Club History 1892-1992
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Club History 1892-1992 SECTION 4 (Chapters 11 to 13) In the 1990s the Club ‘commissioned’ the late Flight Lieutenant Murray Adams and the late Lieutenant Colonel Peter Charlton to compile a book that outlined the history of the United Service Club from its founding in 1892 to its centenary in 1992. Writing the Club’s history had been planned and abandoned many times in previous years, and researching this compilation was a challenging task as our record-keeping was less than fastidious and much deduction and reliance on memories were required. The book is now out of stock. As we hold no more copies of the book, this electronic version was prepared in January 2016 to enable today’s Members to appreciate the stories and personalities of the Club’s first 100 years . There are some recurring themes across the years that may resonate today, eg membership, finances, social functions, catering quality and property proposals. Almost all the original format has been faithfully retained, including page-breaks, (to the limit of our volunteer’s ability) with a few minor and inconsequential variations here and there. It is presented in pdf format after scanning, Optical Character Recognition (OCR,) and conversion to Word format, then to pdf. As the consolidated version is over 7Mb in size, the book is presented here in pdf format split into five sections for shorter downloads. We may have missed an occasional typographical error for which our volunteer apologises and blames on the OCR and the manual conversion processes combined with his unfortunate level of attention to detail. File: History. Club History Book.section 4. Chapter 11 to 13. v1. Jan 2016. RM CHAPTER ELEVEN Enter the Associates Throughout its history, service rank distinction has never been particularly important in the United Service Club. A junior officer, even one of the most brief seniority, could expect to be treated equally to a member who had been a brigadier or a general. The only deference expected was, in the words of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, ‘the natural deference that youth owes to age’. Occasionally, however, some curious disputes arose over the privileges that pertain, not so much to ranks, but to positions within the Club. Take, for example, the matter of the vice president’s car park position, decided at a meeting in October 1965. At the time the vice president was Lieutenant Colonel Cameron who was also convenor of the house and finance sub-committee. In this latter role, rather than as vice president per se, Cameron had occasion to visit the Club more often than most other committee members. Because of this, suggested the president, Brigadier McEachern, the committee might consider the provision of a separate car park next to the president’s car park. Flight Lieutenant Tuckfield, an active contributor to committee discussions, was not so sure. The members, he thought, might not accept the idea. This view was supported by Lieutenant Commander Vidgen, who said there was already a feeling among members regarding free car parking facilities. And, added Tuckfield, was the position being made available to the vice president, or to the convenor of the house and finance sub-committee? Although both positions were held by the same person at that time, this position easily could change. The weighty matter of the vice president’s car park position was put to the vote and by a margin of two, carried.* By 1966, the possible disposal of the Green House was something of a dead issue. The various proposals put forward in the early part of the decade had lapsed, partly because of excessive optimism on the part of the potential developers and partly because of the economic conditions at the time. The sub-committee set up to *In one of those curious coincidences of Club life, the question of car parking privileges occurred while the authors were lunching in the snack bar during the preparation of this book. Why, asked one member at lunch, did the immediate past president warrant a car park? Gentle discussion followed for a moment or two until it was pointed out to the questioning member - ironically by Lieutenant Richard Cameron - that one way he could ensure a parking position as immediate past president was to run for the office of president himself. Discussion then lapsed. Now the immediate past president is also a member of the executive sub-committee, whose members are constantly at the Club for the Club. 150 Enter the Associates consider proposals for the Green House settled into a kind of benign state, to be revived from time to time and then at never more than the suggestion level. As well, the members were well aware that they had assets of considerable value in the Club’s property including the Green House; they were in no hurry to develop these assets or to allow others to profit from the foresight of their predecessors. Running through the discussions on the use of the Green House, from the very early days of its occupancy by the Moreton Club, was the possibility of its conversion to a ladies annex. This would have filled several requirements: firstly, it would have offered ladies somewhere for afternoon tea after shopping or other pursuits; secondly, it would have gone some of the way towards solving the vexed question of women in the Club. The proposal to convert part of the Green House into a ladies annex had been aired at the 1965 general meeting. As Lieutenant Colonel Little pointed out, the idea was by no means new; it had been first proposed in 1946, 20 years before, and rejected then. Now, however, the mood of the members had changed. Several speakers cautiously supported the idea and even suggested that ladies might be admitted as associate members. As was so often the case, it was Little who moved the motion; now the procedures were under way. It was a tortuous process. When the matter was first aired in sub-committee, the wretched question of car parking arose. If the ladies were allowed to use the annex, would they also be allowed to use the car park? And if this was the case, members should be told. That information had better be included in the circular. Would the ladies be allowed to drink liquor in the annex? This was another important question, and one with clear licensing implications. Did the Club’s liquor licence actually extend to the Green House premises? A moot point, but one which could have embarrassing consequences. Would members support the idea of their ladies being able to drink in the Club? Some sub-committee members appear, from the minutes at least, to have some quaintly old-fashioned ideas about the drinking habits of their ladies. Another problem for the sub-committee; another proposition to be put to members. Finally, after some months of hard work, some questions for members were formulated. It seems that this process was akin to a medieval scholar examining a text, such was the care and consideration (not to mention the slow speed of the process). The questions, however, were simple and clear: Are you in favour of establishing a ladies annex? If so, are you in favour of amending the rules to include associate members? Would you be prepared to nominate your wife or any other eligible person? Members had some useful information upon which to base their decisions. If the 151 United Service Club, Queensland Club wanted to establish a Ladies Annex, then the Green House was the only possible place. No suitable alternative existed. There were considerable costs involved. One alternative, of taking over part of the ground floor, meant capital spending of about £2500 would be needed to take over a portion of the ground floor; running costs of this area , including the repayment of capital and allowing for rental loss, would be about £1600. The second alternative was rather more expensive. It proposed using the function room, in addition to the first proposal. Another £500 was required. Quite simply, for either proposal to work, the ladies needed to be attracted to the Club, not just for afternoon tea, but also for luncheon. To have the ladies in for lunch would mean the provision of meals and liquor. This could not be done without creating a new class of Club member, that of associate, otherwise, under the licensing laws, ladies would have to be accompanied by members when visiting the Club. That was not the idea at all. Eligibility for associate members was relatively straight-forward: ‘wives of members; widows of deceased members; ladies who hold or have held a commission in the Armed Forces of any Commonwealth country’.* Here seemed to be an important breakthrough, not just for the wives and widows of members, but also for women who could join the Club in their own right, albeit as associate members, so long as they held the same qualifications for membership as the male members - ‘hold or have held a commission in the armed forces of any Commonwealth country’. At a time now when human rights legislation has forced other clubs to examine the question of female members, it is significant that the United Service Club, admittedly in a circuitous fashion, was looking at the issue a quarter of a century earlier. The proposal to offer associate membership to ladies holding a commission in the armed forces was, however, dropped before it got to the annual meeting. The membership sub-committee examined the question of admitting ladies who had held commissions in March 1969, and decided against the proposal.