father at North Melbourne. So I had the pleasure of boarding with them for a couple of years.
That sounds like you had a good experience. From that point, when the building societies, or building co-operatives, were established, you went to work for them eventually didn’t you?
TL: Yes, I actually was Chairman of YCW Number one Co-operative Housing Society which we formed as soon as it was possible after that legislation came into being. Thus it was in 1945 that our Number One Society got off and I was Chairman of Directors of that for a short time. But I was working full-time for the YCW at that stage. I had left the Commonwealth Public Service in 1945 when they offered me a position in the YCW Movement full-time. From 1945 to 1950 I was full-time and I became the first National President of the YCW Movement in Australia. But in 1950, you might say, I had reached retiring age for the Youth Movement and I had to find something else to do.
What age was that, that you had to retire at?
TL: Oh, I would have been about twenty-nine then. Technically the age group of the YCW was fourteen to twenty-five, or married. At twenty-nine, I had become married before then. But I went in to work in a clerical capacity with the YCW Terminating Co-operative Housing Societies. At that time we had formed about fifteen of them. After spending a short time there, less than a year, I would think, I was offered the job of Secretary of the YCW Co-operative Trading Society, also in Melbourne, and I took that up and started in 1951 and remained with them full-time until I retired in 1986.
When you were involved in the start of the YCW Trading Society can you remember how that came about?
TL: Yes, that came about because we had by 1947 established several housing co-operatives. We found that long-term lending through them enabled people to get funds to get a house, but then they often were short of funds of the ability to buy furniture for their house at reasonable prices. This made us think what we could do to co-operatively help them to furnish the home and that brought us to trying to form a consumers’ co-operative and we did call a meeting n 1947 mainly of members of our housing co-operatives and a few other Catholic parish people. In due course there was a formation of that. It was formed in 1948 but it didn’t start trading until 1949. One of the problems at that time, this was in the early post-War years, getting suitable premises was a problem when you were very short of money and secondly it was very difficult to get the necessary approval, we didn’t really need approval we could start up, but we were in a position of needing the goodwill of the furniture society to be able to get supplies to sell to members. That took as awhile between a premises search and a delay of getting the goodwill so we didn’t start trading until September 1949.
Was Doctor Mannix involved in the YCW or the other Movements at that time or before?
TL: Well Dr Mannix, as Archbishop of Melbourne, had the right of veto or approval over the Youth Movement, the Catholic Youth Movement, but as far as co-operatives were concerned, once we formed a co-operative that was a legal entity in itself. But in courtesy we had before we formed Co-operative Housing or before we formed Co-operative Trading, we had sought his advice as to whether he though we should proceed or not.
Did you actually go and see him?
TL: Yes, Frank McCann and I did see him and his advice was much in these terms, ‘I’m glad to see you’re not letting the grass grow under your feet.’ He was very much in favour of anything that helped, what you might call put opportunities in the hands of people who had perhaps been denied those opportunities before.
Did you become politically involved with the Labor Party split at any time during that period?
TL: No. That is one of the things that the YCW Movement itself, as a youth movement, had to steer clear of right from the outset, that is it would not have anything to do with what could be termed party politics. It was interested in politics in the sense of making representations to either Government or Opposition if we felt we had a cause to pursue, like looking for new legislation.
But that must have been very difficult to do because after all the social studies movement was heavily involved in all sides. You would have had a job to keep clear of it.
TL: Well, we had good leadership I would say in the sense that there was Father Lombard who was most emphatic that the job of the YCW as a Youth Movement was not to become involved in any party politics, and he was given great encouragement in that opinion by the name who became Episcopal Chairman of the YCW, namely Bishop, he became Archbishop but he was ?????? Bishop at the time, Archbishop Justin Simmons. Between those two at the top and our own sort of conviction we were able to resist any invitations to participate in that. That did not mean that the YCW Youth Movement didn’t take action to condemn Communism, we did that through our publication and through our own influence with people, but we were not out counting heads or working in any political party.
I don’t know if you knew Kevin Yates of New South Wales at all?
TL: Yes, I did have the pleasure of meeting Kevin on a few occasions and found him a very enthusiastic man on co-operatives and also had the pleasure of reading several of the things he had written.
This is something that intrigues me. It seemed that although he was mainly on the platform of the Social Studies Movement, the Movement, and his main sponsor on speaking on co-operatives, particularly credit unions around in New South Wales, was Doctor Paddy Ryan, who was certainly much involved with the Movement, yet Kevin Yates didn’t seem to get involved with that, in spite of that.
TL: Well, I didn’t know Kevin well enough on anything else he did, so I have not got much information on that.
Yes, I asked Tom Kelly about that and he was involved.
TL: Well, Tom is a chap I got to know over the years, and he is still going isn’t he.
Yes, very much so, he is the Secretary-Director of the New South Wales Historical Co-operative and he is up in Albury now doing his duty on the stand there at the Managers’ Conference there.
TL: Yes, well he has done a remarkable job.
Anyway you don’t know any more about that. What about your impressions of Doctor Mannix, how did he impress you a great deal.
TL: Oh yes, I was always impressed by Doctor Mannix, he had a great personal standing amongst the Catholic community and he was well known to all people in Australia. No I was always a staunch supporter of Archbishop Mannix. I mean there were one or two things we would have differed with him on in relation to industrial movements and party politics and the need to keep the YCW out of it, but that didn’t affect our relationship with him. If we had to get permission from him to do something in the YCW Movement, he always treated each issue separately and he was always a most fair person and of course he was an adept at summing up situations.
Did you have anything to do with Bob Santa Maria in those days, or not?
TL: Oh yes, I saw Bob a number of times in those days because Bob was in the Secretariat of Catholic Action and the YCW Movement itself was a Catholic Action Movement and therefore in one sense our program was reported to him or co-ordinated under him, but we were fiercely independent as regards our own programs and what we did. I always enjoyed Bob’s company whenever I met him at meetings of that and it was only that probably he placed greater importance on the danger of Communism and his method of opposing it, than we did and, for instance, not agreeing that his method was suitable for the Youth Movement.
I interviewed Jack Cain a few years ago before he died, quite extensively, and he talked quite a bit about these sort of things and his involvement with people in Victoria, did you come across him at all?
TL: No, I think I only met Jack Cain once and wouldn’t have had any dealings with him at all.
He was an interesting sort of person, he really believed, he was one of the leaders in that cause and I think he felt let down.
TL: Yes, well, I had great respect for all of them who had that opinion and who fought to uphold it because I am sure they believed them.
Funnily enough I was interviewing Wendy Lowenstein, she was a Communist, a little while ago and I was rather tending to think that some of the Catholic Movement might have been a little paranoid in those days. However, she disabused me of this. She told be exactly how there was this factories movement, they all had to go to the factories and become workers and take over the union movement. She explained to me that this was a definite policy and they all of a sudden were sent to do it. Of course it was ludicrous the way they did it, because they couldn’t do it. She said that the people working there knew darn well they were all middle-class intellectuals, you know.
TL: Yes, well I think looking back that people might have done some things differently. When they judged the battle to be on the leaders decided on that action and all I can say is that we never got involved in anything like that.
When did you actually become involved in credit unions as such?
TL: Well having learnt of them in those late ’30s and through the ’40s of the National Catholic Rural Movement and National Christian Workers Movement, both of those, whatever they were going to do on this things, did suffer through the War and it really affected the future of both of those Movements and thus affected the future development of credit unions through them. It was after having formed the YCW Trading Co-operative Society in 1949, we then had these housing societies, we had the trading society, we said well we should have a co-operative education committee looking into where we go from here. Thus we got a group of about thirty people out of those housing societies of ours and the trading society, and they met monthly and they divided into groups and they discussed what we could do next. One group looked at insurance and we formed an co-operative insurance division of our trading society and that kicked off in 1954. Prior to that we said these people who are now getting housing loans, long-term finance, these people are buying furniture on their own hire purchase terms through the trading society, they run out of money occasionally, or they might need to borrow to buy something, let’s look at credit unions. It has got a twofold purpose of helping people save money and it’s got the other one of being able to lend it at your own rates. So at those education committee monthly meetings we did produce three kinds of co-operatives. We added the insurance division onto the trading society, we decided credit unions should be formed, we should try and promote credit unions, and the third one was let’s have a go at building homes. The fourth issue was, we said we need to get a Co-operation Act into Victoria. Because our trading society which we had registered in 1948, was registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act. Thus I can recall going to Sydney to get a bit of information on their Co-operation Act round about 1952 and we made representations with our State Government that we should have an act and we got the Act introduced in 1953, pretty similar to what the Act was in New South Wales. At least we were glad to get it because we had in started a credit union in 1952, unregistered, and we saw that when the Act came in we could be the first registered credit union in Victoria, which we did have.
Which was that first credit union?
TL: It was called YCW Central, because when we said we would do something about credit unions, the first group of people we wanted to help were those who were in the housing co-operatives that we had started, or in the furniture, and they wanted to get some things. A lot of people in those days could almost build their own homes under sub-contract, you see, but they often run out of money wanting to buy a bit of materials because they had to wait to get the work done to get a progress payment. So this lending was something, was a good way. So we did get a number of people out of the housing co-operatives to join what we called YCW Central. The Common Bond for them was membership of one of our housing societies which was a bit different from what was the vogue at the time, or membership of the trading society, and that got away to a useful start. Once the Act came in, we said we now we think the best way we can go about promoting credit unions is to promote them on a parish basis. We gradually started them getting going and it would have been probably round about 1957. In 1957 anyway we had three or four going and we said we can form an Association under the Co-operation Act. That is what we did in 1957.
Had those previous credit unions that had been under the wing of the National Catholic Rural Movement, had they been within the parishes?
TL: Yes, they had been on a parish basis yes. Now when the new Act came in of course, a number of them had by that time faded, a number of them were still going and they had the opportunity to come in and register or not. Funnily enough one or two of them didn’t want to register. They wouldn’t be going now, of course.
End Tape 1A: 3861 Words: 1 hour 40 minutes.
25 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH TED LONG
There is one thing that we discussed before I started recording and I don’t know when you came across Father Gallagher who founded the Australian Antigonish Association?
TL: Yes, I met Father Gallagher when he came into our office in Melbourne, in the mid-1950s I suppose it was, and made himself known to us. We were impressed with his philosophic approach to co-operatives because we also had learnt of the Antigonish Nova Scotia experiments in co-operatives. We had learnt of it through a pamphlet written by Father Murtagh, a Melbourne priest, for the Australian Catholic Truth Society.
How do you spell his name, by the way?
TL: Father Murtagh.
Right, I have been wanting to know that for sometime. Several people have spoken of him.
TL: The philosophy as expounded by the Antigonish Movement did interest us and in fact on two occasions we had people from Melbourne visit Antigonish. First was Monseigneur Toomey, Kevin Toomey, who was National Chaplain of YCW and in a sort of informal way acted as Chaplain to the co-operatives for a period in the ’50s. He visited there and gained quite a bit of information from Monseigneur Moses Coady, who was probably the most famous of the Antigonish Nova Scotia leaders. The second person was Bob Maybury, who was the Senior Executive and Manager of our Terminating Housing Societies, he visited there in I think it was 1963 or 1964 and he brought back good information from there also.
Father Gallagher was a unusual person, did you become aware of his legal battles to get the tax exemption?
TL: Yes. We kept in touch with him for a period of two years and we did get the benefit of information from him and his colleagues in the Antigonish Movement of Australia. We also exchanged ideas on a number of things concerning the direction co-operatives should take. Gradually then we lost contact with him because he seemed to be very much concerned, from our point of view, with the philosophy and staying in a small way whereas we, whilst appreciating the need for philosophy, the need for education, we felt there had to be more widespread progress to try and involve greater numbers of people and I think from thereon he may have felt we weren’t as pure as his organisation was. However, we didn’t lose touch altogether and we from time to time did meet him later on and we were sorry in fact that his ideas hadn’t gained more support and more application in other parts of Sydney.
Did you hear anything about his trip down to Tasmania when he was on holiday and apparently he started seven credit unions down there?
TL: I can’t recall. I may have heard it but of course I have heard a lot of things over the years and we wouldn’t have been surprised really if he did that because he was a goer.
He eventually did get tax exemption, too, in 1964.
TL: Yes, oh yes, he had worked hard on that.
But unfortunately the rest of them couldn’t get it for quite some time and they had to do it politically. Were you involved in any of that?
TL: No, my association closely with credit co-operatives was from when we started in that education committee in say early 1950s and in the formation of that first one, YCW Central, then in promoting the formation of them in parishes throughout Victoria and up until the Association of Catholic Credit Societies, which was formed in 1957, sort of took over the responsibility for promoting credit societies. But, the point that I think I would like to make is that the promotion of credit unions in Victoria from say the Co-operation Act coming in 1953 up until the Association of Catholic Credit Societies vacating their restricted role and widening their rules and so on to become the Victorian Credit Co-operatives Association, thus a Statewide thing in 1966, that in that period in between the bulk of the effort and the cost of promoting the credit societies in Victoria was born by the YCW Co-operative Society, which wasn’t a credit union but was a trading society. It did this because its Directors and staff believed that this was a very useful economic tool to develop.
I notice that of the YCW you were both Foundation Chairman and Secretary, how did that come about at the YCW?
TL: Well I was Foundation Chairman when I was still working full-time for the YCW Movement and when I went to work for the housing co-operatives I was still Chairman at that stage, but when I came back to be Secretary of YCW Trading Society I ceased to be Chairman and we appointed a new Chairman and that person was a very well-known businessman in Melbourne a Mr William F Dunlevy.
The management of the YCW Trading Society, who came after you in that?
TL: Well, before me there was a Manager, Frank McCann. When he reached retiring age from that full-time job he had with YCW Youth Movement as National Secretary, he was asked to take on the job of first full-time Manager of the YCW Trading Co-operative.
So you were Secretary?
TL: I was Chairman and he was Manager, say from 1949 to 1951, I was Chairman and he was Manager. From 1951, he was Manager and I was Secretary and we had a new Chairman.
So did you stay there as Secretary?
TL: I stayed there as Secretary but somewhere along the line we changed, my role became also Chief Executive Officer and Secretary.
So how did that happen?
TL: Well that was just that as the co-operative grew and Frank McCann became fully occupied as Manager I became Secretary and Chief Executive Officer which I suppose was a sort of splitting of the role, splitting of our two roles in one way. But it was quite an amicable arrangement and Frank McCann finished up retiring in 1978.
You took over from him, did you?
TL: Yes, we brought in a new Sales Manager then and I was General Manager.
It was you that handed over to Des Ryan?
TL: When I retired in 1986, Des Ryan, who had been the Sales Manager, he became the General Manager and Secretary.
No wonder I was baffled in trying to work that out from the Minutes. Yes it looks like a dog’s breakfast, my working out of that situation. I am still not quite sure I have got it.
TL: I can write it down for you if you want.
Well, we will need that. The other thing is the foundation of the Association, Catholic Credit Unions, how did that come about, I mean who suggested it in the first place?
TL: Well, it seemed to us to be a pretty natural idea.
Was this because there had been one done in New South Wales, or what?
TL: I suppose it was because yes we had heard of the League in New South Wales and we had seen the provision for it in the Act. But more particularly I think from discussions in our education committee, that is the general education committee, and looking at what had happened with the NCR, the National Catholic Rural Movement, and the NCWM ones, that whilst they might have had more than a dozen credit unions, there did not appear to have at any stage been a co-ordination of them. We saw a number of things that could benefit by them working together. Particularly, I think, we appreciated this through refreshing ourselves on the basic principles of co-operatives and on the philosophy that came to us from Antigonish too. The basic principles I speak of of course came from Rochdale pioneers and one of them was, ‘co-operatives co-operating together’, and whilst in the credit union shell they were all the same sort of credit co-operative, if they didn’t work together they would lessen their chances of propagating the credit co-operative ideal. So once we had three, and that is what we legally needed to form an association, we didn’t waste any time, we formed one.
And where does the Co-operative Development Society come in?
TL: Yes, well that association was registered in 1957. It of course went on promoting more credit societies and in 1961, well having this co-operative education list thing going monthly, the next thing there was to say well can we do something a bit better than this and we said yes well we could form a community advancement co-operative and we’ll call it Co-operative Development Society and we will try and make that the educational co-operative for our Housing Societies, for our Trading Society and for the Association of Credit Societies and so we formed that.
They just formed another one, did you know that?
TL: Where is that?
Well there is one, I don’t know I presume it is all over the country, but actually the office that I know of is in The Rocks in Sydney.
TL: Oh, I see. I wasn’t aware of that.
It has only just been formed, it has been formed out of the Association of Co-operatives.
TL: Has it, well I am not aware of that one Rex, I can’t comment on that, I don’t know anything about it.
I’ve got the paperwork here, I will show you. I was interested to see that it had got the same name and the same sort of philosophy. It is like reinventing the same thing over and over again.
TL: Well of course our Co-operative Development Society started in 1961 and it had the object of trying to get the different sorts of co-operatives working, co-operating together, again getting back to that principle that co-operatives should help one another, and also of course the other principle that there should be money spent on education. Along the way, at any rate, we had a lot of interest in developments and had quite a few sticky questions to sort of bring about some sort of solution to. Ultimately, we fixed as our object broadening the scope of our co-operative movement, which was very much Catholic-oriented. The first development of this that had to get the Co-operative Development Society’s sort of goodwill and approval of was going from a closed, not a closed, but going from basically an association of Catholic credit societies to an open credit societies association in 1966, which the Development Society said yes go ahead and do it, but try and preserve some of the principles that we have built our co-operative up on. The second thing was that we said to help that come about, we think that the new association ought to be, the remodelled association should be interested in joining a new organisation that should come in to federate the different types of co-operatives and to make that practical as soon as the groundwork was ready for that the Co-operative Development Society will vacate the field, it will go into liquidation. And it did, in 1970. Came into being in 1961 and it voluntarily liquidated in 1970 when the Co-operative Federation of Victoria came into being.
Was that allied to the Australian Association of Co-operatives which ..
TL: Well the Association of Co-operatives wasn’t in then, that was the Co-operative Federation of Australia at that time. The Australian Association of Co-operatives came in, a change of name with a different sort of location.
But they were instrumental in forming the New South Wales Credit Union League too, the Co-operative Association in Sydney, actually formed at their rooms and Jack Ward was the man who was on the Association.
TL: Yes, well, my understanding of that, Rex, is that New South Wales, because it had a much older history of some older co-operative federation than Victoria has had, but there was a Co-operative Federation of New South Wales for a long time. There was a Co-operative Federation of Australia which started and stopped and which eventually started again and I think it was in 1943 it came back into being with support mainly from Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. Now it got a bit of new life in the 1960s, then, when Western Australia became very strong in it. The Co-operative Federation of Australia struggled on then after that and almost petered out and it was revised a few years ago in the days of Bruce Freeman in New South Wales who was Co-operative Federation of New South Wales Secretary or Manager, and they then came up with a new idea that let’s rename this Federation to the Australian Association of Co-operatives, let it take the place of our State federations so we will have one Association in Australia, but we will have a division in Victoria, a division in Queensland, and so on. So it has got a slightly different structure now from what it did have, I think. That is my understanding of it. At any rate, when we formed the Co-operative Federation of Victoria in 1970 it did affiliate with the then Co-operative Federation of Australia. Then when the Co-operative Federation of Australia became the Australian Association of Co-operatives, the Co-operative Federation of Victoria didn’t liquidate but it is in recess. The Registry has agreed to let it sit there in recess and if say the Australian Association of Co-operatives goes ahead and is going to stay there, the Co-operative Federation of Victoria will go into voluntary liquidation. So virtually Victoria now has a division of the AAC and it has a delegate on their Board. Des Ryan and Brian MacIntosh are both on the Board from Victoria, but Des, I think, is on their in his own right as a member but Brian is representing Tasmania.
Yes, I have a photograph from their Christmas edition of that, they are lined up the people who are Directors. There was a number of things that occurred to mind from what you have recently said and one of them is re them starting the first credit union. Well it wasn’t the first credit union there was a few other credit unions started out of building societies or home owners co-operatives at one stage, or whatever they liked to call them in those days in New South Wales, round about 1945 when the Act was changed and they were allowed to register. But one of the ones that was started was the Catholic Thrift and Loan Society which became universal. But it became universal when, this is according to Bill Egan, I don’t know if you remember him?
TL: I remember his name, but I don’t know if I ever met Bill.
The main people who formed the Universal Credit Union, as it is known, in 1946 was Kevin Yates and Bill. However, they ran into trouble with the Archbishop who said that they shouldn’t have Catholic in their name and that is where they came up with the name Universal. But they operated for two years as the Catholic Thrift and Loan Society. There are two things, and they were also much involved with the Co-operative Development Society and I noticed the paperwork which I got from Bill Egan and I also got from Tom Kelly and Clarrie Murphy in Sydney, it has the Imprimatur of both the Diocese of Melbourne and Sydney on their paperwork that they sent out. Do you know anything about the co-operation there must have been between the two Diocese in this matter?
TL: When did that happen?
I don’t know I just saw the paper and the paper has got no date on it.
TL: Is this a recent happening or is this …
Oh no we are talking about the 1950s or 1960s, I think 1950s actually.
TL: What was the name?
It was called the Co-operative Development Society. There was also, I think it was, a Catholic Co-operative Development Society.
TL: No, I have no knowledge of that at all.
Some of the material put out was in your name. You know you wrote it. If you look underneath there you will find two forms. Neither of them are yours?
TL: John Giddons and that’s mine.
Right. Now, I am remember what it was it was the Catholic Truth Society.
TL: Yes, the Catholic Truth Society, that is different. The Catholic Truth Society was just a Diocesan thing here which used to publish anything that it thought was useful to publish. Mostly they were on spiritual matters, but this was on a social question so it got a guernsey.
Both Sydney and Melbourne?
TL: That’s right, well that is Australian you see and the two Dioceses would have co-operated on that.
When did you do that?
TL: In 1962. This one was October 1963, that was John Giddons. Now John worked in the Taxation Department, he had a very good job there, but he was Honorary Secretary of the St Gabriel Reservoir Parish Credit Society and he was active in the Association of Catholic Credit Societies, he wrote that about credit unions.
Now, I notice that you both gave papers, both you and John Giddons, to the School.
TL: Yes, well the School was run by the Co-operative Development Society and that was you know part of our role of educating people to make them more enthusiastic, to give them a better understanding of their role. See we really believed, I think, when we got into co-operatives, we believed what the Antigonish Movement of Nova Scotia, the St Frances Xavier University there, the idea that they were propagating, that co-operatives were a means to an end whereby you can gain greater personal freedom and that is something that is almost essential, for better Christian living. We viewed co-operatives, in a sense, as a means of reform, making a contribution to the reform of society. We didn’t say the community or the society or the economy has got to go all co-operative, we weren’t saying it has got to be a co-operative economy, but we were saying that the world, or the community, has got socialism, it’s got capitalism, it’s got other things and bits of each mixed up at times, but there is a need for something, a third order you might say, and co-operatives could be that third order. If there was a proper mix, then, of this capitalism, socialism and this form of private enterprise which is co-operative, you would probably finish up with a better society. But to get that you have got to have some fairly strong commitment in your co-operatives to develop in people a belief in those things and if you haven’t got an education program in sufficient co-operatives, there is not much hope of getting sufficient belief to make your co-operatives achieve that object. Now I would think that in Australia co-operatives have probably neglected their opportunity to do as much in the area of co-operative education as was needed. Therefore, to some extent we are not achieving the object that say we who started the YCW co-operatives had hoped. That doesn’t mean they can’t do it in the future, but it is going to make it harder.
I have noticed about credit unions that they came out of more affluent times in Australia, whereas in America and Canada and in Europe too, they came out of hard times. Would you like to comment on that?
TL: Well I think in Australia their development was probably in what you might call affluent times, relatively affluent times, but they came to meet a need of a section of the community who was not being serviced properly at that time. The same would apply to terminating housing co-operatives, they came in very large growth in the post-War years. Now they were a sort of a determined effort by parents and their children to correct the lack of home ownership that the parents had through the Depression and such and the co-operative mechanism did enable more people to get home ownership. Now, once the terminating housing societies were making this available, well I think then subsequently terminating were not the force they were because the other banks and other lending institutions took up the opportunity to do likewise. Now with credit unions, there was certainly a vacuum there in ordinary people saving money. You know they weren’t rushing off to the bank to deposit regularly because they couldn’t get a loan from the bank unless they had a security. So our bringing in of credit unions was tackling those two things that were lacking in the community even if we were in good times. I mean there was not the regular saving facility and you couldn’t get a personal loan. You could get hire purchase tacked on to a bank or something and you were paying 25 per cent or flat rate. Credit unions in the space of about ten or twelve years corrected that.
There were co-operatives going before the War, who were the people? Father Lombard was one involved in co-operatives was he not?
TL: No. Father Lombard wouldn’t have started the co-operative, well he would never have started the co-operative, but he became enthusiastic about co-operatives when he was looking at this problem of the savings grant being cut out, right. Now the people who started it before were people like the Rural Movement and the National Christian Workers who had somebody in their organisation who must have read something of what this co-operative, what the credit union was doing for farmers in America.
And what about the co-operative movement in the Anglican Church in Victoria, was there none of that?
TL: We never could get any spark of enthusiasm.
End Tape 1B: 3642 Words: 1 hour 30 minutes.
25 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH TED LONG
Now as far as what you have made notes on there, there is quite an area that I don’t dream of so to speak, that you had experience of. I know we are here to do the start of the VCCA, and we have covered part of that, when did you come across Leon Magree?
TL: Well I met Leon Magree first in the YCW Movement and subsequently I would have met him when I worked for the YCW Co-operative and he would have had some contact with us, perhaps he was getting something for his own home, but he became interested in our credit union, in the first credit union we formed. No, correction there, I met Leon Magree, it is right I met him in the YCW Movement, but subsequently I met him when he came to work for the Co-operative Housing Societies after I had left the Housing Societies and was working for the Trading Co-operative. He was a clerk in the Terminating Housing Societies and when the first YCW Credit Society was formed, after some time he became the Honorary Secretary of that as a spare time job.
When did he become permanently on full-time?
TL: He continued to work for the housing co-operatives and when the Association of Catholic Credit Societies was formed, somewhere along the line he became Secretary of that.
As a part-time job?
TL: Well part-time because he probably started off working it in conjunction with his Housing Societies job.
That is what he said, yes. What were you doing at that time?
TL: At that time I was full-time YCW Trading Co-operative.
So what did you have to do with the Association at that stage?
TL: Well at that stage, I was doing a lot of work, I was virtually doing the co-operative education work for YCW Co-operative Society and for that committee we had, education committee, and I was doing a lot of formation of credit unions. In other words we would contact a parish, we would know through our membership of the Trading Society somebody in say the Box Hill Parish, or the Waverley Parish, and I would give him a call and say, What do you think of a credit co-operative?’ and he would ask a bit about it and then I would say, ‘Well you ought to think about starting one in your parish.’ Sometimes it might have got wiped off, but invariably you would get some sort of interest. You would tee up a time to have a further yarn to him. The upshot would be that somewhere along the line you would ask him to get three or four people together and you would go out and you would have what we called a home discussion. Now all of those home discussions between say 1956, when we started doing them, and 1962 or something like that, they were done by YCW Co-operative and friends. They were not done by any paid officers they were all done in our spare time. What would happen around the suburbs, it wasn’t bad, often times, I don’t know how many times I have been out at night. You’d get in the car and you would arrange two or other fellows and you’d pick them up and we’d go out to Croydon or we’d go somewhere else and we’d have a home discussion. We might have had four home discussions in the one place, four of us would go out and we would go to four different homes in the one place. After about three months you would get a credit union formed. That was OK for the suburbs but we did that in Bendigo, we did it in Ballarat, we did it in Echuca, we did it in Corryong, these are all places two hundred kilometres away, you know, some of them. You came home the same night, you didn’t stay up there and have a sleep in at the motel next morning, you came home at night. Get home one o’clock, two o’clock in the morning. I remember Frank McCann and I one night went off to Bendigo and we did our home discussions at a couple of places and we took off about midnight and it was in winter and we got back as far as Wood End and dash we had a big hill to climb and the snow was falling and you couldn’t get up the hill. So we slept in the car on the side of the road there and about two o’clock in the morning, bank, no we had got out of the car and gone for a walk around, just off the road and low and behold a truck comes down the other way and hits our car. Just hit it, he didn’t make it undrivable, but he hit it and if we had been in we could have been thrown out. That was the worst experience we had on those home discussions. But that was snow at Wood End and you hardly ever got snow there. The main point there is that it was a volunteer effort and that was very much the spirit of the early credit unions in Victoria.
Yes I have got stories from Dermot Ryan, Clarrie Murphy and Ken Miller and whatever and the early days there as well. Of course Dermot Ryan was in Father Gallagher’s parish.
TL: Well, he would have had some excitement sometime then.
They used to call them cottage discussions.
TL: That’s right, cottage discussions. We thought they were pretty good you know for performing a thing. They were a good way of getting people to take part in a discussion.
The first time I heard of cottage discussions is virtually Martin Luther. I am sure he didn’t invent them.
TL: Well no, I didn’t know about that.
Well he did. But he certainly didn’t invent them I am sure of that. But Father Gallagher was very much gone on that.
TL: Yes he was.
So when did you sort of drop out of the organisation of credit unions and out of the Association?
TL: It would have been about 1963 or 1964 I think because we had the Co-operative Development Society going in 1961 and we were still doing it there, I was still very active in it then. It would have been about the time Leon Magree became full-time Manager of VCCA, or Secretary of VCCA, and they then took over more of the responsibility of promotion. Because I was gradually dropping out of that side of it and getting back to what I should have been doing more of, I suppose.
Several people have talked to me about the various credit union Schools. Now can you describe your part in the Co-operative Development School?
TL: Well, I would have to look it up and see what I did do there.
Well, if it is written down don’t worry about it, but it is your reminiscences that we are really after in this.
TL: As far as I can recollect I wasn’t a speaker at that one, I was the organiser of it. I would have been acting as the chief organiser.
Was Monseigneur Coady there?
TL: No he wasn’t there, but he got a mention. There is a quote from him: ‘People plus knowledge equals progress.’ See he reckoned people were the most important thing. People without knowledge weren’t much good, but people with knowledge and you had it, you had progress.
I read about Father Tonkins in there. He sounds like a colourful character in Antigonish.
TL: Yes. I didn’t ever speak to him. I don’t suppose I spoke to Monseigneur Coady either, but I read more of Coady. Tonkins wrote a book I know and many people regard him as probably one who did more even than Coady. So they were both well-deserving of praise.
They used to talk about three of them, the other one was McDonald, I think.
TL: Yes, he was a bit younger I think and I don’t know whether he is dead now, but he was well-known.
There are some wonderful stories about Father Tonkins and his fur coat and his cigar butts.
TL: Ah well, I don’t know much about them.
Well the next thing is your involvement with other credit union Schools. I notice here, for instance, that you came down talking in Gippsland, in this newspaper here, The Co-operator.
TL: Well, the Co-operative Development Society, up until the time of the Association, the State Association which came into being in 1966, the Co-operative Development Society was trying to get credit union to have Schools or conferences and we often had regional conferences for a group of credit unions and they would get delegates to come along. We talked on a number of subjects, there would always be something on the philosophy and there would then be something on the practical side of it, the accounting or the legislation or looking at the future. It was quite the thing in round about 1962, we had very much the question of where do you go from here? In other words, what you have got to remember is that the credit unions we formed in parishes were all run by voluntary effort and very often they were only open Sunday morning or whenever mass was on, and you had rostered volunteers. That was a bit of a strain on a person. Say Box HIll, which formed in 1958, that was the parish that I lived in, and come 1962 you were still operating on a Sunday morning and you had five Directors and a Secretary and they were having to do all this work. You know, I think they were getting a little bit tired. So we said, ‘You’ve got to look at taking the next step of perhaps opening somewhere else perhaps once a week or something like that.’ Gradually, you had parish credit societies saying, ‘Well we will become open, we will get an office down the street and we will open say Wednesdays and Saturdays,’ or something like that and gradually they got to full-time.
Were you involved in the push from parish credit unions into community credit unions?
TL: I was involved in it, not in the sense of the specific credit union doing it, but I was involved in the discussions of it as to when it should happen, should have happened and that. Because to this day there are one or two who still run parish credit societies and in a little way they do a good job. But our view was that it was better to expand and enable more people to get the benefit of this because this wasn’t something that was restricted to only being good for Catholics or only being good for non-Catholics. It was a community thing and therefore it could be a means of helping people get on better. Certainly, the inter-mingling would do good anyway, with greater possibilities.
Did you have to negotiate the opening of the Bonds of credit unions with the Registrar in the same way as they did in New South Wales?
TL: Yes, well it was really a question that had to be taken up. It was a simple one when you formed the parish one because the usual wording was ‘Adherents of the Parish of St Frances Xavier, Box Hill’. We used the word ‘Adherents’ because we had the interpretation of that that did permit you to take in non-Catholics who at least paid some sort of respect to the Parish. But when we went community, yes well, we didn’t have a great deal of difficulty winding it to the residents of the municipality of Box Hill. Just on that, they are much wider today though in Melbourne. Virtually they might as well not be a Common Bond some of them today. They can take in from Kew to Ringwood, which is you know …
They are not allowed to compete in areas?
TL: Well, I think they are usually looked at in the sense that they are not allowed to overlap another area unless there is a mutual agreement. However, there have been some sort of problems where you get say a union like the SEC, State Electricity Commission, here which has the State of Victoria virtually. Then you have a strong credit union like the Latrobe Valley which was basically Morwell, well there was a bit of cut-throat down there because the Morwell thing was also part of SEC’s area and they had a few battles. Now I don’t know how they actually resolved that. You were going to say?
I was merely going to ask you if there were any credit unions like the first one in Queensland which was an Anglican one which had nothing to do with the general movement. I understand that the founder was a Scottish blacksmith named MacDonald and he got his information from Canada from the credit people in Alberta. But they didn’t charge nor pay interest and they are still going.
TL: No, we have nothing like that.
They have a once a month arrangement, one evening a month, and it is a social event. There was never any going in Victoria which didn’t charge nor pay interest?
TL: No, I am not aware of any.
They originally used this as a method of building a church, financing a church. It was a parish savings scheme which was used to build a church and when the church was paid off then they swung it around and turned it into a credit union. What used to happen is that they didn’t take interest, but the credit union used to get interest on the money by investing it and they would also get the benefit of discounts by buying. They only had seventy members in the first instance and they’ve still got seventy-two members of something like that. They are still going. Now what else is there we should cover. Did you go to any of these Schools.
TL: The only one I went to of the Newport, because I was full-time Co-operative Trading Society so any time I went to any of these things was like taking a holiday. But I did go to the Newcastle one because I was specially asked to go. That was the one, it must have been 1964 or 1965 I can’t remember which year it was, it was the one at which, it was prior to Stan Arneil and the New South Wales League making their push to come into Victoria. They had been pushing for a couple of years I suppose to get a League in Victoria. They weren’t interested in what we called the Association, they wanted a League in Victoria like there was in New South Wales. Well you remember we had the Association here from 1957, so we were not very enthusiastic about somebody from New South Wales saying move over we are coming and we are going to set it up our way. So they were working through Morwell mainly because Morwell was in our Association and Graham Benson was a Director of our Co-operative Development Society and Graham was fully in support of our idea that all co-operatives should be helping one another, because Morwell had a credit union and a trading store. New South Wales, of course, were purely credit union as far as we could see. So, at any rate, Graham said, ‘You have got to come up to New South Wales,’ you see. At any rate we got up there and the next thing on we learned that Stan Arneil and his colleagues are going to come to Melbourne the following week, or two weeks or something, and really form a credit union league in Victoria. So of course Leon Magree was with me at Newport and we had to head this off. We headed it off before the end of the week. We had to be good people and …
How did you head it off?
TL: Well we only headed it off by tackling Stan and getting him to state what he was doing, because he was doing sort of without. We believed he was coming down and he wasn’t telling us what he was going to do would then finish up sort of a fait accompli, you see. So we just had to tackle him head on and let him know that he would be welcome to come to Victoria, but when he came it would be at a meeting that we were aware was taking place and there would be an agenda and we would know what was on it. So that’s what happened. He and someone else came down.
Do you remember who else?
TL: Well, there was a guest speaker at that thing from CUNA.
It could have been Charles Compton.
TL: Charles Compton, yes. I think Stan and Charles Compton came down and met our Co-operative Development Society and they were very keen then to get their way and we finished up, we got our way. The arrangement was there would be a meeting called at which we would recommend that the ACCS would convene a meeting, or form a committee to convene a meeting with changed rules that would provide for a State Association and the change of name from Catholic Credit Society to whatever they wanted to call it.
Now, there was two meetings, how did that come about? One at the Nurses in town and another up in the Latrobe Valley.
TL: Well, I think the first meeting at the Nurses’ place was the one that really set up a steering committee and it might have been called, my memory of that is a little bit vague although I was there, but I think even at that meeting the New South Wales representatives might have turned up at the meeting intending to push through a formation. But it went the other way, there was a committee formed to plan a formation meeting, a meeting to pass the necessary resolutions and change the rules.
Do you remember who else came down apart from Stan Arneil? Don Harvey? Beresford Calverley?
TL: I can’t recall. I would have to look up the Minutes on that and I haven’t got those Minutes. Honestly, I can’t recall who else attended the meeting. All I know is we were keen it would happen in a certain way and that is how it happened.
You weren’t going to let it be taken over.
TL: Well, we had put a lot of time into this. You have got to remember that it hadn’t been something that just happened in Victoria, it had happened according to what we thought were pretty important principles and we wanted to protect something that we reckoned had started the way that we believed in all co-operatives. We reckoned that the Sydney people were more interested in getting numbers on the board, you know, get greater strength. Also, we were a little bit wary of domination by Sydney if it did happen, you see. Now I think the thing that happened, whilst it might have sounded cantankerous to Sydney, we felt justified in doing it that way. I think we tried to act with a sense of fair play because we at no stage said, ‘Look you can’t come in.’ We couldn’t stop them coming in but we didn’t even say you can’t come in. We said let’s do it our way. I think it certainly didn’t handicap anything the way we did it. I can recall here, there were some people who held the view that while Victoria probably should have held out and told them to form another association, but to my way of thinking that would have been too divisive. I think that having put so much time into having what we had, we probably only regret that as the credit society movement has gone on it has had to get bigger it has had to bring in more technology and it is much more difficult today to protect those principles, we’ve felt anyway.
How much do you think the knowledge that the New South Wales people were intending to come down got you moving to do your own, or had that already been decided before you heard they were going to turn up?
TL: Well, we had been working towards that anyway. This would have been happening from about 1963, particularly, when I can recall we had at a regional credit union conference at talk by John Giddons on ‘Where do we go from here?’ He was pointing out the need to get away from the voluntary parish society to the community one and our Association was also looking at ways and means of making the Association more sophisticated. In other words, we had created central banking in a modest sort of a way but it was in operation, but we hadn’t got any security thing in yet. We did have different insurances in, yes. Our main fear of Sydney coming in to Victoria was the domination, the fear of domination, and secondly a feeling that there would be a tremendous influence to develop credit unions regardless or without any regard to any other co-operatives.
Did you meet Stan Arneil when he came round starting the ABC credit unions?
TL: No, I didn’t meet him when he came to Victoria. I think the first time I met Stan Arneil was one time I went to Sydney. I was never very much welcomed by him the once that I did meet him. He never made you feel that he wanted to talk to you. I would have only met him at some meeting, you know, it wasn’t that I had gone to see him and he brushed me off, it wasn’t that sort of thing. I think Stan was feeling that we didn’t want him in Victoria and he wasn’t very happy with us. When I got to Stan and went to that Newport School and talked to him and when he came here and talked to our Development Society and I would have met him at that Nurses’ night meeting, Stan and I always got on all right.
How about some of the others, Beresford Calverley and Dermot Ryan?
TL: Oh Dermot I always found a nice guy and very easy to get on with.
Got any stories you can tell about him?
TL: No, all I can say is I didn’t spend much time at the credit union Schools once Sydney came here because I was trying to get right out of it once we got the Association here on its own feet. We reckon we had the Association virtually on its own feet before they came, so I was getting right out of that.
They used to invite you to AFCUL and things like that when Dermot was Chief Executive Officer.
TL: Well if they invited me …
You did attend, there is a couple of occasions you gave an Address.
TL: I went to one up here in Warburton. That’s right, I went to that one. But I only went up there and spoke, I didn’t stay the week-end and get into whatever went on at night or day-time, lunch times, or anything like that. I can recall that when I went to Warburton I was invited by Dermot and there was a good crowd there. I forget what I spoke on, but it was published anyway what I did speak on. Dermot afterwards was very pleased with what I said, I can recall that. Whether he meant it or not I don’t know, but he said he was.
When they started the historical co-operative they always wanted to try and get you involved in that as well.
TL: Well, I have had no direct contacts from anybody about the historical. I have had whatever leaflets or that they send out, I think I only had them once or twice, so that is all right. I am not a great history man.
You feel as Henry Ford did.
TL: I think today and tomorrow is more important than yesterday.
End Tape 2A: 3,780 Words: 1 hour 35 minutes.
25 FEBRUARY 1992: INTERVIEWER RICHARD RAXWORTHY: TALKING WITH TED LONG
Your role with quite a number of organisations, particularly on the co-operative side, you mentioned the Co-operative Development Society, what was your main involvement on that?
TL: I was Secretary of the Co-operative Development Society for the whole of its existence from 1961 to 1970 and that was to do with convening regional conferences of credit unions until about 1966 and deciding questions of principle and policy which should be followed by different co-operatives. We were very keen that they all uphold the basic principles of co-operatives and especially we were trying to get them to interested in the principle where one co-operative should help another co-operative. The Co-operative Development Society also sought to get a co-operative movement representative on the Co-operative Societies Advisory Council and I was appointed to that in 1969 and stayed it until 1989. In that role it didn’t do a lot for co-operatives but one thing we did put a fair bit of time into over those years was trying to get improvements to legislation. As usual that was very slow. During the period 1961 to 1970, apart from convening regional conferences of credit societies and of other co-operatives which were held in places like Melbourne, Morwell, Geelong, Camperdown, we did initiate action to form an association of trading co-operatives in Victoria and that one formed in 1968. Unfortunately that association never became very active and when the Co-operative Federation was formed in 1970, the trading association gradually ceased to operate and was liquidated later on. The Co-operative Federation came into being in 1970 and took over the role that the Co-operative Development Society had followed up to then. The Co-operative Development Society, as it said it would, then went into voluntary liquidation feeling that its job had been done and it was up to the Co-operative Federation from there on to look after such things as the promotion of new co-operatives, the promotion of co-operative education and so on.
And what about the various premises that the Association of Catholic Credit Societies and later on VCCA had that you remember?
TL: Well to start with the Association of Catholic Credit Societies would have just used the address of the Terminating Housing Societies, firstly the YCW Co-operative Society and secondly the Terminating Housing Societies.
Where were they?
TL: They were both in A’Beckett Street, Melbourne. The YCW Co-operative Society itself, when it started trading in 1949, it worked from temporary premises, or from old premises, at the back of St Frances Church, known as the old Catholic Welfare Home. It was in 1960 that we moved into our own building in A’Beckett Street which we had purchased and renovated. We stayed there until the Co-operative Society sold the building and moved out in 1989. The Association of Catholic Credit Societies, after leaving the YCW Co-operative’s address in A’Beckett Street, 157 A’Beckett Street, would have had its address at 49 A’Beckett Street which was the Security Housing Society’s address. After that the VCCA, no it was after the Association of Catholic Credit Societies became the VCCA that it moved to its own address at 69 Wellington Street, Windsor.
Now, you had nothing to do with that?
TL: I had nothing to do with the 69 Wellington Street move at all. Correction there, they had another address before Wellington Street, they had an address, I can’t give you the address but it is off St Kilda Road, but it was another address in between. It would have been rented accommodation.
Was there a Credit Union Advisory Committee in Victoria, or was it all a Co-operative Advisory Committee?
TL: To start with there was only the Co-operative Advisory Committee, or Council, but later there was a Credit Societies Advisory body set up. I am not sure what year that came in, but that came in because of the special financial requirements facing credit societies. I was not on that, they would have had nominees from the VCCA appointed by the Government.
Let us turn to the YCW again if we may, can you outline how it was run and your part in it and your work with the Board and the various Chairmans that you had?
TL: Yes, well the second Chairman of YCW was William F Davey and he continued as Chairman from say about 1951 until the late 60s. He was succeeded by Mr Phillip Perkins and then he in turn was succeeded by Mr Paul Rankin. Mr Paul Rankin has been succeeded by Mr John Luckman.
How did you get on with them, were you able to work well with all of them or did you have to do battle?
TL: No, I found each of them very capable and certainly it was practical to work with each of them. Each of them has served for a fairly lengthy period.
I completed a form here to try and work out the length.
TL: 1948 to 1952, I was wrong there, one year out there. 1952 to 1968.
This is merely of the Directors’ Register.
TL: This would be right. 1969 to 1975. Well the dates again, I was Chairman from 1948 to 1952, Bill Davey from 1952 to 1968, Phil Perkins from 1969 to 1975, Paul Rankin from 1975 to 1990 and John Luckman has just taken over in 1990.
Can you correct that Secretaries and Managers, I have got a bit of a muck up there and I am short of a number of dates?
TL: Well, I can certainly correct that in writing for you, but I would have to look up the Minute Book to give you the exact dates. Frank McCann would have been the first Secretary/Manager and I would have taken over as Secretary once I joined the staff which was either 1951 or 1952. Frank would have continued as Manager then and I would have been Manager and Secretary after Frank left in 1978. Des Ryan is Secretary/Manager from 1986 to now.
The YCW Trading Co-operative at the present moment only seems to deal in working clothes and school uniforms and to some extent insurance and holidays. Have they dealt in other things before?
TL: Yes, they certainly have dealt in a large variety of household goods and in school furniture. The YCW Co-operative when it first came in and started trading in 1949 it was essentially selling household furniture. This was very much meeting the needs of members of our Co-operative Housing Societies. We sold everything from prime cost items for the home to kitchen utensils, including floor coverings, bedding, the various items of furniture, then also the white goods. When I mentioned prime cost items these included stoves and baths and that sort of thing. So you could get pretty anything you wanted.
I notice thought that trading co-operatives in Australia have generally died off somewhat. I know they have all over the world, in Britain as well. Have you any ideas on that, do you feel that they haven’t kept up with the times, or what?
TL: Well just before I answer that, just to tell you the other things that we handled apart from the household goods. A few years after we started we found that a lot of our parents were finding the cost of schooling was a considerable item and one of the things was school desks for schools. So we went into the design and manufacture of school desks and were able to cut the price with design improvements and consequent improvement in price. This became a big business for us for a number of years. Gradually everyone else caught up with that and there was no need for us to carry on, and also fashions changed and the more normal type of school furniture was changed drastically into much more modern sort of stuff. So that business went out as far as we were concerned. In 1964, arising out of one of the Regional Schools of Credit Unions a need was expressed for something to be done about bringing competition into the supply of school uniforms, so a big business was built up in that. That today is our major business. Over the years the furniture supply and distribution changed a lot. Discount houses even came into that area and there was no need for us to continue in the field of white goods and furniture because many suppliers were now supplying these things on a discount basis. So rather than carry stocks of things that weren’t wanted as a central base we discontinued our supply of those things. So today the Co-operative is dealing mainly in school uniforms and work uniforms and in some sporting goods and a limited amount of school furniture and certainly an insurance agency and a holiday home. To comment on your other question as to are trading co-operatives on the way out, well certainly they are in a time of great difficulty. The question of providing needs of members is difficult to see the need to day when you have got such a variety of supply from the ordinary commercial market. There apparently still is a need in some areas but it is possible that the future of co-operatives might have to switch more to providing services for the community rather than goods. Whether this is a need, only time itself will tell, but industry has changed and like in the financial world the deregulation has made a change there, well so has the ability of co-operatives to compete with other flexible commercial enterprises. Having regard to the need for greater capital to compete, I think it requires co-operatives giving a lot of thought to where their future lies.
Now we must turn to some of the questions that Des Ryan mentioned. We have just about covered a number of the first ones re the YCW Co-operative Society Limited, but one is what contribution has the Co-operative made to education in co-operatives?
TL: The YCW Co-operative Society has made a considerable contribution to education in co-operatives. It was, together with the Terminating Housing Societies, the main contributor to whatever costs were born by the Co-operative Development Society in promoting conferences and Schools and in publishing information on co-operatives. It also bore a fair part of the cost of publishing The Co-operator over a fair period of time, which was a magazine conveying information on co-operatives. Then, through its contribution to the Co-operative Development Society, it also helped to produce quarterly bulletins for co-operatives. Apart from that its staff, principally myself and the voluntary effort of other people in their spare time, put a lot of effort into the promotion of cottage discussions and home discussions to do with the formation of credit societies. In fact I think a number of credit societies formed in Victoria before the State Association took over the Association of Credit Societies in this State was something like ninety. When you put all that together, the YCW can claim to have made a pretty big contribution to the development of co-operatives in Victoria and especially to the development of credit co-operatives from a period when they were virtually unknown in this State.
I suppose that would cover also other co-operatives that have been started by the YCW?
TL: Yes, well I think it is important to mention two specifically, they did play a big part in forming the Association of Credit Societies and they did form a big part in forming the Co-operative Federation of Victoria. The fact that the Co-operation Federation of Victoria is not active at the moment, it having vacated the field of action to allow Victorian co-operatives to form a division of the remodelled Australian Association of Co-operatives, doesn’t mean that the effort wasn’t worth while. It just means that a different formula has been worked out for a different attempt now, but they are carrying on the same work as was intended to be carried on by the Federation. The YCW Co-operative itself has played its part, they have always had a representative on the Board of the Co-operative Federation of Victoria and now on the AAC.
All the different activities in co-operatives that you were involved in, the credit co-operatives and the others, must have taken up a great deal of your time over the years. I know it has given you a living too, but have you found that this has been hard on your family, hard on your health, or has it always been an unalloyed pleasure so to speak?
TL: Well certainly I have regarded it as being a very enjoyable occupation, I have enjoyed working in co-operatives. I have met so many people who are what you would term ‘good’ people. People who have a sense of trying to do something to help someone else.. People who give meaning to the idea of co-operatives being non-profit organisations, of trying to get people to help one another. On the other hand, I must confess, any co-operative, and I have been associated with the start of quite a few, has taken a long long time to get beyond the stage of getting out of the formation period and I think the same applies to starting a co-operative as would apply to starting your own business, that is you work some years before you can expect to get anything like reasonable working hours and you certainly work longer hours than normal. Throughout my working time I suppose I have regarded the co-operative as if it was my own and therefore I have put a lot of hours into beyond what would be normal and it certainly has been hard on my wife Maureen and naturally on the family. But that’s something she has put up with very well and something I hope hasn’t militated too much against the children, the eight of them. I don’t think I would refuse the office if I had them again.
Is there anything in particular that you can pick out of which you are proud which you were involved in?
TL: Well, I look at what the position is today and I suppose the thing that does make you feel a bit of pride sometimes is when somebody meets you somewhere and they introduce you to their son or daughter or someone and say, ‘That’s Ted Long and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have had a house.’ Now that is an exaggeration, but you sometimes like to hear things like that.
Well thank you very much Mr Ted Long.
End Tape 2B: 2446 Words: 1 hour.