Geoffrey Remington (1897-1968): a Most Unusual Citizen
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Geoffrey Remington (1897-1968): a most unusual citizen Carmel Jane Maguire A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of New South Wales April 2012 CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent had been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. ……………………………………….. Carmel Maguire ii Frontispiece Geoffrey Cochrane Remington 1897-1968 iii ABSTRACT Developments over the past fifty years in the craft of life writing have opened new possibilities and new challenges for biographers. Historical sources have become much more accessible through digitization of files, especially when they are made available through online indexes if not full texts. There have been shifts in understandings of what constitutes biography. No longer can any topic in a subject’s life can be kept off limits. At the same time, there is a healthy and widespread realization, largely derived from postmodern ideas, that no biography can be definitive. Not only is it impossible to gather all the facts of anyone’s life, however voluminous the sources, the truth contained in them remains open to interpretation. So with Geoffrey Remington. Born into a privileged family, Geoffrey Remington’s youth was marked by tragedy in the suicide of his father in 1908; for the effect on him there is no direct evidence. He was educated largely in private schools and qualified as a solicitor in 1923. Comfortably wealthy all his life, he volunteered a large part of his time and effort to the service of others. The reason for this compulsion to service, he claimed he could never identify. The evidence of its existence is to be found in his deeds. His most sustained and energetic campaign was the Free Library Movement which resulted in the Library Act 1939 to enable establishment of free public libraries in New South Wales, supported by local and state government funds.. He served as a Trustee of the Public Library of New South Wales from the 1930s and on the Library Board of New South Wales from its inception. His interest in public administration stemmed from his belief in democracy and especially in the need for better government. In World War II he served as a Commonwealth public servant in the Department of War Organization of Industry and then in a United Nations agency. Anxious to influence better standards in the management of Australian business and industry as in the public service, he pursued a campaign through Rotary, which brought about the Australian Administrative Staff College in Mt Eliza in 1956. His incompatibility with the first principal, Sir Douglas Copland, set the stage for a bitter battle of wills. He sought through the Institute of Public Administration and the Australian Institute of Political Science to bring about improvement not only in the quality of public servants but also in the quality of politicians and their policies. He cultivated the famous, and the young, and the talented and many who had not necessarily any of these qualities. With Sir Herbert Gepp he found employment for several European Jewish refugees who arrived in the 1930s. His reputation in dealing with commercial clients in his law practice earned him many directorships. At the same time his life was marked by his respect for labour as well as capital, and got on well with left-wing trade union officials. In his youth he was attracted to the ideas of Fabian socialism, influenced by Beatrice and Sidney Webb and by friends who were London School of Economics graduates. He was partisan in neither politics nor religion. A man of supreme confidence and something of a bon viveur, he entertained in his several clubs, lived life to the full and urged others to do likewise. Awarded a CMG in 1960, Remington earned the view of some of his nominators that he was ‘a most unusual citizen’. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to many people who have helped me over the years in which I have worked on this thesis. Dr Heather Radi began the project when she asked me to write an entry for Remington in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. After reading his papers at the Mitchell Library I became convinced that his life would be well worth a full biography. I was very fortunate that Associate Professor Anne O’Brien agreed to be my supervisor in the doctoral program at University of New South Wales and that Dr Beverley Kingston became my co-supervisor. To both of them I owe immense gratitude. I was fortunate to have spoken several times to Geoffrey Remington’s daughter, Susan, before her untimely death in 2003, and with her cousin, June Lamb. June was the daughter of Remington’s sister, Doris. Susan gave me some of her memories of her father and press clippings about him, as well as names of some of her father’s associates and of two of her own friends. Those friends, Elizabeth Bowman and Brian France, were generous to me in interviews. Probably in 1970, the late John Metcalfe used to pay unscheduled visits to my study when I worked in the School of Librarianship which he founded at the University of New South Wales. His stories sometimes involved Remington and what they had done in their so-called railway crusades around country New South Wales drumming up support for the Free Library Movement. Memory of the anecdotes has faded but I do recall Metcalfe’s obvious regard for Remington and his sadness at his loss. I am very grateful too to the late Professor Wilma Radford, generally for her leadership in the School of Librarianship and especially for her enthusiasm for my writing about Remington. I remember the two of us crouched over an ancient reel to reel tape machine in the oral history section of the State Library, trying to discern what he was saying on the tapes he made in 1964. Two other great ladies of Australian librarianship, Pauline Fanning (very recently deceased at 97) and Dulcie Penfold, were informative and entertaining in the interviews they gave me. Bill Thorn, an esteemed colleague from the National Library in the 1950s and 1960s, has helped me with his knowledge of events and sources. I am grateful too to Helen Woodward, who was in place to observe the stresses caused when local government adoptions of the Library Act outstripped the resources in books and staff available to serve the new libraries. Helen’s work over many years contributed a great deal to the quality of public libraries in New South Wales, and I was fortunate to be able to tap some of her wisdom. I continue to benefit from the wise counsel of Dr Russell Cope, for many years Parliamentary Librarian of the State. Dr David J. Jones has always been generous in sharing knowledge with me from the time that he was one of my students in the postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship at the University of New South Wales. For this thesis, he has shared with me access to useful documents and his profound knowledge of the life and times of W.H. Ifould, Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales, for many years up to World War II. Sir Laurence Street, to whom Remington had given some of his first briefs as a young barrister, was also generous in allowing me to interview him. Remington became acquainted with Sir Laurence’s grandfather, Sir Philip Street, when they used to meet at art auction viewings in search of the etchings which they both collected. I am indebted to many State Library of New South Wales staff, especially Mark Hildebrand and the late and wonderful Arthur Easton. Dr Ann Maree Schwirtlich and Margy Burn at the National Library of Australia have also been very helpful. At the end of this long list, I acknowledge the amazing support of my dear sisters and of my friends who, though all have probably been tempted, have never abandoned hope that I would one day finish this work. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Declaration ii Frontispiece iii Abstract iv Acknowledgements v Chapter One: Introduction 1 Part I. The making of the man Chapter Two: His father’s world 30 Chapter Three: From boy to man 55 Part II. Libraries for the People Chapter Four: The Free Library Movement 87 Chapter Five: Authority, collegiality and effrontery 158 Part III. Adventures in public administration Chapter Six: Remington’s War 190 Chapter Seven: Mt Eliza 218 Chapter Eight: The end of a full life 251 Chapter 9. Conclusion: Remington: “The man who saw what needed to be done and did it” 276 Bibliography 288 Appendix 1 Free Library Movement: Broadcasts 302 Appendix 2 “The light that never fails” 304 vi Chapter 1 Introduction Scope This work sets out to give an account of the life of Geoffrey Cochrane Remington 1897-1968, and, in so doing, also to throw light on the worlds in which he moved. His life encompassed the change of status from colonies to nation brought about by Federation. He lived through two world wars and absorbed cultural, economic and social changes, the effects of which came up little short of revolutions. Throughout the period beliefs about nationhood, politics, education, poverty, women, race, the natural environment – in effect about every aspect of human life in Australia and in the world in general – constantly grew and changed.