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. Hobsbawm has dubbed the twentieth century ‘the age of extremes’ and describes ‘the extraordinary scale and impact of the economic, social and cultural transformation’ as ‘the greatest, most rapid and most fundamental in recorded history.’1

Remington lived through this age of extremes. For nearly all his working life he was a solicitor who was based in Sydney and whose practice was very largely based in commercial law. However, the span of his interests and interventions was worlds wider. Commitment to public service is the attribute which comes most clearly in this account of his life. The English biographer, Hermione Lee, believes that there is one key word in any biography.2 The key word for this account of Remington’s life could be service. One of the purposes of this biography is to probe the sources of his

1 Eric Hobsbawm, The age of extremes: a history of the world 1914-1991. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994, p. 8 2 Hermione Lee, Body parts: essays on life-writing. London: Pimlico, 2008, p.80

1 desire to serve the community. He wanted the Australian community to be both better governed and better educated and he was acutely conscious of the strong association between the two. His interests in both public administration and public libraries are therefore not surprising. In the reminiscences which he taped in 1964 at the request of Principal Librarian Gordon Richardson of the State Library of New

South Wales, Remington says that he rejected the idea of service either as a member of Parliament or as a public servant. At the same time he claimed that he had no understanding of why he was motivated to have his say publicly on the great political and social issues of the day.3

It is not clear whence his commitment to public service was derived, but its origins can be traced to his parents and the strong faith and morals inculcated in his childhood home. His mother had come from an Australian family with ancestry of colonial prestige in George Johnston, a First Fleet officer whose colorful career resulted in large land grants and a large family.4 Geoffrey Remington’s father had risen from clerk to captain-of-industry status since arrival in the colony. He migrated from

Northern Ireland with his Anglo Irish Protestant parents in 1863 when he was thirteen years old. He began work immediately and worked from early on in the insurance business. He was a public-spirited employer, much concerned with the further education of the young men on his staff as shown by the firm’s house journal which he edited.5 He was much engaged with community organizations, such as the

Freemasons, and he served for many years in the New South Wales Regiment of

3 G.C.Remington, Audio tapes, recorded at his home in Woollahra, August 1964. Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6 4 A.T. Yarwood, ‘Johnston, George (1764-1823)’, Austalian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/johnston-george- 2277/text2925, accessed 6 March 2012 5 See, for example, Mutual Life Chronicle, v.5 no.165 (1 July 1902): p.[73]

2 Volunteer Artillery. In 1892 he married the daughter of his boss in the insurance company in which he had attained the rank of general manager. His wife was 18 years his junior and seems to have conformed to the insight from Penny Russell that

‘nineteenth century marriage demanded an unquestioning transference of loyalty from the parental family to the husband’.6 She proved a loyal wife and a loving mother in the little memory preserved of her in family lore. The nurturing in their children of an obligation to serve would not be surprising.

The family lived in a fine house and grounds on Sydney’s North Shore, and while plays and pageants with neighbouring children were not unknown, the family and their servants took part in prayers and Bible readings as part of the household’s daily routine. In these, the young Geoffrey heard the Christian ideal of serving one’s neighbour. The head of the house was an outstanding success in business and a force in the community, and he was no doubt ‘the moral arbiter’ of the boyhood world of

Geoffrey and his brothers.7 The effect of his death by suicide when Remington was not quite twelve years old can only be conjectured as neither he nor anyone else left direct evidence of its effect. His mother wore only black clothes from the day of her husband’s death, according to a family source. This gives at least some inkling of the profound effect of his death on her.8 There is no doubt that his father had been a powerful influence on his family and his authority and, to some extent, his reputation were abruptly removed by his suicide.

6 Penny Russell, ‘Introduction’ For richer, for poorer. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1994, p.10. 7 This is a phrase describing Hancock’s father, borrowed from Jim Davidson A three-cornered life: the historian WK Hancock. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010, p.503. The life spans of WK.Hancock 1898- 1988 and GC Remington 1897-1968 were similar except for Hancock’s extra 20 years of longevity. 8 June Lamb to C. Maguire, Private communication, 11 April 2002. Mrs Lamb was the niece of G.C. Remington

3 Inculcation of the idea of obligation to serve would have been continued in the schools he attended and their influence in the shaping of his character might well have increased after the death of his father Geoffrey Remington was educated in private schools. He first attended small local schools in the neighbourhood near the family home and, after his father’s death, he went to country boarding schools before returning to Sydney to finish his secondary education as a ‘day boy’. The ethos of the private schools founded in colonial Australia in the later nineteenth century carried on the tradition established by Dr Arnold at Rugby. His influence was carried far and wide throughout the British Empire and through many modifications, if not perversions.9 The schools established in the nineteenth century by or under the influence of the Anglican and other Protestant denominations, might have begun with religious impulses but, after Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, Crotty has pointed out that ‘The nation, rather than God, became the dominant paradigm’.10 But service remained a key component of their public ethos. They emphasised the development of character and, seeing the school as a microscosm of the world, sought to develop high standards of duty, honour and service.11 Remington and his older brother attended three different private schools, one in Sydney and the others elsewhere in New South Wales. They were boarders at Tudor House in the Southern

Highlands and at The Armidale School, and day pupils at the Sydney Church of

England Grammar School, known as ‘Shore’.

9 See, for example, the account of J.R. Darling’s attempt to convince not only the parents and students at Geelong Grammer that the annual boat race was ‘an ignoble perversion of traditional public school ideals’. Peter Gronn, ‘”Will anything ever be done?”: Geelong Grammar School and the Associated Public Schools Head of the River in the 1930s’ Australian Historical Studies v.26 no.103(1991):242- 261) 9 Martin Crotty, Making the Australian male: middle-class masculinity 1870-1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001, p.28 & pp.88-89. 10 Martin Crotty, Making the Australian male, p.24. 11 C.E.W. Bean, Here, my son: an account of the independent and other corporate boys’ schools of Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950, p.96

4 Remington was likely to have absorbed elements of the service ethos from the military training of his youth. He was credited with having had two years military training when he enlisted in the Army in 1918.12 A universal military training scheme came into effect in Australia in June 1911 with the Defence Act 1903-1910.

Shortly after the Second World War, C.E.W. Bean, the official war historian, was impressed that, when seeking officers in both World Wars, ‘commanders naturally chose largely from the corporate schools’.13 There is nothing to suggest that

Geoffrey Remington did not share Bean’s pride that ‘Since the colonization of

Australia patriotism has always deeply influenced its colonists’.14

If warfare was to be the test of private school education, such a test was soon to hand.

Few Australian families of all classes and degrees of pride in their British heritage were untouched by the World War 1914-1918. 60,000 Australian soldiers were killed and 150,000 wounded on the battlefields of Europe, Africa and the

Dardanelles15. Brian Lewis, as a middle-class private school boy in Melbourne, noted that by 1916 ‘gallantry was a word that meant nothing’ and by 1918, after one of his four soldier brothers had been killed and another wounded, he had realized that

‘It had been a sordid war and still was.’16 In Sydney, the effect on Remington himself and his comfortably rich upper middle class family was profound. His elder brother, Harry, was not killed but he was seriously wounded in France in 1918. The long term effects on his brother who was two years older, and on his mother and

12 Geoffrey Cochrane Remington, ‘Attestation paper of persons enlisted for service abroad’, ‘Application to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force’. ‘Conduct sheet’ ‘Trainee section’, ‘Australian Imperial Force training card’, National Archives of Australia, Series B2455 Item 8028394 consulted 19 September 2009. 13 C.E.W. Bean, Here, my son: an account of the independent and other corporate boys’ schools of Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950, p.201. 14 C.E.W. Bean, Here, my son, p.192. 15 George Odgers, 100 years of Australians at war. Sydney: Lansdowne, 1999, p.38 16 Brian Lewis, Our war. Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1981, p.236 and p.360.

5 himself, again can only be sketched in accordance with sparse reports of later events.

It is evident, however, that within a few years Geoffrey had taken over the role of head of the family. His brother died on his grazing property in the west of New

South Wales between Quirindi and Coonabarabran in 1935. He was 40 years old.

His early death lends weight to the surmise that he never entirely recovered from his wounds.17

Remington was of course profoundly affected by the events of his time, not only the great wars but other much subtler changes which impinged on his outlook on the world and on his immediate milieu. As Leon Edel points out:

No lives are led outside history or society; they take place in human time. No biography is complete unless it reveals the individual within history, within an ethos and a social complex.18

Political events in New South Wales in the 1930s, including controversy over the so- called ‘Lang years’ and the New Guard, particularly stirred the legal and academic communities. Remington corroborated with industrialist, Herbert Gepp, in his writings on government and took extraordinary pains in overseeing the publication of

Democracy’s danger by Angus & Robertson in 1939 for which Gepp paid.19

Remington’s daughter recalled family stories of evening meetings in his home and in those of his associates. Remington was associated with the founding of the United

Australia Party (UAP). He was President of the Constitutional Association of New

17 Geoffrey Remington’s daughter, who died in 2003, in one of our informal conversations intimated obliquely that suicide could have been a Leitmotiv in the Remington family. Davidson reports that Hancock, beginning work on the Smuts biography, took ‘the biographer’s customary precaution of getting to the elderly quickly’ (Davidson, A three-cornered life, p.344. The excuse for my dalliance in not having spoken nearly enough to Susan Remington is that at her age, which was very near my own, I did not regard her as ‘elderly’. 18 Leon Edel, Writing lives: principia biographica. New York: Norton, 1984, p.14 19 Herbert Gepp, Democracy’s danger. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1939.

6 South Wales20, and worked to recruit members of the Australian Institute of Political

Science as well as helping to found the New South Wales Group of the Australian

Institute of Public Administration. His outlook from early manhood can perhaps be tagged ‘progressive’, in the sense that Michael Roe delineates in his lives of nine post

World War I progressives.21 Among the ‘individuals who carried progressive influences into many fields’, Roe lists Herbert Gepp, metallurgist, captain of industry, ardent nationalist and publicist. Remington admired him greatly and expended much time and effort in assisting in publication of some of his articles and his book.22

While Roe’s description of the origins and outlook of the ‘progressives’ refers to an earlier generation, it fits Remington very well. He was a bourgeois professional

‘anxious to shape society as [he] believed best’, and keen to embrace Australian nationalism as a way of raising his profile as a figure in society. Like Roe’s progressives he was a traveller who embraced the wider world.23 As World War II threatened, he tried to find positions for European Jews and he reached out to the

Japanese business community in Sydney.

Remington’s anxiety to shape society as he believed best found many outlets, but his greatest efforts went into public libraries and public administration. By the early

1930s Remington, settled in his practice and in married life, was ready for a wider world than the law. He set out to find program material for his quest to improve

20 Stuart Macintyre, 1901-1942: the succeeding age. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986 (The Oxford History of Australia, vol.4) p.228: ‘The spectre of Bolshevism called forth a variety of right- wing movements dedicated to the defence of the established order’. Among them were the Empire and Loyalty League, the King and Empire Alliance and Constitutional Associations. 21 Michael Roe, Nine Australian progressives: vitalism in bourgeois social thought, 1890-1960. St Lucia, Q.: University of Queensland Press, 1984. 22 B.E. Kennedy, ‘Gepp, Sir Herbert William (1877-1954)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, v.8. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981, pp 640-642 23 M. Roe, p.318

7 society, and, partly by accident and partly by design, he found it in public libraries and to public administration.

Since libraries were his main contribution to public service through the Free Library

Movement, this biography sheds light on existing histories, especially those which refer to the Movement. There are broad outlines of Australia’s mixed experiences on its path to public libraries. The text on libraries in Australia, produced initially by

Balnaves in 1966 and followed up by Biskup and Goodman was widely used in

Australian schools of librarianship from the late 1960s to at least the mid 1990s.24

Just after World War II Norman Lynravn, a senior librarian on the staff of the

National Library of Australia, produced a history of libraries in Australia in which he gave the main emphasis to the experience of the army libraries which he had helped to set up during the War.25 In 1971 I responded to an invitation to prepare for an annual publication on advances in librarianship a type of state-of-the-art contribution which emphasized the dual British and American influences on Australian libraries.26

David Jones has made many contributions to the cultural history of public libraries in

Australia, notable for his extensive use of primary sources.27 Jones also wrote as his doctoral dissertation a biography of W.H.Ifould, who, as Principal Librarian of the

Public Library of New South Wales, with Remington and John Metcalfe, played a

24 John Balnaves, Libraries in Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1966; John Balnaves, and Peter Biskup, Libraries in Australia. 2nd edition, completely revised and rewritten by John Balnaves and Peter Biskup. London: Bingley, 1975; Peter Biskup, and Doreen Goodman, Australian libraries. 3rd edition. London: Bingley, 1982. Biskup, Peter, Libraries in Australia by Peter Biskup with the assistance of Doreen M. Goodman. Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, 1994. 25 Norman Lynravn, Libraries in Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1948. 26 Carmel Maguire, ‘Advances in Australian library services’, Advances in librarianship, Edited by Michael H. Harris, vol. 9 (1979): 257-289 27 Two notable examples: David J.Jones,. ‘Public Libraries: “institutions of the highest educational value”’ in Martyn Lyons and John Arnold, editors, A history of the book in Australia, 1891-1945: a national culture in a colonised market. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2001 pp.157-175; David J.Jones, ‘Public Library development in New South Wales’ in Politics of libraries: challenges and realities, ed. by Kerry Smith. Oxford: Chandos Publishing, 2008, pp.71-80

8 major role in the achievement of legislation which facilitated the proliferation of local public libraries in this State.28 The campaign for public libraries in New South

Wales, in which Ifould, Remington and Metcalfe were principal actors, has been described in basic outline by Ida Vincent.29 Ifould planned for a system of public libraries centred on the Public Library with branches in the regions. Remington with

Metcalfe’s less obvious help built the case for enabling local government bodies to set up public libraries in their areas. Rodney Snibson’s Master’s thesis on the Free

Library Movement points up this conflict in which Remington and Metcalfe prevailed in the Library Act of New South Wales in 1939 which served as a model for other

States on similar quests.30 This biography builds on the work of these writers. Since it follows Remington’s life closely it explores some of the fine-grained political dealing that led to the foundation of a public library system, and this lays bare something of the politics of middle class male manners.

Remington was inspired by a report of a survey of Australian libraries sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York carried out in 1934 by Ralph Munn, Director of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh assisted by Ernest R. Pitt, Chief Librarian of the

Public Library of Victoria. The writing of the report was entirely Munn’s work, and his uncompromising prose detailing the deficiencies of Australian library services fired Geoffrey Remington to take up public libraries as a cause and he swiftly enlisted the librarian, John Metcalfe, as a collaborator. Their battle was joined in New South

Wales and resulted in the passing in 1939 of the Library Act in that State. After

28 David J.Jones, W.H. Ifould and the development of library services in New South Wales 1912-1942. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales,1993 29 Ida Vincent, ‘The campaign for public libraries in NSW, 1929-1950’ Libri v.31(1981): 271 293 30 Rodney Paul Snibson, The Free Library Movement in New South Wales 1935-1944. Thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Librarianship, Monash University, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts, 1982

9 World War II, Remington and Metcalfe persuaded nearly all local government authorities to adopt the Act and set up public libraries. Their campaign and

Remington’s ceaseless proselytizing had significant effects in all the Eastern States.

He enlisted help from Rotary, through his own club, and he recognized the potential lobbying power of community organizations, for example the Returned Soldiers

League and the Country Women’s Association. Mrs Ruth Fairfax, the State president of the CWA, was not the only woman enlisted in the cause. Remington also enlisted

Miss Maddox of the Theosophists Society and Thelma Metcalfe, John’s wife, who was, if not an early feminist, at least an early worker for women’s issues. The work of Remington and Metcalfe brought about the legislative foundation and local government acceptance on which the New South Wales system of public libraries was built.

Public administration was the second great interest of Remington’s life. Unlike his choice of public libraries as a major interest, the beginning of his interest in public administration is not easy to identify. Whatever the cause, his participation in public life was fuelled by his lively interest in good government and the necessary conditions for effective democracy. The Constitutional Association of New South Wales was the first body in which he held office.

Perhaps Remington’s greatest achievement in public administration was getting the

Australian Administrative Staff College off the ground. His persuading of captains of Australian industry in Melbourne to donate funds and continue with regular instalments was remarkable. More remarkable still was his persuasion of his brothers in the Rotary Club of Sydney, whose efforts he had engaged in the campaign, to

10 support location of the college in Victoria. Scott and Wanna observe that ‘Public administration in Australia grew slowly out of a constitutional-legal tradition with

British origins, and was informed by the ideas of American administrative science’.31

This dual parentage of ideas for action applies to public libraries as well as many other notions widely accepted in Australia. In fact Remington reviewed the history of comparable bodies in British and the United States and recommended that in

Australia the Institute of Public Administration, of which the New South Wales

Regional Group was inaugurated in 1935, should study both British and U.S. models and pick the best of both.32

This work seeks to represent as accurately as possible the personality and political philosophy of a man born to wealth and privilege, drawn to the ideals of Fabian socialism, an Australian patriot and loyal inheritor of British heritage who was also drawn to the ways of being and doing in the United States. Part of the aim of this work is also to represent the interesting paradox of a man, skilled in the capitalist ways of business who was notably successful as a company director and who had at times proved himself a champion of the workers and at all times worked for the improvement of society generally.

The concept of service

Service is an intriguing concept, related to philanthropy Personal willingness to donate part of one’s wealth to the common good has not been common in Australia.

31 Joanne Scott and John Wanna, ‘Trajectories of public administration and administrative history in Australia: rectifying “a curious blight”’ Australian Journal of Public administration, v.64 no.1 (March 2005): p.12. 32 G.C. Remington, ‘Purposes of the Institute of Public Administration’ Public Administration v.14(January, 1936): p.34

11 Comparisons are often made with the nineteenth century industrialists in the United

States who amassed tremendous wealth and made huge public endowments. The names of Leland Stanford, Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie are among those likely to arise in any discussion. Fortunes made in Australia were smaller, though the extent of some of those amassed here and in the United Kingdom may remain hidden in the labyrinthine ownership networks of the large pastoral companies. 33

Beneficiaries of the latter seem to have taken their money back to the UK and kept it.

Even though not all their ventures were profitable, R.G.Casey railed against the great pastoral landholders for their refusal to contribute to his fundraising on behalf of

Menzies party prior to the 1949 election.34 Perhaps political animosities may have been involved in that case, and generous contributions to Australian life have been made by some of the wealthy pastoral families. Notable among them is the part played by the White family and other pastoralists in the founding of the

University College which evolved into the University of New England in

Armidale, New South Wales.35 The gift of the premises was on White family initiative and eighty per cent of the 130 contributions to the required £10,000 endowment fund raised by public subscription came from wealthy graziers in the region. The heroic effort of raising this sum was that of the local Country Party member of State Parliament and Minister for Education before and after the

33 The Vestey family’s extensive leases included land in Queensland and Western Australia as well as the Northern Territory. They with Bovril were the largest but not the only overseas lessees. F.G.G. Rose, ‘The pastoral industry in the Northern Territory, 1911-53’ Historical Studies, v.6 no.2 (1954):150-172; Peter d’Abbs, The Vestey story. Collingwood, Vic., Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, 1970. 34 W.J. Hudson, Casey. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1986. 35 ‘Booloomimbah’, the magnificent fortyfive room mansion designed by John Horbury Hunt, commissioned by Frederick Robert White one of his Armidale properties, proved difficult to sell after the death of his widow in 1933. In the last months of 1935, the family approved of purchase of the house from the estate by White’s son-in-law, T.R. Forster, to present it to the University of Sydney provided the house and its surrounding property became the nucleus of a university college. M. Jordan, A spirit of true learning: the jubilee history of the University of New England. Sydney UNSW Press, 2004, p.28.

12 Lang Labor government, David Henry Drummond. He regarded as ‘one of the finest features of the campaign. . .the large number of small subscriptions which have come in from people of modest means’.36

Drummond has been described as ‘the University’s principal founder’37 and his energy and enthusiasm for education were also very important to Remington in his campaign for public library legislation in New South Wales. In that campaign, Remington complained about a lack of generosity from the largest

Australian firms when he appealed for funds.38 Personal fortunes were amassed by Australian residents like the staunchly Methodist Ebenezer Vickery whose wealth began in iron and boots and went on to trading and importing, ship owning and coal mines and large leases of land. His estate, sworn for probate at nearly ₤500,000 in

1906, seems puny in comparison with the Carnegie legacies, for example.39 The donations of some of the industrialists and other wealthy benefactors have been regarded as conscience money. That such compensation was due is obvious in some of the early deeds of the latter-day philanthropists. Andrew Carnegie's reputation as an industrialist, for example, may have needed his later huge donations through the

Trusts set up in the United States and in the United Kingdom to atone for some of his earlier deeds.40 Public spirited generosity of less wealthy citizens was widespread in

Australia in the period from the end of the nineteenth century and for the first forty or

36 Jordan, p.31. 37 Jordan, frontispiece. 38 Remington to Tate, 17 October 1936, FLM correspondence files, no.1 file, Letters from A.1 to E.3, 2A Miscellaneous. 39 G.P. Walsh, ‘Vickery, Ebenezer (1827-1906)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University/, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/vickery-ebenezer- 4779/text7953, accessed 31 January 2012 40 Joseph F Wall, Andrew Carnegie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

13 fifty years of the twentieth.41 Australian philanthropy, including Remington’s, has to be measured in the donations of time and talent as well as money to public causes.

Remington himself was sparing in his donations to the many good causes who sought his contributions. As Eva Cox has pointed out, ‘aspects of daily living, such as unpaid production and gifts of time, are not counted as part of the wealth of nations’.42

Service to the community is often achieved through voluntarism. Like the legions of volunteers who contribute their service to the Australian community today, without whom the nation would be much less wealthy, Remington appeared not to count the opportunity costs of his contributions, that is, the costs of not doing possibly lucrative things in the time occupied by voluntary service.43 Oppenheimer’s analysis of

Australian volunteering makes good use of the four broad areas of Smith’s typology and they are useful in trying to characterize Remington’s concept of service.44 In applying Smith’s model to Remington’s life, there are elements of philanthropy, as discussed above. Smith’s second area is mutual aid and self-help, where ‘people come together around a specific need or interest for mutual gain’.45

Remington’s ability to identify and bring together groups and lead them to

41 Donations from the poor have been important in constructing and maintaining some of the great Australian religious buildings. One example from the past is in building St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney (Patrick O’Farrell, St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney 1821-1971. Sydney: Devonshire Press for St Mary’s Cathedral, 1971). A contemporary example is the public appeal for replacement of the roof of St James Anglican Church in Phillip Street Sydney. 42 Eva Cox. A truly civil society. 1995 Boyer lectures. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1995, p.14

43 Remington’s daughter, Susan, objected to my description in the ADB entry of her father’s law practice as ‘prosperous’, and assured me that ‘It did not seem prosperous to us’. 44 Melanie Oppenheimer, Volunteering: we can’t survive without it. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008, p.13; Smith, Justin Davis, ‘Volunteering and social development’, Voluntary action, vol.3 no.1 (Winter 2000): p.11 45 Oppenheimer, p.13

14 pursue common goals is obvious in his work in ad hoc associations like the Free

Library Movement and in established entities like Rotary. Despite his confidence in his leadership skills, he was happy to serve in associations like the

Australian Institute of Political Science and to showcase other people’s skills in the Institute for Public Administration. In his longstanding devotion to Rotary no indication emerges that he sought access to business networks or to ingratiate himself with ‘the big end of town’. His father was for many years Grand Master of

New South Wales Freemasons but there is no existing evidence that Remington ever was active in a lodge and even to have joined one. Whether he was not drawn to the

Craft’s belief in and practice of brotherly self-help is impossible to speculate.

Participation, is another of Smith’s areas and in Remington’s concept of service is represented in the time and energy he expended on behalf of his contributions to the ‘third sector’ organizations which are not part of the public and business sectors and which make a social and political contribution.46. On the other hand, he was not prepared to go without due reward in dealing with bureaucracies in either government or industry. When, as a temporary public servant in World War II, Remington got to practice what he had preached about the need for better public administrators, he made sure that he was rewarded with an appropriate salary. His aim was to enable the provision of the facilities which he strove to have implemented, whether that meant getting decent food to the men in the

Civil Construction Corps camps in World War II or making public libraries accessible to all citizens. There is, however, no doubt that the major ingredient in Remington’s service was the area identified by Smith as campaigning and advocacy.

46 Mark Lyons. Third sector: the contribution of nonprofit and cooperative enterprise in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001, p.5.

15

His talents as an advocate were honed by his study and practice of the law, though perhaps earlier influences lay below his acknowledged persuasiveness and his flair for publicity. Another ingredient in his desire to serve was the conviction of noblesse oblige; the origins probably began with the stern religious principles of his early childhood with the household’s daily prayers. Private schooling would have enhanced his sense of obligation to his country and to his class.

Remington’s ability to write convincing propaganda and make effective speeches may also have been enhanced by both his legal training and the influence of a father whose own writing gives ample proof of mastery of English style and of extensive reading of the classics of English literature. Remington’s gift for public relations may be regarded more a consequence of his own personality which seems to have made no great distinctions between the wealthy and powerful and those with more modest means and less education. Not only were premiers and government ministers persuaded to accept his suggestions so was the neighbour of his seaside house to re- locate his clothes line from interfering with the Remingtons’ scenic view.47 His ambition to serve was also enhanced by his ability to make and usually to retain friends in all the areas of his activities. They ranged from the young and slightly bolshevik like Hartley Grattan, the mildly hysterical like Miss Maddox of the

Theosophists, and the famous like Sydney and Beatrice Webb.

47 Sue Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000.

16 Geoffrey Remington pursued with evangelical zeal possibilities for improvement in society. Study of both his efforts as a progressive reformer and the impact of his society on him are worth exploration at some length.

The business of biography

The flowering of the biographical enterprise in Australia, at least since the 1980s, is both inspiring and daunting. Persons literary, political, and academic have been the subjects of commendable biographies. There is much useful advice available from a wide spread of authors on how to go about the business of biography. At the same time, there is cause for wariness since the warning published by one of the authors widely considered a master of the craft in 1984 that there are ‘singularly few masterpieces’.48

In its widest connotation, biography is ‘the graphic representation of life, in whatever form or medium’.49 The depiction of lives in cinema and television attests to its continuing appeal, an appeal which has been increased by the apparent reality and

‘truth’ of lives so depicted. The writing of biography in academic circles has been strongly influenced by the ideas of Postmodernism. This movement called into question the notion of the definitive account of anyone’s life. Since the 1960s and

1970s the whole question of whether historians can tell the truth about the past has been scrutinized. After their researches on whether history is fiction, two Australian historians, Curthoys and Docker have provided a road map for navigation among the postmodernists and anti-postmodernists. Two of their conclusions have particular

48 Leon Edel, Writing biographica. New York: Norton, 1984, p.24 49 Ian, Donaldson, ‘Introduction’, in Shaping lives: reflections on biography. Edited by Ian Donaldson, Peter Read and James Walter. Canberra: The Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1992: p.ii

17 relevance to the biographer, namely, that ‘we can only investigate history through the textual traces left by the past’ and that ‘the temptation to declare that the historian can objectively establish the truth about the past is to be resisted’.50

Stuart Macintyre remarked in his survey of Australian biographical writing from

European settlement that from the 1980s, new works were ‘reflexive and experimental’. Gone was ‘the older assumption of a life, finished, complete, and independent of its narrator’.51 As Hermione Lee has pointed out: ‘Biography has changed enormously in the last hundred years in what it allows itself to talk about’.52

There is little support for the depiction of lives which is not going to depict them like

Lely’s Cromwell, warts and all. Another change is the emphasis on the ordinary person as a subject of biography. The writer, Frances Spalding, herself a practised biographer, quoted the solace offered by Dr Johnson in 1750 that ‘I have often thought that there has rarely passed a Life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful’.53 Dr Johnson’s belief in the usefulness of ‘a judicious and faithful narrative’ of anyone’s life is now taken by biographers as part of their literary warrant. Women have come into their own as subjects of biographical writing. No longer do they have to be saints, literary figures, actors, singers or dancers. The characteristics requisite for a certificate of worthiness for a biography have changed markedly. One of the most read life stories of the 1980s was the autobiography of

Albert Facey, who chose the title A fortunate life, which was regarded as irony by

50 Ann Curthoys and John Docker, ‘Is history fiction?’ http://evatt.org.au/papers/history-fiction.html Accessed 28 February 2012. 51 Stuart Macintyre, ‘Biography’ Oxford companion to Australian history, ed. by Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 52 Hermione Lee, Body parts: essays on life-writing. London: Pimlico, 2008, p.2 53 Quoted in Frances Spalding, ‘The biographer’s contract’, Australian Book Review no.328 (February 2011): p.39

18 most readers. The author, however, stoutly and stoically believed that his life marked by extreme poverty and hardship was fortunate.54

What makes someone else’s life interesting to a biographer may be the subject’s deeds, their associations and associates, the milieu, the events of the time, or some combination of all these factors. There may also be a connection between the subject’s life and the interests and prior knowledge of the biographer who seeks to record it. Perhaps Jim Davidson could not have written such an outstanding biography of W K Hancock if he was not himself a historian who had acquired a great deal of knowledge and understanding of history and historians before he turned his attention to the evidence of Hancock’s life.55 My interest in writing a biography of

Geoffrey Remington grew out of a request to prepare an entry for him in the

Australian Dictionary of Biography. 56 I had known of his work in obtaining public library legislation in New South Wales through the subject on library history which I taught in the School of Librarianship in the University of New South Wales. I had also heard something of his deeds from colleagues in the library field and, in the years after his retirement, John Metcalfe told me anecdotes of him on visits to my study in the School which he had founded. Of Remington’s other major interest, in public administration, or in his profession of the law, I had taken little interest.

The substantial collection of papers in the Mitchell Library afforded scope for analysis in depth of his official life outside his profession. Despite the practical reasons for my choice, the major factor which influenced my decision to attempt a

54 Albert Facey, A fortunate life. Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1981. 55 Davidson, Jim, A three-cornered life: the historian W K Hancock. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010 56 Carmel Maguire, ‘Remington, Geoffrey Cochrane (1897-1968)’. Australian Dictionary of Biography v.16 (1940-1980) Pik-Z. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp.76-77.

19 biography of Geoffrey Remington lay in the questions presented by my quick reading of his papers for the ADB entry. Most intriguing was a piquancy in the contrast of a life of service pursued by a silver-spoon carrying lawyer son of wealthy and socially well-positioned parents. What was the wellspring of his compulsion to serve society which is not now and was not usually in his time or any other time conspicuously associated with the profession of the law? Why did his absorbing interest and contacts with politics, politicians, and political parties never descend into partisanship? What made him apparently immune from sectarianism, whether in politics or in religion? How did the concept of service take hold in him and what nourished it throughout his life?

Historians have not agreed on whether psychology can usefully probe a subject’s life.

W.K. Hancock, for one, regarded ‘Strachey-like biography as elegant exposé’.57 On the other hand, however strong the wish to avoid what has been dubbed

‘pathography’, the contemporary biographer cannot avoid reference to a subject’s private life. Philip Ziegler has expressed ‘some reservations [on] the sort of biography which treats only the public side of a subject’s life’. He refers to the ‘so- called “political” biography, in which the authors deliberately eschew any but the most fleeting reference to their subjects’ childhood and education, let alone to their spouses and children, let still further alone to their mistresses, lovers, or secret vices’.58 While no mistresses, lovers or secret vices have been uncovered in my inquiries into the life of Geoffrey Remington, glimpses of his inner life emerge from his correspondence and the reports of his behaviour left by others. Remington was so

57 Ian Davidson, A three-cornered life, p.363. 58 Philip Ziegler, ‘Biography: the narrative’ in Ian Donaldson, ‘Introduction’, in Shaping lives: reflections on biography. Edited by Ian Donaldson, Peter Read and James Walter. Canberra: The Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1992: p.226

20 prone to flatter that even some of his Rotary brothers got sick of it.59 As a modus operandi, it usually served him well and not only with politicians. On the other hand when he was angered, he was quick to display it. He was also prone to fall out comprehensively when he fell out with people. The most noteworthy and interesting was his conflict with Sir Douglas Copland over the Australian Administrative College at Mt Eliza in the period in which Remington initiated the project and Copland became the first Principal. The written record provides ample evidence of their anger and of the contrast in their views of the world. For a biographer, it provides insight into the subject.

Partly because of Geoffrey Remington’s lack of celebrity as well as the times in which he lived, the more intimate issues of his personal life have largely to be guessed at. Since he never served on the battlefront, he had not suffered like the returned soldiers whom McCalman characterizes as ‘grey men [who] wanted only a quiet life and a return to the certainties and securities they remembered, or idealized, of life before the war’.60 His brother may have been one of that number. Furthermore, until well after the Second World War, the expectations of wives and women’s place in society was not seriously questioned in Australian middle class life. The public record of nearly forty years of the Remington marriage reveals no conflict between him and his wife, whose David Jones bills he paid and whose parking fines he occasionally argued before paying. Joan Remington was reputed as a woman of both beauty and charm, and their late daughter expressed respect and affection for both her parents. Lee has dubbed ‘bonfire stories’ the accounts of destruction of personal

59 According to S.F. Kellock, in introducing speakers at IPA Regional Group meetings, Remington ‘was always flowery and flamboyant in this duty - he irked some people who said he overdid it’. ‘Geoffrey Remington – an appreciation’, Public Admiistration,v.27 no.3 (September 1968): p.202 60 Janet McCalman, Journeyings: the biography of a middle-class generation 1920-1990. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993, p.63.

21 records of authors and other subjects of biography which constitute part of ‘what falls through the net of biography’.61 After her father’s death, Susan Remington told me that her mother gathered up and destroyed any documents in the house which she considered too personal to be given to the Mitchell Library. What was included in that bonfire seem likely to have been financial data and may have contained details of some family disagreements with Geoffrey’s in-laws on both his own and his wife’s sides of the family. Some hints of the latter have leaked into the extensive correspondence in the sources used in this study.

Sources

Papers in the manuscript collection of the Mitchell Library of the State Library of

New South Wales are the main resource. The main collection of Remington’s own papers consist of 42 boxes and since the original deposit there have been 6 extra consignments added to them.62 More voluminous are the hundreds of files of the

Free Library Movement,63 along with several volumes of press cuttings on the

Movement.64 This plethora of material available on the FLM has influenced the shape of the thesis and why discussion of it is the longest part of the text. At the same time, sources of any life however plentiful are never complete. While I was preparing this work, and when I had begun to build my relationship with Remington’s daughter Susan in three or four meetings, she died suddenly. The ‘bonfire story’ has already been mentioned in which his widow burnt all the papers she considered too

61 Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000. 62 G.C. Remington, Papers ML MSS 808 and add-ons 18,19,108,114,124144; ML 1350/63. 63 Free Library Movement, Correspondence files, 1936-1940. Archives of the State Library of New South Wales, File nos. 32871, 32878-32882, 32885-32890, 32892, 32918-32921, 32923-32924, 32934- 32935, 32945-32950, 32953, 32955-32956, 32959, 32962, 32969-32971, 32975-32979, 32983, 32987- 33003. These numbers were not available when I read the files so in citing them I have used the descriptions which were on the files themselves. 64 Free Library Movement, Press cuttings [April 1937-September 1951] 4v. Mitchell Library F/815 SET.

22 personal to be given to the Mitchell. The archives of his law practice do not seem to have survived as other people took over the practice, and the only snippet of a case in which he defended the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been picked up from an official

National Archives file.65 The correspondence files in the Mitchell which deal with library and other matters were part of his office files. Other sources relating to

Remington’s involvement in library matters survive in the State Library of New South

Wales’s own archives, including those of the Trustees and of the Library Board of

New South Wales. Relevant manuscript materials were also located in the National

Library of Australia, and the Australian Council for Educational Research, and in the archives of the Australian Administrative Staff College at Mt Eliza. A search of the

Beatrice and Sidney Webb archives at the London School of Economics revealed no trace of any of Remington’s correspondence with them. If Beatrice remained as dismissive of Australia as the journal of her visit to the colony reveals, she would hardly thought retention of Remington’s letters worthwhile. Alternatively, there may have been good grounds for the archivists charged with collecting and organizing a mountain of the Webb papers to decide not to retain all. A visit to the archives of the

Administrative Staff College at Henley on Thames, on which the Australian

Administrative Staff College was modelled, similarly yielded nothing of Remington’s correspondence with the principal, Sir Noel Hall. Access to his personal papers was not available. On the other hand, good luck prevailed in my getting from the New

South Wales Office of Australian Archives at least a portion of his wartime personnel file, the cover of which had been branded ‘Destroy 1968’.66

65 Remington’s daughter Susan referred to the ‘Jehovah’s Witness Pacifist case’ in 1943 which went to High Court. Her father was the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ solicitor, and the case was lost, using argument to the Constitution for freedom of religion. Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 11 September 2001. 66 NAA NSW Branch series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington

23 No audio records of the radio broadcasts which Remington gave, or arranged for colleagues to give, during the campaign for public libraries from 1935 to the beginning of World War II have survived. He also gave a ‘Guest of honour’ address on ABC radio in 1948.67 Neither the commercial stations nor the Australian

Broadcasting Commission have any of these programs. Some of the carbon copies of the typewritten scripts have survived. The rapid advances in recording sound and pictures and of copying text only became commonplace in Australia after 1945. Thus the great oral history projects were not up and running in time for Remington to have been recorded by professional interviewers like Hazel de Burgh. Unlike his father,

Geoffrey Remington did not keep a personal scrapbook, and his father also gave in the house journal of his Company his views on many topics. Neither of them kept a diary. However, Geoffrey Remington did make audio tapes in 1964 at the request of

Gordon Richardson, then Principal Librarian of the State Library of New South

Wales, and these provide some insights into how he remembered his life and social contribution. The originals recorded on reel-to-reel tapes by Remington himself at his home are replete with barking dogs and other suburban noise and some passages are indecipherable. Re-recording on tape have not removed all the difficulties.68 An

American biographer has remarked that ‘As others have noted, people who keep diaries and write memoirs rarely portray themselves in a bad light, and they almost never minimize their own importance’.69 This no doubt is true of the more sensational anecdotes on the Remington tapes but they are a valuable source for some

67 G.C. Remington, Guest of honour [broadcast 24 October 1948] ‘Your future depends on what you know’. [Sydney, 1948] 4pp. In a letter written before the broadcast, Remington mentioned the title and immediately added ‘but actually I will be speaking on the need for Library Services in Australia’. (Remington to Harold Alexander, Town Clerk, South Melbourne, 18 October 1948, Remington Papers, Box 14 Libraries-general, ML MS808. 68 G.C.Remington, Audio apes, recorded at his home in Woollahra, August 1964. Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6 69 Cooper, John Milton Jr. ‘Conception, conversation, and comparison: my experiences as a biographer’ in Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Writing biography: historians and their craft. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004: p.93.

24 of the story of his reactions to his war experiences in the early 1940s and especially for his attempts to probe his own motivations, and for his self-representation.

My work has also been enhanced by the generosity by the many people who had known Geoffrey Remington in a variety of settings and who granted me interviews.

They included Remington’s late daughter, Susan, and his niece June Lamb, Susan’s lifelong friends, Ms Elizabeth Bowman and Mr Brian France, Sir Laurence Street, to whom Remington had given some of his earliest briefs as a young barrister, Mrs

Pauline Fanning, Ms Dulcie Penfold, Mr William Thorn, librarians who were formerly senior members of the National Library staff, Ms Helen Woodward, who worked at the State Library from 1948, most of the time in public library matters and became secretary to the Library Board, and the late Mr Eoin Wilkinson, whose guardian, Angus Mclachlan, sent him as a young graduate to talk to Remington about a career in librarianship, which he pursued and was for many years Librarian of

Macquarie University.

Structure

This thesis is arranged in nine chapters and three parts. After this introductory chapter, Part I is entitled ‘The making of the man’ and has two chapters. The first is entitled ‘His father’s world’ which gives some insight into his parents, but especially his father and his influence on Remington’s early life. The second, ‘From boy to man’, covers Remington’s experiences at school and immediately afterwards while the First World War raged. In the 1920s he was an articled clerk in a law firm from which he progressed to his own practice in 1924. In this period he also enjoyed his

25 first taste of world travel, a taste which he never lost. The 1930s marked his entry into marriage and into public life.

Part II of the thesis is entitled ‘Libraries for the people’ as Remington entered on his major campaign for public libraries in New South Wales, and took charge of the Free

Library Movement, which is covered in Chapter 4. The Movement’s major aim was to achieve legislation to enable the setting up of public libraries in New South Wales.

Despite formidable odds, Remington was the person most responsible for the Library

Act 1939 and he tried to spread the Movement to other States. Chapter 5 pauses in the chronological account of his life in order to consider the mixture of confidence, collegiality and effrontery with which Remington took to himself the authority with which he dealt not only with Australian individuals and organizations but also those he dealt with in other countries. The Australian Council for Educational Research, and more particularly its Library Group, were not permitted to become obstacles to his direct communications with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The outbreak of war calls for a third part of the thesis which is entitled ‘Adventures in public administration’. Chapter 6 presents Remington’s service as a temporary public servant in the Department of War Organisation of Industry in Melbourne and its offshoot the Allied Works Council. Near the war’s end he became chief administration officer and briefly director of the South West Pacific Administration office of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in

Sydney. Chapter 7 records what was to prove his last great campaign for creation of what became the Australian Administrative Staff College at Mt Eliza. Remington got traction for his idea from his Rotary Club of Sydney which had given him some help

26 in his public library campaign. But the Club came to the fore in the struggle for expansion of possibilities for professional management education. Remington wanted the students selected from among working managers with some practical experience and to come from the public as well as the private sector. His fund- raising among the captains of industry in Melbourne made necessary the College’s location in Victoria, a difficulty which the Sydney supporters seemed to accept without undue fuss. Drama ensued with the appointment of Sir Douglas Copland as its first Principal. Two men were never better fitted to fall out, and they did.

Remington may have counted himself the winner of their personal battle as Copland resigned before Remington left the College Council.

Part III. continues with Chapter 8, ‘The end of a full life’, in which Remington’s roles as library elder statesman, company director, and public relations expert are outlined.

He retained his place on the Library Board of New South Wales and among the

Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales. He was also in demand as a company director and feted with overseas trips by two of his companies, Rolls Royce and Standard Telephones and Cables. His STC directorship, rather than his much earlier attempts to reach out to Japanese businessmen in Sydney before World War II and his lifelong career as an internationalist, earned him membership of the

Australia/Japan Business Cooperation Committee. He attended a meeting of the

Committee in 1967, only a few months before he died.

The Conclusion of the thesis, Chapter 9, with the title ‘Remington: ‘This man who saw needed to be done and did it’, gives a final summary of his qualities and achievements and discusses whether he had by then earned the description of ‘a most

27 unusual citizen’, attributed to him by one of the sponsors of his CMG award in

1960.70

70 S.F. Kellock and J.G. Thornton, Statement in support of application for award of an honour by the Royal Institute of Public Administration, Australian Groups, August 1959. National Archives of Australia, Canberra Office, Prime Minister’s Department, file no.58/2183, ‘G.C. Remington/Civil honour’. Others who recommended an honour for Remington were Sir William Dunk CBE, Mr Hubert Opperman OBE MP, Sir John Crawford, Mr John Metcalfe, and Mr Essington Lewis, Chairman, Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited.

28 Part II. The Making of the Man

29 Chapter 2

His father’s world

His father

Geoffrey Remington's father, John Cochrane Remington, was born in Coleraine,

Northern Ireland in 1850 and came to Australia with his parents in 1863. His father

Robert Remington was a ‘softgoods warehouseman’, and J.C. Remington seems to have gone to work immediately as a clerk. He has recorded that by 1867 he was working in the insurance industry.1 However much formal education he had received in Ireland, there is no record of his having received more schooling in

Australia. From the age of 13 he appears to have educated himself. What is certain is that in 1873 he was appointed as Company Secretary and then in 1885 as General

Manager of the Mutual Life Association of Australasia, a remarkable story of social mobility.2 Twenty years later he disclosed that he was employed to do ‘all duties connected with the Office which may be assigned to you at any time by the Board of

Directors’. He went on to report that he ‘endeavoured to fulfil, in the spirit as well as letter’, the terms of his appointment. He reported that he also ‘kept the books’ of the

Association for some years, ‘returning to the Office for that purpose on Saturday afternoons’.3

His diligence paid off in personal as well as business terms. An engagement was announced in the house journal ‘between the General Manager and Miss Constance

1 ‘Reminiscences’ Mutual Life Chronicle, v.4 no.142 (August 1900): p.127, and Kent Henderson, The Masonic grand masters of Australia, Melbourne: Ian Drakeford Publishing, 1988, pp.91-2. 2 ‘History of the Mutual Life’ Mutual Life Chronicle, v.2 no.56 (June 1893): p.71. 3 JCR[emington] ‘A retrospect’ Mutual Life Chronicle v.2 no.57 (July 1893): p.[73]

30 Mabel Dickinson, third daughter of our worthy Chairman of Directors’.4 The marriage, which took place on 10 March 1892, was covered in the Press and extensively in the Mutual Life Chronicle.5 In a supplement to the Chronicle in April

1892, under the heading, ‘The General Manager's Marriage’ there was a list of the presents and who had given them.6 When they embarked for England nine days later, the Company hired a steam launch to accompany their liner, SS ‘Valetta’, to

Sydney Heads. All the Principal Office staff were there in a launch in April 1893 to greet their return as their ship ‘slowly steamed to her moorings in Neutral Bay’.7

Remington's wife was eighteen years younger than her husband. This gap was unusually large, even in those times. Beverley Kingston has pointed out that

'difference in the age structure between the male and female population shaped the marriage market’ in nineteenth century Australia. Brides were not only scarce but younger than their husbands, and the men who did marry were on average about four years older than their brides. This gap narrowed from 1860 to 1900, but was always smallest in those colonies where the sex ratios were nearest to even. 8 Thus the age difference in the Remington marriage was remarkable at the time. Constance

Remington was the great-granddaughter of Colonel George Johnston, the first military

Governor of New South Wales, the man who apprehended Governor Bligh and who benefited from his position in a large land grant in Sydney which, like his other interests, he seems to have managed adroitly.9

4 Mutual Life Chronicle no.37 (November 1891) p.147 5 Mutual Life Chronicle v.2 no.41 (March 1892) and v.2 no.42 (April 1892) 6 ‘The General Manager's Marriage’, supplement to Mutual Life Chronicle v.2 no.42 (April 1892), 7 Mutual Life Chronicle v.2 no.54 (April 1893): p.61 8 Beverley Kingston, Glad, confident morning. Melbourne: OUP, 1988, pp.117 (The Oxford History of Australia, volume 3: Chapter 3, Society, pp108-173.) 9 Yarwood, A.T. ‘Johnston, George (1764-1823)’, Austalian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/johnston-george- 2277/text2925, accessed 6 March 2012.

31

Geoffrey Remington's parents could be said to have set out on their honeymoon cruise, and on married life generally, with comfortable wealth, good social position, and excellent prospects. All the evidence of annual reports of the Company and of national and international comments on the profitability and probity of the Mutual

Life Association leave the impression that the Company was very soundly managed.

In 1892 the Insurance Times, published in New York, referred in particular to Mr J.C.

Remington as 'an underwriter whose fame increasingly reaches this country and

Europe'. Never given to false modesty, Remington published the extract in the monthly house journal, the Mutual Life Chronicle.10

The survival of the Mutual Life Chronicle affords excellent opportunity for study of

Geoffrey Remington’s father’s personality and style as a manager. There are insights into his personal beliefs, his essentially optimistic outlook, his apparently liberal views on what the company owed its customers and staff and thus into the values of the time. In the search for the origins of his son’s strong orientation to do good in society, analysis of the Chronicle’s content has therefore been given extended treatment in this thesis. The Mitchell Library holdings run from no.1 (November

1888) to v.5 no.182 (December 1903).11 The last issue bears no warning that it is such, and it is likely that other issues were published. What remains are 182 issues of this monthly four page sheet, on the masthead of which J.C. Remington is named as editor. The authority with which the Chronicle is edited and the diction employed bear the stamp of the General Manager, though only a few items bear his initials. It is a substantial record, not only of his stewardship of the Mutual Life Association but

10 Mutual Life Chronicle, v.2 no.40 (February 1892) 11 Mutual Life Chronicle, no.1-v.5 no.182 (November 1888-December 1903). Sydney: Mutual Life Association.

32 also of his qualities of character, his personality, his management philosophy and performance and of the business world in which he operated. There is also some record of his involvement in pursuits outside the Company, and some little of his personal life.

After 12 years of its publication, Remington disclosed that the Chronicle was 'begun in a very experimental fashion as an improvement upon our previous quarterly circular to agents'.12 Though its circulation is never disclosed, Remington in that issue as on several other occasions expressed surprise at the increasing demand for it.

In December 1896, he reported that notice in the previous issue of its availability on request brought a trebling of circulation.13 One assumes that it could also have been useful as barter for publications of other companies, of which he assembled a considerable collection and from which he constantly copied extracts for publication in the Chronicle. As an instrument of communication with officers (the term used for full-time employees of the Company) and agents (those who sold insurance for the

Company on a commission basis), whether in Principal Office or in other city or country branches, in Australia and New Zealand, on face value it would have served its purpose well. 'Useful hints for agents' is a regular feature. There is a wealth of cautionary anecdote. Agents may well have found useful these tales of those who hesitated to sign on the dotted line for their life assurance and were subsequently drowned, shipwrecked, blown up, or in some other way deprived of the life which they had carelessly omitted to assure. In almost every issue of the Chronicle, the promptness with which the Mutual Life Association pays off claims is testified in a continuing procession of letters from grateful widows, solicitors and executors.

12 'Ourselves' MLC v.4 no.146 (December 1, 1900) 13 'To our readers' MLC v.3 no.98 (December 1 1896) p.[73].

33 When hint of dissatisfaction 'of some of our contemporaries' with the regular 'Prompt

Settlements' column reached Remington, he was unrepentant. He described these published acknowledgements as 'excellent pabulum for our representatives. . .[which] would be greatly missed if omitted from the Chronicle'.14

Not only was the Chronicle a constant channel of information and encouragement, it was also an instrument of education. Mini-tutorials are given on subjects as disparate as the work of actuaries and the fallacy of the tontine system. The Mutual Life Club, whose membership was open to the young men on staff at Principal Office, held monthly meetings. Proceedings of the meetings were reported and the papers presented by members and visitors were published in the Chronicle. The published versions were often presented with summary of the discussion which they had provoked. Topics were not confined to those related to the insurance industry. The

Chronicle (no.8, June 1889) reports an address by Remington, as President of the

Club, on 'Science and its methods'. For the October 1889 meeting, the program was described as 'Music and elocution'.

Remington also attempted education in a broader milieu. In 1899 Company

Secretary Gelling was dispatched to the United Kingdom on a visit of inspection of the London Branch Office which had been opened in 1897. He returned shocked by

British ignorance of Australia, and Remington very soon began a series of

'Antipodean Notes' which thereafter appeared in almost every issue.15 The contents consisted of economic, demographic and social data on Australia, often in the form of clearly presented statistical tables. His attempts to educate the English were not

14 MLC v.5 no.165 (July 1 1902) p.[73] 15 MLC v.4 no.133 (November 1 1899)

34 always so oblique. The President of the Insurance Institute in London was reported to have suggested that lapsed policies in the Australian insurance industry were probably frequent because of 'the difficulty of up-country squatters being able to send their premiums to the head office'. Remington reacted with scorn: 'One can fancy the picture of the Australian postman which presented itself to the mind of the skilled

Actuary; probably a naked blackfellow carrying a letter in a cleft stick, travelling in danger of his life from the savage opossum, or dreading the death-dealing claws of the gigantic and ferocious native bear'.16

While the Chronicle's purpose was frequently didactic, the content was never dull.

Incentives were offered in the form of rewards. The General Manager's Prize was competed for by officers and agents, vying to write the most new business in a limited period of time. A league table of progress was published over four issues in 1899 with participants known only by ciphers, 'S8' and so on, until the prize winner's name was announced. There are also many reports of social functions. There was the annual sports meeting, at which Mr. Remington gave a special prize for the 100 yards handicap; and the annual cricket match, at first with rival insurance company, the

AMP (Australian Mutual Provident), and in later years with the Company's solicitors.

This change of opponents was no doubt influenced by controversy over what

Remington saw as AMP's repeated attempts to cast doubts on his Company's integrity, which are discussed below. Celebrations were quite frequent and reports of them were shared with Chronicle readers. Several were in honour of the General Manager but he was host to others. Celebrations in 1890 for the opening of the new Principal

Office building in Sydney at George and Wynyard Streets included an inaugural

16 ‘Life assurance in Great Britain’, MLC v.4 no.127 (May 1899): p.66

35 dinner for 125 people, a Harbour cruise for staff, and a supper for 250 workmen on the building. At the supper, in response to fulsome praise from his Chairman and father-in-law Samuel Dickinson, JCR gave a modest but spirited exposé of his business philosophy and strategy. He included his policy on future buildings for the

Company, and this included a far-sighted view of the future of Sydney and the importance of beautifying its streetscape. 17 On a later occasion Mutual Life Club members were invited to the Remingtons home, 'Cooinga' at Summer Hill to hear 'an address by Mr Remington on his recent travels in Great Britain'.18

The General Manager's speeches as recorded in the Chronicle were not dull either.

Some are notable for their humour. At a dinner at the Hotel Australia for Company representatives, Remington said that he was giving the dinner because he did not know enough about the men working in the field. He was quick to add though that "I may say there is not a letter that comes into the Office that I do not read, and not an answer that goes out that I do not read'. In proposing a toast to him, Company

Secretary Gelling told the gathering that 'if you were the unfortunate writer of some of those letters that went out, and heard his remarks upon them as he perused the letter books, you might begin to wish he had written them all himself'. According to the report this brought '(Laughter)'. So did Remington's response that: 'I have to put the blue pencil now and again through some things in the outward letters, and I would like to use the blue pencil sometimes on the inward letters, only, unfortunately, I don't see them early enough'.19

17 MLC no.24 (October 1 1890). A commemorative brochure, prepared by Remington, was issued on that occasion - 1869 twenty-one years 1890: inaugural proceedings on the completion and opening of the Mutual Life Association of Australasia'a new principal office, George and Wynyard Sts., Sydney: 4th to 6th September, 1890. 13[2]p. 18 MLC v.2 no.58, August 1 1893. 19 MLC v.5 no.160 (February 1 1902): Supplement 'The General Manager's Dinner'.

36

In the same speech, Remington referred to the success in their careers of 'so many young men who came to my hands, boys fresh from school'. To this he added: 'If I had no other record than the fact that I had taken by the hand these young men and helped them onward, I should judge my life's work well done'. Remington then gave one of the rare intimations of his vulnerability when he said, 'I am a man who feels greatly the appreciation of those who come into immediate contact with me - to me personal approbation is a great deal more than to many people'.

The Chronicle had given at least one earlier hint of his vulnerability. On the occasion of his Silver Jubilee in the position, on 23rd June, 1898, at a lunch with the staff in their luncheon room at Principal Office, Remington responded to speeches in his praise with the warning that 'if I attempt to say what is in my heart I shall certainly break down'.20

The Chronicle editor's stance was usually more remarkable for its feistiness than its sensitivity. Early in its existence, Remington ordered branch secretaries and district agents not to reply in kind to the AMP's 'recent departure from fair methods of competition'. He assured them that 'The "Mutual Life" can hold its own without attacking its neighbours, but it will not therefore submit patiently to hits "below the belt" - nor above it, for that matter'. Errors about the Company spread by other companies were frequently corrected in the Chronicle, and Remington's ripostes were always firm but often light. There is however nothing light in his response to an accusation in the AMP Messenger that the Mutual Life had not, as it claimed, ensured

20 MLC v.4 no.117 (July 1 1898): Supplement. 'The General Manager's Silver Jubilee, 23rd June 1898: Presentation to the General Manager', p.4.

37 the lives of the Queensland Contingent to the Boer War for ₤65,000. The exchange of correspondence on the subject between Remington and the Secretary of the AMP

Society, Robert B. Cameron, was published in a supplement to the Chronicle of

March 1900.21 Cameron was acting in the absence of AMP General Manager,

Richard Teece, who had been Remington's friendly rival 'boss' in the cricket matches between the two firms. The epistolary battle with Cameron was fierce and shortlived.

Remington declared war with his letter of 6 February 1900, and he ended the daily exchange of fire on 12 February when he wrote to the Company's solicitors requesting the issue forthwith of a libel writ against the AMP. Cameron's attempts, first to deflect the complaint and then to delay its referral to his Board until General Manager

Teece returned, were notably unsuccessful.

The following issue of the Chronicle has a 'Supplement. . .explaining cessation of libel action because "A Correction" appeared in The AMP Messenger at end of 1st week of March'. In the same issue, under the heading 'The Thanks of the

Government', Remington records the gratitude of the Queensland Government for payment of the claims for two Transvaal deaths. He adds that a claim has also been paid for one of the Sydney Lancers, the first Contingent of whom had also been covered by Mutual Life at no cost.22 Remington's decision to persuade his Board to offer the free cover to the States for their Transvaal contingents was no doubt motivated by his loyalty to the British Empire but at the same time provides more evidence of his business acumen. The term 'public relations' may not have been invented at the time but this gesture, noticed in the local press and in the general

21 MLC v.4 no.137 (March 1 1900) Supplement. . .Correspondence between Mutual Life Association of Australasia and Australian Mutual Provident Society on libellous accusation that MLA did not ensure the Queensland Contingent for L65,000 [pounds] as claimed. 22 MLC v.4 no.138 (April 2 1900)

38 overseas press as well as the specialized insurance business press in the United

Kingdom and the United States, was a public relations and publicity coup for the

Company, achieved at very little cost. One may also be sure that the offer was not made without careful consideration of actuarial advice. J.C. Remington’s son,

Geoffrey, was to display notable flair for public relations throughout his life.

Remington's feistiness and general high level of energy may have been fuelled by personality traits but must have owed something to his usually bounding good health.

In 1898, Remington, his wife and one of their children succumbed to what he described as the bubonic plague. His 'Sick Bed Reflections', published in the

Chronicle, reported that he had been comforted by the knowledge that his life was assured for nearly four times the amount of his annual income. He expostulated upon the need for 'the Mayors and Aldermen of our Municipalities' to 'devote a little more attention to Sanitation, even if they thereby seemed to neglect the glorious vision of

Federation', and for Government Sanitary Officers to be able to enforce measures to ensure public hygiene in time of epidemics.23 According to Curson and McCracken,

'Before 1900 bubonic plague was unknown in Australia.'24 When Remington returned to the topic in May 1900 he referred to a diminution of ‘cases of bubonic fever, popularly known as “The Plague”’25. Whatever the nature of the family illness in 1898, Remington reported on his return to work that the experience seemed ‘to have left him in better health, if possible, than before'.26 Remington's optimism is another notable trait that emerges from analysis of his writings in the Chronicle. The whole tone of the publication is entirely positive. Doubts are not admitted, whether

23 MLC v.4 no.119 (September 1, 1898) 24 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken, Plague in Sydney Kensington: UNSW Press [1989?], p.193 25 MLC v.4 no.139 (May 1900) p.116 26 MLC v.4 no.120 (October 1 1898): 'Personal'

39 about the recovery of the Australian economy from depression, or the success of

Federation despite the movement's slow progress. There is also total assurance on the present and future prosperity of the Company. By 1898, Remington was referring to the Company Annual General Meeting as 'the usual pleasant gathering of Members'.27

Two months later, in one of his few signed contributions, Remington wrote of his

'gratitude for the past and bright hope for the future'.28 During the economic depression of the 1890s and early 1900s, Remington made many proud references to the Company's helpfulness in granting members loans against their policies and to the extensions granted to them for paying premiums. In 1903 he referred to the

Company's annual meeting as 'the extremely pleasant and satisfactory proceedings on

Monday last'.29 In difficult economic times, many chief executives do not experience the annual meeting as either pleasant or satisfactory. Remington had earlier deplored

'some of our own people metaphorically wringing their hands over the downfall of

Australia’ when ‘Australian life offices are, on the whole, in a stronger position today than they have been, despite financial panics and commercial depression’.30

Despite J C Remington's stature in business and his social position, there is some evidence that he was no ultra-conservative. He praises the boldly nationalistic

Sydney Bulletin for its rebuttal of criticism of Australian life assurance companies with the comment ‘Bravo, Bulletin! Right on the spot, as usual, and with all the courage of your opinions.’31 His opposition to government policy designed to grant

Old Age Pensions seems to have been sincerely based in the belief (shared by many in positions of wealth and power) that age pensions provided by government would

27 MLC v.4 no.115 (May 2 1898) 'Our Annual Meeting)). 28 MLC v.4 no.117 (July 1 1898) 'A quarter of a century' 29 MLC v.5 no.175 (May 1903). 30 MLC v.2 no.70 (August 1894) ‘Good for Australia’, p.126. 31 MLC v.2 no.70 (August 1894) ‘The ingenuous correspondent’. p.127.

40 destroy the motivation for saving (and for buying life assurance) among the working class.32

His attitude to people of non Caucasian origin also marks him as very much a man of his time. He asserted that the reasons for not insuring Chinese lives ‘could not be better set forth’ than in an article from the Insurance Record published in London, to boot:

The great drawback to doing business among the general run of Chinese is the difficulty in proving death Claims. It is impossible to identify Chinese – they look too much alike.33

Maoris were also banned from taking out policies.34 Aborigines did not rate even a mention as possibilities. Anti-semitic jokes were occasionally reproduced from overseas sources, suggesting attitudes which may have been adopted without question from the attitudes of British business at the time.35 In contrast, the Chronicle' s lack of sectarian Christian bias was noticeable. The endorsements of life assurance from clergy include Catholic priests as well as Anglican and Protestant pastors.36

Women seem almost as scarce as aborigines in the Mutual Life Association. The appointment of a ‘lady doctor’ as Medical Referee for the Association in Melbourne was hailed as the first such appointment ‘in these colonies’.37 The only other mention of an individual woman is of Miss Elsie K. Begbie who won Stott & Hoare's

32 MLC v.4 no.123 (January 1899) 33 'Life Assurance for Chinese' MLC v.4 no.134 (December 1899): p.94 34 MLC v.4 no.115 (May 1898) p.17. 35 MLC ‘Fiery jokes’ no.5 (March 1899): p.[18]; MLC ‘Clippings’ no.14 (December 1899) 36 MLC 'A Catholic priest on Life Assurance' v.3 no.88 (February 1896) p.54; ‘A parson on life assurance’ v.3 no.95 (September 1896): p.82 37 MLC v.2 no.40 (February 1892)

41 Business College Gold Medal for writing shorthand at 200 words per minute.38 The few other references to women were at best condescending. Wives gained no praise as they allegedly discouraged husbands from buying life assurance.39

Remington's editorship of the Chronicle revealed much of his activities and his attitudes, as well as his skill as a manager, but coverage of his personal life was sparse. His engagement and marriage and the chronicles of his honeymoon trip are covered, but nothing is said of the death of their first child in England in the year after their marriage. The nearest is a reference to Mrs Remington's recovering health.40

There is again no reference to the death of his father which occurred in 1902, though the death in 1904 of Samuel Dickinson, his father-in-law and Chairman of the Mutual

Life Association, caused him to absent himself from the Freemasons Ball that year

‘owing to a family bereavement’.41

Remington's passionate attachment to his Company and his industry did not exhaust his energy, enthusiasm and optimism for activities outside the office. In 1892 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the New South Wales Regiment of Volunteer

Artillery, having served in it since 1868. He joined the Artillery as a Gunner in1868 and was promoted to Second Lieutenant in 1871 and on to Captain and then Major in

1884.42 He was also a dedicated Freemason who, over a long period, held many offices including the highest in the colony, that of Grand Master of the United Grand

Lodge of New South Wales for the years 1899 to 1905. All his predecessors in that

38 MLC 'Personal' v.5 no.173, March 1903. 39 'The "Old" Woman' MLC v.3 no.91 & 92 (May & June 1896): p.68 & 80; ‘The new woman’ v.3 no.93 (July 1896): p.75. 40 MLC v.2 no.52 (February 1893) 41 Australian Town & Country Journal, 27 July 1904, p.43. 42 ‘Naval a & military notes and gossip’ The Illustrated Sydney News, 21 November, 1891, p.6

42 office had been Governors of the colony, and his successor in 1905 was the newly appointed English Governor of New South Wales, Sir Harry Rawson. Remington may well have been asked to step aside for the new Governor, though there is no explicit evidence on this point in the surviving papers. There is however more than a hint in the farewell eulogies to Remington that many of the membership may have preferred to serve the Craft under his leadership. The handover ceremony was attended by 3,000 people, and the New South Wales Masonic Herald reported the event under the heading, 'The king is dead - long live the king'.43 The associated article conveys the impression that Most Worshipful Brother Remington might well have been preferred to the incoming State governor, Most Worshipful Brother Sir

Harry Rawson, KGB.

Remington’s high Masonic office, as well as his position in business, ensured that he was an important figure in the social life of the colony. Whether he presided over installations of grand masters in other lodges or over Freemasons balls in Sydney and elsewhere, reports of his activities regularly appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald and in other newspapers in country New South Wales and in other colonies. Pursuit of his Masonic duties also seems to have accorded well with his love of travel. In

June 1902 the Chronicle recorded that the General Manager had been away for 10 days in the previous month, mainly on Masonic business. This had taken him to

Broken Hill, Adelaide and Melbourne, where he installed the Premier of Victoria, A.J.

Peacock, as Grand Master of Victoria for the third year. Remington's overseas travels are also recorded in the Chronicle. In the January 1892 issue (v.2 no.1), the

General Manager is reported to have left on '17th ultimo for New Zealand, to inspect

43 New South Wales Masonic Herald, v.1 no.4 (26 April 1906).

43 the Association's Branches at Auckland and Christchurch, and the District Agencies at

Wellington and Dunedin.' His return was expected 'about the end of next month' which suggests that his tour was to last for more than two calendar months. His return to his Sydney office was shortlived since his honeymoon voyage to England began on 19th March, nine days after his marriage on 10th March 1892. The

Remingtons returned on 30 March 1893. Remington published his 'Notes on Travel" in eleven parts in supplements to issues of the Chronicle from March 1893 to April

1894. The first part was announced in the Chronicle as 'an extremely interesting

Supplement this month consisting of Mr. Remington's "notes" of a recent trip through the Continent of Europe'.44 Unfortunately neither that nor the second part announced for the following month has been preserved in the copies in the Mitchell Library's collection. The remaining parts, if not extremely, remain at least mildly interesting and notably well written.

Clearly Remington must have employed some of the leisure of his year abroad in writing. His 'History of the "Mutual Life"' was appearing in the Chronicle at the same time as the "Notes on Travel". It also was completed in eleven parts, and published over the same time period, May 1893 to April 1894. There can be no doubt that

Remington took pride in his writing. In 1902 he wrote: 'Our little paper this month is crowded with matter of perhaps purely office interest, but, after all, it is to inform and encourage our workers that we write, although finding, of course, additional reward in the fact that our columns are so frequently clipped by the regular Insurance Press, and never without kindly appreciation'.45 Remington assiduously reported each year the reaction of the domestic and overseas press, general and financial, to the Mutual Life

44 MLC v.2 no.53, March 1893 45 ‘Beating the record’ MLC v.5 no.160, February 1902

44 Association's annual report. Extracts from the Company annual reports published in the Chronicle demonstrate the clarity and the authority with which they are written.

The Chronicle bears witness, not only to Remington's ability to write descriptive prose, but also to his interest in history in general, as well as his interest in literature, and his acquaintance with the English classics.

As Editor of the Mutual Life Chronicle, Remington also displayed some bibliographical sophistication in its design and presentation. He published a triennial index of good quality. His adoption of continuous pagination from the beginning of the second volume suggests that he regarded the Chronicle as a journal of record. So does his change to much better quality paper stock from v.4 no.112 (February 1898).

He also used the Chronicle to encourage the reading habit among the young men on his staff. He described the insurance press as 'The Embarrassment of Riches' and the

Chronicle 's regular publication of extracts from these journals as 'a sort of Liebig's

Essence of them to our Officers and Agents who have neither time nor the opportunity to read the original journals'.46 In a much later contribution called 'Do You Read the

Papers?’, Remington told his staff that they should read the insurance press, and again reminded them of the encouragements to reading provided for them. As Remington went on: 'Towards awakening this interest [in reading the insurance press] we think we may claim to have done something in these columns, and the well-stored library of the Association contains masses of information which are valuable, if not absolutely necessary, to everyone who seeks to obtain promotion in the Service'.47 This collection is likely to have been one of the earliest corporate libraries in Sydney.

46 MLC v.4 no.131 (Sept 1 1899) p.84 47 MLC v.5 no.175, May 1903, p.115

45 Amalgamation and suicide

By the time that the Mitchell Library's holdings of the Chronicle cease in 1903,

Remington appears to have 'grown' a very successful company in terms of the bottom line and the apparent goodwill towards it in the wider community, as well as made a name for himself in the insurance industry internationally. The London Office which was opened, apparently on his initiative, in 1897 is reported as being very successful from the outset.48 His pride in the Company was immense and so was his confidence. In August 1901 he praised the performance of the management team and his hope that ‘it will be many years before there is a break in the ranks’.49

On the General Manager's personal qualities, The Mutual Life Chronicle provides evidence of his lively mind, his energy, his grasp of the life assurance industry, and his debating skill, especially in matters in which the Company's honour was impugned. Also obvious is his gift for promotion of the Company and himself, and his leadership qualities within the Company and in the broader industry context.

There is also evidence in reports of the social gatherings and Mutual Life Club meetings of a happy, maybe pseudo-family atmosphere in the Company. Many of these traits will also appear in the life of his son, Geoffrey Cochrane Remington.

All the indications are that as of 1903 when the only accessible issues of the Mutual

Life Chronicle come to an end, his father, J C Remington, was running a tight but happy ship. There is similarly no hint in the Company annual reports from 1905 to

48 ‘Our welcome to London’ MLC v.4 no.117 (July 1898) 49 MLC v.5 no.154 (August 1901): p.29

46 1908 that the MLA was not trading profitably.50 Very possibly it was their profitability that made them a takeover target.

That he would regard amalgamation as a sign of personal failure as a manager is strongly indicated by his remark regarding Australian life assurance offices in 1900 that ‘Weak and mismanaged concerns have been forced into amalgamation or liquidation’.51 He may even have been duped. In 1902 Remington seemed to take great delight in the visit to Sydney of Ralph Price Hardy, a noted British actuary, whom he named in the Chronicle as 'An Honored Guest'.52 Remington described

Hardy as conducting an 'Actuarial Investigation of the affairs of a kindred office' and this office was the Citizens Life Assurance. Perusal of their contemporary annual reports has not been possible but circumstantial evidence indicates that it is very likely that Hardy recommended their takeover of the Mutual Life Association.53 The

Chronicle also gives hint of a threat even from Remington's own Board. To an item headed 'In praise of actuaries' reprinted from Pall Mall Gazette, Remington had added: 'It is difficult sometimes to make even Directors understand that the biggest

Life Office is not necessarily the best'.54 Once his Company’s members had voted decisively for the amalgamation, however, Remington became its staunch supporter in refuting in the newspapers critics of the move. In The Argus he pointed out to ‘Mr

Howden, one of our most active rivals’, that far from winding-up ‘the company is joining hands with a company having a vigorous industrial branch’ and the

50 Mutual Life Association of Australasia, Annual report of the directors for presentation at the Annual General Meeting. Sydney: 36th-39th, 1905-1908. 51 MLC v.4 no.139 (May 1900): p.123 52 MLC v.5 no.159 (Jan 1902) 53 The Citizens Life Assurance is not among the companies in ‘Table 1: New policies sold lby the major life insurers 1880-1930’, but, by that measure, the Mutual Life Association in 1905 was the second smallest of the companies listed. (Monica Keneley, ‘The Life insurance industry in Australia: an historical perspective’, Deakin University Faculty of Business and Law, Working paper no.2104, February 2001, p.8). 54 MLC v.5 no.160, (Feb 1902):p.[53]

47 amalgamation would ensure that ‘our policy holders will benefit from the profits arising therefrom’.55 In the Sydney Morning Herald, there is a letter to the editor from a correspondent calling himself ‘Endowment’ who claimed to be a long-time holder of a Mutual Life policy. Not only did he object to the company’s ‘fusion with a company with an industrial department’, he also objected to the appointment of Mr

J.C. Remington as managing trustee for life. He then added that ‘It is more palpable every day that the insurance offices are conducted primarily in the interests of officials whose remuneration no one can find out, and who have periodical round the world tours at the policyholders’ expense. . .’56 While no stranger to newspaper controversy, as the files of the Sydney Morning Herald reveal, Remington might well have been wounded by such a slur not only on his own probity but also on his calling.

In view of J.C. Remington's decision in 1908 to take his own life, his views on suicide as expressed in the Chronicle are of interest. He stoutly defends the Company's determination that claims on it remain 'indefeasible', that is, that the policy is paid on the death of a policy-holder from any cause, including suicide. In one of the defences of this policy, he quotes and records his hearty concurrence in the view of the

Missouri Insurance Commissioner that "Suicide, with possibly a rare exception here and there, is insanity".57 Not only the facts of his death but also the motives for his own 'insanity' deserve to be probed.

The amalgamation of the Mutual Life Association with the Citizens Life Assurance

Co. Ltd., under the name of the Mutual Life and Citizens Assurance Co. Limited took effect on 1st January 1908. J.C. Remington shot himself at ‘Pibrac’, his home in

55 J.C. Remington, Letters to the Editor, The Argus, 27 February, 1907, p.8. 56 ‘Endowment’, Letters to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Financial, proposed insurance fusion’ 57 MLC v.2 no.71 (Sept 1894): p.131.

48 Warrawee, during the night of 28 February 1908 and his death was reported in a detailed and dramatic account in the Sydney Morning Herald next day.58 Mrs

Remington reported that her husband had been sleepless and some time after he left the bedroom she heard the gunshot. There seems that very little research has been done on the extent of coverage of suicide in the Australian media59, but, according to

Cooke’s study of Victorian inquests into suicides, ‘Many suicides were reported in considerable detail in the press throughout the period 1841 to 1921’.60 The Herald’s report of Remington’s suicide was probably not unusual in its explicit treatment of the event.61 At the last annual general meeting of the merging company on 27th April, the loss of the late ‘widely known and greatly respected’ General Manager was duly regretted.62 The Sydney Morning Herald’s report of the meeting quoted John J.

Garvan, Chairman of the newly minted Citizens Life Assurance Company Ltd, who acknowledged Remington’s ‘great personal sacrifice’ in recommending amalgamation to his policyholders.63 Garvan was a well-known Catholic who is credited by John

Ward as having ‘engineered’ the merger of the Citizens Life Assurance with the

Mutual Life Association to form the Mutual Life & Citizens Assurance Company

Ltd.64

58 Sydney Morning Herald, 29th February 1908 59 Jane Pirkis and R. Warwick Blood, Suicide and the media: a critical review. Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care [2001?], p.10 60Simon Cooke, ‘A “dirty little secret”?: the State, the press and popular knowledge of suicide in Victoria, 1840s-1920s’ Australian Historical Studies, v.31 no.115 (October 2000): p.318 61 For example, the Singleton Argus on 29 February 1908, p.4, used the headline ‘A city sensation/suicide of Major Remington/victim of insomnia’. 62 ‘The late General Manager’, Mutual Life Association of Australasia, Annual report of the directors for presentation at the 39th Annual General Meeting…on 27th day of April, 1908, p.[2] 63 “Citizens Life Assurance Company Ltd: a new standard of excellence set up’ Sydney Morning Herald, 29 February 1908, p.8 64J. Ward ‘Manning ,Sir William Patrick (1845-1915) ADB v.10:p.397) . William Patrick Manning, another of the directors, Ward describes as ‘a notable Roman Catholic layman’. Manning also shared with fellow director Frank B. Freehill the distinction of a papal decoration. Freehill, a solicitor, was also a strong supporter of Irish nationalism and president of the Irish National League in New South Wales. (Freehill, Francis Bede (1854-1908) ADB v.4 1881-1890: p.219). Henry Gullett’s religious allegiance rates no mention in ADB (Hawker, G.N. Gullett, Henry (1837-1914) ADB v.9 1891-1939: p,136) The most distinguished of the directors was William John Lyne who was offered the first Prime

49

An article in the Herald on the day after his death reveals more on the causes of his distress:

The negotiations for the union of the Mutual Life Association of Australasia and the Colonial Life Association Co. Ltd. called for the exercise of close application. There were hard things said, and some personal things were uttered which seemed to reflect upon the General Manager. Probably they were not meant to wound, but they wounded, nevertheless, and contributed to bring on that attack of insomnia which culminated in the last act which ended his life.65

With Garvin as chairman of the Board of the Citizens Life Assurance Co. Ltd. at the time of the takeover and at least half of the directors prominent Catholic laymen, some credence can be given to the family’s belief that J.C. Remington's distress at the amalgamation was increased because he had been bested in the merger by 'the

Catholic company’.66

Among the papers in the Mitchell Library is John Cochrane Remington’s Scrapbook in which from 1905 to August 1907 pasted 14 numbered pages of news cuttings from local and overseas sources, and occasional hand-written poems of a cheering nature.67

Pages 15 to 18 have been excised. On page 19 there is a single cutting, unsourced and undated, headed 'The late Mr J.C. Remington' with a brief obituary. Geoffrey

Remington then took over the Scrapbook and his clippings begin with extracts from various published sources in 1933.

Ministership of the Commonwealth of Australia and, unable to form a government, became one of Barton’s ministers and thence till October 1908 Treasurer. A Catholic newspaper in 1906 accused him of ‘Orangeism’, which suggests that he at least was not Catholic. (Cuneen, C. Lyne, Sir William John (1850-1920) ADB v.10 1891-1939: pp179-181). 65 ‘Mr J.C. Remington, tragic death, troubled with insomnia, suicide surmised’ Sydney Morning Herald, 29th February 1908, p.13 66 C. Maguire, Notes of interview with G.C. Remington’s daughter, Sue Remington, and his niece, June Lamb, 27 March 2001. 67 J.C. Remington, Scrapbook Remington Papers MS 808 Box5a

50 His Mother

An item in the Chronicle for October 1895 suggests that at least there would have been no cash flow shortage for J.C. Remington’s widow and children. The following item appears under the heading ‘He ought to know’:

Among those who are assured in the Association to the limit fixed by the By-laws for any one life, namely ₤5000, is Mr J.C. Remington, the General Manager.

During the twentytwo years he has filled the important position of chief executive officer, he has seen the Association steadily grow from a very small body of policy-holders to one of the largest among Australian financial institutions. His confidence in the solidity of the Mutual Life is shown in a very practical manner, and it goes without saying that noone is more competent to judge its future prospects.68

Constance’s first child, a son, was born and died during the Remingtons' trip to

Britain and Ireland immediately after their marriage. She later gave birth to three sons and two daughters. A daughter, Doris, was born in November 1893; a son,

Henry John usually called Harry, born on 25 October 1895; a son , Geoffrey

Cochrane, on 27 November 1897; another son, Phillip Sydney on 10 June1901; and a daughter on 17 June 1903, Joyce Constance. 69

There is little evidence of her life after the death of her husband. She was called

'Little Grannie" in the family, and surviving grandchildren had few stories to tell.

She died in 1925 before Geoffrey Remington's daughter Susan was born and when his niece, June Lamb, was very young. June knows that she was born on the kitchen table at 'Pibrac', the table having been moved into the billiard room for the event.

Constance Remington’s eldest child was 12 when her husband died, and she managed

68 ‘He ought to know’ MLC v.6 no.84 (October1895): p.39 69 The births were announced as follows: Doris SMH 2/11/1893; Harry SMH 2/11/1895; Geoffrey SMH 7.12.97; Philip, SMH 10/6/01); Daily News (Perth) 23/6/1903.

51 to bring up five children and educate them at private schools. Immediately after her husband’s death, she stayed with a sister in Melbourne. The home she lived in there in South Yarra was owned by Sydney V. Stead who was probably her brother-in- law.70 June’s memories of her grandmother as a widow are that she always dressed in black and that for one year she wore 'widows bones' (Victorian mourning jewellery) in the lapel of her collar. June also remembered that Constance was loved and respected, and was a charming hostess. During World War I, she worked for charities and her hobby was fine needlework.71 This picture of a little old lady has to be tempered with what little other evidence is available. She was indeed dressed in black at the wedding of her daughter, Doris, June’s mother, to Bruce Minter in June

1920. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that “Mrs Remington wore a gown of black charmeuse, with overdress of white georgette, and a smart panne hat’.72

Certainly not widows’ weeds. As a married woman she led a very active social life.

At the Freemasons Ball in July 1902, the Governor General Lord Hopeton ‘entered with Mrs J.C. Remington’.73 In 1904 at the Freemasons Ball ‘in the presence of about 3,000 Masons’, after presentation to her husband of an illuminated address and his portrait in oils, Mrs Remington was given a diamond tiara.74 Apart from Masonic functions, Mr and Mrs J.C. Remington appear frequently on the vice regal and other guest lists reported in the Sydney and other newspapers.

Constance Remington was no mouse, and she seems to have managed well after her husband's death. There was no doubt sufficient money from her husband's estate and

70 The address was “Arnside”, Walsh Street, Domain Road W-N side, South Yarra, Sands & McDougall’s Melbourne, suburban and country directory for 1908, and the owner listed as S.V. Stead. Geoffrey Remington sent a telegram to Sydney V. Stead, William Street, Melbourne, on 24 February 1927, advising that his sister Joyce had died. 71 June Lamb to C. Maguire, Private communication, 11 April 2002. 72 ‘Minter-Remington’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 1920, p.8. 73 Sydney Morning Herald, 11 July 1902. 74 West Australian, 19 July 1904, p.5. The illuminated address is among he Remington papers in the Mitchell Library (MS 808). The oil painting and the diamond tiara appear to have vanished without trace.

52 there is also reference in the family papers to inheritance in her Dickinson family having been through the female line. She died at ‘Pibrac’ on 1 November 1925 and is buried in the family grave in St John's Anglican cemetery, Gordon, where her husband is also buried.

Geoffrey and his brother Philip lived with their mother at 'Pibrac' until her death and continued to live there and provided a home for their sister, Joyce, who died in

February 1927. Joyce was an invalid from teen-age after injuries sustained in a fall, according to family legend, from a front balcony at 'Pibrac'.

The times of his childhood and youth

Geoffrey Remington's upbringing was at once privileged and touched with tragedy with his father’s suicide when he had not long turned eleven years old.

In 1899 his father had purchased 'Pibrac' at Warrawee with its surrounding estate.

The house designed by Horbury Hunt still stands and is described in a 1974 publication as 'one of the most distinguished North Shore houses'75. Its claim to distinction is borne out by the description in the standard work on Horbury Hunt.76

The Remingtons arrival in the neighbourhood could hardly have been unremarked since the head of the household embarked on a successful campaign for creation of a railway station for Warrawee.77 Life at 'Pibrac' was no doubt well-ordered and godly.

Geoffrey Remington’s niece, June Lamb, passed on memories by her mother of the

75 Zeny Edwards, The architectural gems of Warrawee. Sydney, the Author, 2000, p.59 76 Peter Reynolds, Lesley Muir and Joy Hughes, John Horbury Hunt: radical architect, 1838-1904. Sydney, Historical Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2002 77 J.C. Remington ‘was largely responsible for securing the opening of Warrawee Railway Station against the wishes of the Railway Commissioners’. Ian Ramage, Letter to Carmel Maguire 15 June 2004. Personal communication. Present day commuters on the North Shore line continue to remark on how close the Warrawee station is to Pymble.

53 strict keeping of the Sabbath by family and servants alike and of daily Bible readings.

There is however also evidence of pageants and parties at home and in neighbouring homes in which the Remington children took part.78 No doubt these occasions offered excellent training in manners and sociability. There is also evidence of warm affection in the letters which the children wrote to their parents in their absence for two months in New Zealand in 1906 and 1907.79

This secure existence must have at least been disturbed, if not shattered by their father's suicide in 1908, even though traumatic effects of this event are not discernible in the rest of Geoffrey Remington’s life. Among the legacies of his early life may have been his apparent indifference to the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, and the supreme confidence which he brought to all his own initiatives.

78 Programme 16 July 1904 for 'Pibrac' for a pageant ‘Cinderella’ with Geoffrey Remington listed as the Prince; the Misses Remington are listed among the fairies in Cinderella at ‘Edinhope,’ Wahroonga on 23 September 1904, Remington Papers, Box 6: ‘Family’, ML MS808. 79 Remington Papers, Box 6: ‘Family’, ML MS808.

54 Chapter 3

From boy to man

School

Geoffrey Remington never reminisced publicly about his childhood and upbringing, and the documentary records are ambiguous in some respects. No record seems to exist of his going to school before 1906, when he was already nine years old. Probate papers for his father indicate that he owed school fees for his siblings, to Miss

F.Hooke for Doris and to ‘Rev. W. Fisher’ for Harry.1 William Fisher was the second headmaster of Tudor House, which he purchased from the founder in June

1906.2 Miss Hooke’s establishment was much nearer the Remington home, ‘Pibrac’ in Hastings Road, Warrawee. It was one of several smaller private schools in

Wahroonga, and, according to local historian, Ian Ramage, ‘probably the best known’.

Established in 1901, she ran it in a schoolhouse at the back of her home.3 Possibly

Geoffrey also attended Miss Hooke’s before being sent away to school at Tudor

House in Moss Vale in January 1906. The historian of Tudor House’s first hundred years described it as ‘a small preparatory school for boys’, originally in Sydney, but in1902 moved to ‘a landscape of pasture and woodland in the Southern Highlands of

New South Wales’.4 The new Tudor House took over and renamed ‘Hamilton

House’, the house designed by Horbury Hunt in 1891 for the Osbornes a leading

1 John Cochrane Remington, Probate – Remington – [probate packet] no.42490: Full particulars of the Debts due and owing by the deceased…[1908] Held at New South Wales Records Authority, Kingswood. 2 Chris Ashton, Tudor House: the first hundred years. Moss Vale, NSW: the Tudor House Council, 1997, p.32 3 Ian Ramage, Wahroonga our home Extract from revised unpublished manuscript made available to the author, June 2004 4 Chris Ashton, Tudor House: the first hundred years.

55 pastoral family. By coincidence, ‘Pibrac’, Remington’s childhood and early manhood home was also a Horbury Hunt design. Remington’s older brother, Henry John

(Harry), was already there, and School records show that he left in 1906, whereas

Geoffrey is supposed to have left in 19075. A more famous pupil, Patrick White, has described Tudor House when he arrived there in early 1922:6

The building was a mansion in the Thames Valley Tudor style favoured by the Australian rich in the earlier part of the century. It had been an impressive “residence” when lived in by an important family. By the time I arrived it was looking somewhat abraded, standing in an acid garden in which only the fittest had survived.

At the same time, his biographer reports that White ‘found he liked the place’ and that:

No school in Australia was like Tudor House. The boys were rich, the bias was privileged but it was not a fake-English prep school: the temper was Australian. The place was a shambles. Not much had been done to the old house for twenty years, still lit by gas and with water pumped by steam engine from the dam.7

Photographs in the Tudor House history which date from the 1906/1907 period which show a dormitory and a picnic tea in the grounds suggest that it was probably a homely place to be.8

His brother Harry attended The Armidale School (TAS) from June 1910 to June 1913 and Geoffrey’s enrolment there was accepted in December 1911. He commenced studying there in February 1912.9 Where Geoffrey went to school from the beginning of 1908, the time of his father’s suicide, until his arrival at TAS does not

5 Denise Russell, Tudor House Librarian, email to Carmel Maguire 30/4/2004 6 White, Patrick, Flaws in the glass: a self-portrait. London: Vintage, 1988, pp.17-18. 7 David Marr, Patrick White: a life. Milsons Point, NSW, Random House,1991, p.58 8 According to Helen Rutledge, many of the boys at Tudor House including her brother had ponies. (Helen Rutledge, My grandfather’s house, Sydney: Doubleday, 1986) 9 The Armidale School, TAS Register, p.6. An explanatory note explains that ‘sometimes the date of entry noted is that of the Board meeting at which the boy was accepted’

56 emerge from the surviving records. He was 16 years old when he reached TAS, and again he was following his elder brother Harry who attended TAS from mid 1910 and left in Form Five in 1913. Harry had previously been at the Sydney Church of

England Grammar School (usually referred to as ‘Shore’): his leaving in 1910 is confirmed in the School’s Register,10 but there is no information on when he had first enrolled. The decision to send him away to the provincial city of Armidale to school may have been taken because of his mother’s widowhood. The choice of TAS for both sons may have been influenced by how small the school was at that time. There were 109 pupils in 1904 and 119 in 1914. The smallness may have been a comfort to the young Remingtons whose feelings about their apparently all-powerful father’s suicide must have been confused to say the least. However this may be, the decision to have Geoffrey follow him seems logical.

Something of the atmosphere of TAS in those years may be gleaned from the history by Jim Graham who until the 1990s had been a master at the School for forty years.11

A new headmaster, Reverend Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, educated at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford, a priest since 1893 and archdeacon of Tamworth, had been appointed in 1910. Graham recalls that: ‘By the end of 1912, given the new leadership, the renewed spirit and the sense of purpose and direction which came unmistakably from Abbott, the School seemed poised to embark on a period of expansion’.12 But on 6 December 1912, in what might seem to the cynical a typically foolish public school tradition, Abbott died of a heart attack playing in the ‘quarterly match’ against the boys, which was presumably a cricket match. His successor,

10 Sydney Church of England Grammar School Register 1889-1994. North Sydney: Shore Old Boys Union, 1994) 11 J. Graham, A school of their own: the history of the Armidale School., Armidale: the Armidale School, 1994 12 Graham, p.99

57 Frederick Thomas Perkins, came from the headmastership of Monaro Grammar at

Cooma to take up the position at TAS in July 1913. Graham remarks that all the old boys from the School’s 20 year existence, 1894-1914 had come from a background which was ‘strongly establishment and pro-British, and therefore considered it their duty to serve the Empire in its hour of need; to do less would have been a betrayal of their heritage’.13

Neither of the Remington brothers can be charged with this treason. Both are listed in the ‘Honour Roll for World War I 1914-1918’ published in the TAS Register.14

Geoffrey’s name however is not among the 273 names on the honour board listed by

Graham, presumably because he had not served abroad.15 Encouragement to serve the Empire in its hour of need was also strong at Shore when Geoffrey left TAS in

Form III to go there in March 1914. Sherington reports that ‘There was hardly a questioning of the war at the School’ and he goes on to give detailed evidence of the pride of the school in their old boy casualties.16 There appears to be no record of the

Remington brothers’ scholarly performance in either the Junior and Senior exams or the Intermediate Certificate and Leaving Certificate which replaced them in 1912.

Neither do their names appear in the lists of Senior Prefects, Captains of the School, or Achievement Prizes at The Armidale School. Nor do they appear in the cricket and football teams listed for the years that they were there.17 There is no evidence that their schooldays were marked with excessive athleticism much less with the

13 Graham, p.102 14 The Armidale School register 1894-1993. Compiled by Belinda Anstock. Armidale, NSW: The School, 1994, p.6. A note explains that ‘sometimes the date of entry noted is that of the Board meeting at which the boy was accepted’. 15 Graham, p.103 16 Sherington, Geoffrey, Shore: a history of Sydney Church of England Grammar School. Sydney: the School in association with Allen & Unwin, 1983, Chapter 4 ‘The trials of war and peace’, p.91 17 The Armidale School register 1894-1993.

58 public partisanship and excessive admiration of schoolboy sports heroes which so disturbed James Darling as headmaster of Geelong Grammar in the 1930s.18 But sporting prowess and bravery in war were both the stuff of heroes. Crotty has pointed out that Cadet Corps in schools were common before the end of the nineteenth century and that a 'universal military training scheme came into effect in

June 1911’, which included compulsory junior and senior cadet training. ‘By 1913 the soldier had been firmly established in Australian ideology as the embodiment of all that was manly’ He also observed that ‘The outbreak of World War I was greeted with something approaching joy at most of the public schools’.19

On his own account, Geoffrey Remington, nearly nineteen years old, at least one year out of school, seems to have been at something of a loose end.20 It is not surprising that he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) on 26 August 1918 as Private

94202. Not only his upbringing but also his brother’s wounds sustained in France in the previous month could have influenced Geoffrey’s decision to enlist. That his mother consented to his enlistment suggests that she may have been one of those upper middle class mothers who retained belief in fighting for the Empire’s cause. A simpler explanation may be that she could not impede the wishes of a strongwilled son. But Geoffrey’s army career was destined to be short. His discharge had been effected by the end of 1918. His Army record describes him as a ‘student’, 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 140 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair. He was also

18 Gronn, Peter ‘”Will anything ever be done?”: Geelong Grammar School and the Associated Public Schools Head of the River in the 1930s’ Australian Historical Studies v.26 no.103(1991):242-261) 19 Crotty, Martin Making the Australian male: middle-class masculinity 1870-1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001, p.28 & pp.88-89 20 He seemed to have discounted any time he spent at Shore when he later claimed that ‘I never had any formal education except up to what was then the Intermediate Examination when I left the Armidale School and went to a coach after that but I didn’t go to University or any formal secondary education’. G.C.Remington, Audio tapes, recorded at his home in Woollahra, August 1964. Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 1.

59 credited with 2-1/2 years militia training, no doubt accumulated in his time in the school cadets. He arrived in camp on 23 September and his career as a trainee was limited to some drill, with and without a pack, and shooting a few rounds of ammunition. On 12 November he was declared inoculated and vaccinated, and, as well as free of ‘Venereal and Infectious Diseases’, and he was ’Dentally fit’, presumably after his treatment on 31 October for two fillings at the AAMG

(Australian Army Medical Group) Dental Services at Liverpool, a suburb about 20 kilometres from the Central Business District of Sydney.21

His brother Harry served abroad with the Artillery with the Australian Fourth

Division. He left Sydney, aged 20, in mid September 1916 and was in France in

February 1917 as a Gunner. In November 1917 he was sent to the Royal Artillery

Cadet School in St John’s Wood, England and earned his Divisional Commander’s congratulations for the ‘very satisfactory result’ of his course there which achieved his promotion to Second Lieutenant. On 6 July 1918 on the battlefield, he sustained what the official Army record describes as severe gun shot wounds to his right arm, hands, buttock and chest. He was removed first to hospital in Rouen and then to two hospitals in London. His next of kin, his mother Constance, was notified of his wounds on 13 July when he had been admitted to the London General Hospital. On

31 July she was ‘Advised progressing favourably’.22. Progress must have been slow since it was six more months before she was advised that he was returning to

Australia. Harry was not discharged from the Army until 26 February 1920:

21 Geoffrey Cochrane Remington, ‘Attestation paper of persons enlisted for service abroad’, ‘Application to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force’. ‘Conduct sheet’ ‘Trainee section’, ‘Australian Imperial Force training card’, National Archives of Australia, Series B2455 Item 8028394 consulted 19 September 2009 22 National Archives of Australia, Australian Imperial Force,

60 treatment of his wounds had taken more than two years.23 The rest of his life was spent as a grazier in the West of New South Wales, and from the 1920s Geoffrey seems to have taken over duties appropriate to the head of the family. He, for example, managed transactions related to shares and properties which he and Harry owned jointly.

There is no evidence that Constance Remington had ever contemplated sending her sons abroad for education. Presumably only somewhat wealthier and definitely more socially prominent families, tended to send their male young to England to be educated in public schools of some reputation and then on to Oxford or Cambridge.

Patrick White and Richard Casey are two examples. One Sydney family in this tradition was the Allens, into whose law firm Geoffrey Remington was about to enter.

The Law

After leaving school at Shore in 1917 and his few months of military service in 1918,

Geoffrey Remington seems almost immediately to have begun his apprenticeship to the law as an articled clerk with Allen, Allen & Hemsley. He was admitted as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 16 March 1923. Articles appear to have lasted 5 years in that period, since his name is listed as one of the candidates who had passed in Section 1 of the Intermediate Law Examination in May

1918.24 Archives of Allens early history do not seem to exist. Inquiry to the firm’s

2003 identity as Allens Arthur Robinson revealed only Dundas Allen’s The Elizabeth

23 Harry Remington’s death notice says he was ‘invalided after the armistice’. SMH, 6 January 1936, p.8. 24 ‘Articled clerks examinations’, SMH, 29 May 1918, p.8.

61 Street cottage: being a record of the firm of Allen Allen & Hemsley.25 This account of the firm from its beginning in 1822 to 1963 occupies only 31 pages and is therefore inevitably sketchy. It does, however, provide some insight into the firm at the time in which Remington was articled there.

Between 1922 and 1924 three new partners were brought into the firm. They were:

Arthur Denis Wigram Allen, the only son of Arthur Allen; George William Dundas

Allen, the eldest son of Boyce Allen; and Norman Lethbridge Cowper, the only son of

Cecil Cowper, who had joined the firm in 1902. Not only were they ‘family’,

Dundas Allen goes on to reveal that there were distinguished military exploits behind some of them:

Denis had been articled in the office in 1914, but his articles were interrupted by the war, during which he served in France with the Royal Naval Air Service. Dundas, who had been at Oxford at the outbreak of war, during which he served in France with the British Army and later the Royal Flying Corps, came into the office as an articled clerk in 1920. Cowper, after several rejections on medical grounds, enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1918, but after three months’ service was discharged as medically unfit, and was articled to his father early in 1919.26

These three of Remington’s contemporaries as articled clerks were presumably good company and certainly all well ahead of him in the race for partnership in Allens.

But there was no social distance between the owners’ sons and Geoffrey, as there is a

Remington family story to the effect that he was on the point of becoming engaged to one of the Allen daughters.27 Remington and Norman Cowper were also both later involved in the Institute of Public Affairs and the Australian Institute of Political

25Dundas Allen, The Elizabeth Street cottage: being a record of the firm of Allen Allen & Hemsley. Sydney: 1964. 31p. Chris Fogarty’s email to C.Maguire, June 2003. 26 Allen, p.21. 27 C.Maguire, Interview with Sue Remington, 7 January, 2003.

62 Science. More evidence of their friendship will emerge in the following Chapter, including Cowper’s role in provoking Remington’s interest in public libraries.

In 1917 after buying the old Athenaeum Club building on the corner of Castlereagh

Street and Hosking Place and renaming it Wigram House, the firm moved to new premises. Dundas Allen reports that ‘at first there was plenty of room in Wigram

House for everyone and everything’. (p.20). He also notes that ‘The strong room was a very high room with a gallery near the ceiling with shelves in which were stored the firm’s old letter books going back to the early 1840s’. (Would that they were available for present day research). After the addition of two storeys in 1920 which were let to tenants, Dundas Allen refers to ‘a kitchen and dining room in which the partners had lunch’. But there was also opportunity for other staff to eat and socialize since Allen also reports: ‘On the ground floor of Wigram House were two shops, one of which was occupied by Mockbell’s Coffee Room’. The other shop belonged to a fishmonger, the aroma of whose cuisine pervaded the firm’s offices until his banishment. More long-lasting in their effects on the workers in Wigram House were the demolition and building works in the area, especially the noise and dirt involved in extending Martin Place from Castlereagh Street through to Macquarie Street. It is not difficult to accept Allen’s claim that: ‘The first few years in Wigram House were far from comfortable’.28

Nearly a decade after Remington’s articles, another clerk who was studying part-time at the Sydney University Law School, reported that: ‘Obtaining articles was very difficult, especially if you had not the connections such as the right school, or

28 Allen, pp.20, 21, 22, 23.

63 recommendations from powerfully connected businessmen’. Even when offered, articles were outside the financial means of many students. Myer Rosenblum reported that he had to knock back the offer of articles offered on payment of a premium of ₤400. Instead he was employed by a more plebeian solicitor ‘without a premium at the “colossal” salary of ₤1 per week’. In search of some legal training, he had his articles transferred to two other offices. Of the whole experience, he reported:

‘Summing up I can say that at all those three offices I received courtesy and help and was surrounded with good natured people but I was taught very very little’.29 It is not clear whether Remington, who would have had little financial difficulty in meeting a premium, ten years earlier had fared better in the matter of legal training with more instruction from his master solicitor or solicitors. Whether he hung about in

Mockbells while his papers were filed waiting in the queue at the Lands Office as was the custom of other clerks, he apparently never felt the need to enrol in lectures of the

Sydney University Law School and later in life he did not seek university education for either of his children. He tended if anything to express as much pride as regret that he was not a university man In a university graduation address given late in his life he claimed that he could speak only on observations ‘formed in the hurly-burly of the mob’ and in ‘the University of Life’.30

There was apparently no universal agreement with a contemporary claim made by an academic in Adelaide University’s School of Law that: ‘our Australian law schools are organized on the right lines. There is that judicious admixture of teaching expert

29 Myer Rosenblum, ‘The articled clerk 1927-1932’ in Mackinolty, John and Judy, eds. A century down town: Sydney University Law School’s first hundred years. Sydney: Sydney University Law School, 1991, pp.83-84 30 G.C. Remington, The useful years. Occasional address delivered at the conferring of degrees at the University of New South Wales on April 27, 1960. Sydney: 1960, p.5

64 and practical lawyers, without which the best results are not attainable’.31 Thirty years after Remington’s legal studies, a distinguished legal academic from the United

States remarked that legal education in Australia had ‘generally followed the pattern of apprentice education’ and that, with barristers and solicitors forming two different branches of the profession, ‘the great numerical superiority of the solicitors has occasionally led them to seek to turn one or more of the schools into a trade shop’.32

It is difficult to track down the Solicitors Admission Board syllabus from the 1920s, how, when and where examinations were taken, and where the results were recorded.

A work published in 1990 points out that even though the courses offered by the

Admissions Boards had been found wanting by committees of inquiry in 1978 and

1987 as ‘poorly conceived, poorly administered, poorly taught and poorly examined’, they were still in existence.33 Whatever the merits of the Board syllabus studied by

Remington, his own testimony attests that his examination performance was less than outstanding. In a sympathetic letter, he assured a young lady who had failed the examination in 1951:

You must not worry at all about this “practice run” of the Intermediate Law Examination – all the best lawyers have, at least, two or three trial runs before they actually get through one or other of the exams. I lost count of the number of times I fell flat on my face trying to satisfy vagaries of the minds of the Examiners and I do not know that I am any the worse for it, although at the time I admit it had me worried. Looking back into the dim recess of primeval time with my best archaeological mind, I recall that I presented myself to the Examiners in Equity on three, if not four, successive occasions and each time they said I was not nearly good enough. However, I am all the better Equity Lawyer for this extensive training.34

31 W. Jethro Brown, ‘Law schools and the legal profession’ Commonwealth Law Review v.6 (1908- 1909), p.8 32 Griswold, Erwin N. ‘Observations on legal education in Australia’ Annual Law Review v.2 no.2 (December 1952) pp201-202. 33 Weisbrot, David, Australian lawyers. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990, p.142 34 G.C. Remington to Miss Annette Randall, 15 June 1951, Remington Papers ML Uncat MSS 808, Personal correspondence Box 10, Remington & Co. files.

65

Remington may have exaggerated the lack of lustre in his own performance in order to reassure the young aspirant. His difficulty in satisfying the examiners in Equity may however have influenced his decision to specialize in commercial law in his practice.

Remington’s admission as a solicitor is recorded in the New South Wales almanac for

1924 as having taken place on 16 March 1923, and his office address is listed as ’16

Wigram House, 19 Castlereagh Street’. 35 In the Almanac for 1925, his address is recorded as ‘Bull’s Chambers, 28 Martin Place’. The new address was occasioned by the beginning in 1924 of ‘Remington & Co.’, in which he was a joint founder and equal partner with G.S. Reichenbach.36 Documents in the Land Titles Office show that Remington’s mother transferred to him in June 1923 and February 1924 three lots of the Pibrac estate, the proceeds of which may have provided his proportion of collateral needed for setting up of the practice and the office. 37

Whatever the merits and shortcomings of his preparation for it, Remington proved capable with Gabriel Reichenbach of establishing a legal business before he was thirty years old. Their partnership lasted until the end of 1938 when Reichenbach went to

Allen, Allen & Hemsley. There, as a partner, by the 1950s he ‘had been looking after

35 New South Wales almanac for 1924, Sydney: Alfred James Kent, Government Printer, 1924, p.97 36 The date of founding and the fact of the joint partnership are confirmed in a letter from Gordon Richardson, Principal Librarian of the Library of New South Wales [now the State Library] to G.S. Reichenbach dated 20.10.1968, acknowledging the latter’s gift to the Remington Memorial Fund and Richardson’s mistake, in his obituary of Remington in referring to Reichenbach as Remington’s ‘former understudy’, in that Remington was ‘not the sole founder of Messrs Remington & Co. but one of two joint founders, who in 1924 commenced the practice as equal partners…From recollections of conversations with Mr Remington, I take it that you were the other of these two partners. I am glad to be corrected’ Remington Papers ML808, Box 17A. 37 Lots14,15 and 16 of DP10158, Certificate of Title Order No.A554698 , Register book vol.3054 Folio 19. Land Titles Office

66 [Frank] Packer like a Dutch uncle for decades’.38 Contemporary sources suggest that the dissolution of the partnership was amicable and that the professional opportunities offered by a partnership in Allens could not be denied. No doubt Remington’s association with Reichenbach and their close friendship set Remington & Co. on a firm foundation, and Remington maintained the firm for the rest of his life, while pursuing many other interests and opportunities. On the other hand he acknowledged that the loss of his partner made an immediate difference. In January 1939 he told

A.J. Waldegrave, the honorary secretary of the Institute of Public Administration in

England, that ‘the upset in the business forces me to keep my nose to the grindstone in a way that I thought was in the past of five or six years ago’.39 Sir Laurence Street, former Chief Justice of New South Wales, assured the author in an interview that

Remington was highly respected, and regarded as a very well established practitioner when he gave Street as a young barrister some of his early briefs in the 1940s.40

Perhaps the considerable amount of property for which Remington was responsible might have influenced his choice of commercial law as a specialty in his practice. As well having been given some of the ‘Pibrac’ property by his mother, Geoffrey and his brother Harry, as executors of her will managed her estate, including property and shares held in trust under the terms of their father’s will. There was plenty of conveyancing work to be done in disposing of the property which the brothers inherited jointly and sometimes individually, as well collecting the rents from tenants of their rented property. He and Harry, who was a grazier in the Bundella district of far Western New South Wales, sold ‘Pibrac’ at the beginning of 1929 for £4000, on a

38 Bridget Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer: the young master, a biography. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2000, pp.196-197 39 Remington to Waldegrave, 6 January 1939, Remington Papers, Mitchell ML808 Box 8 40 Sir Laurence Street, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 13 August 2003.

67 mortgage for three years at 8%. There were several other properties in metropolitan and country areas which they also disposed of.41 Constance Remington also left a portfolio of shares to which those she held under his husband’s will were added. This inheritance may have conditioned his lack of need for any frenzied pursuit of wealth for its own sake in his own career.

The gentleman in society

Geoffrey and his brother Philip lived at 'Pibrac' with their mother until her death in

1925 and continued to live there and, as provided in Constance’s will, continued to provide a home for their sister, Joyce. Joyce Remington who died in 1927 was an invalid from teen-age after injuries believed by her nieces to have been sustained in a fall from a front balcony at 'Pibrac'.42 Harry and Geoffrey Remington were trustees of their mother’s estate and some records of their stewardship and of Geoffrey’s distribution of the estate’s income survive. State Titles Office indexes indicate that in the 1920s Geoffrey sold many parcels of land in Sydney municipalities as diverse as

Ryde, Enfield, Warringah, Kuringgai, and Randwick, some of them jointly with his older brother Harry. His younger brother, Phillip, shared ownership with him of only two. Among the properties jointly sold is listed one for nearly 600 acres at

Wingecarribee in the Parish of Sutton Forest in the County of Camden.43 There is evidence that Geoffrey arranged personal loans and followed up defaulting debtors.

In August 1928 he seems to have been prompt in chiding a borrower for not keeping

41 New South Wales Land Titles Office, Index 1921-25/302/R.P. Act/ Rego-Roa, sheet 330, 331; Index 1926-27/382/R.P. Act/Ra-Ric, sheet 157, 158, & 159; Index 1928-29/410/RP Act /Ra-Ric, sheet 150- 151; Index 1930-32/450/R.P./Ra-Roc, sheet 126. 42 Susan Remington and June Lamb, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 3 August 2002. 43 New South Wales Land Titles Office,‘586 acs 15-33/4 pers pt por/24 ah Wingecarribee pah/Sutton Forest Co Camden’ Index 1928-29/410/RP Act /Ra-Ric, sheet 150-151.

68 up with repayments of the ₤21 which he had lent her at 10 % interest.44 As a joint executor of his mother’s estate, Geoffrey’s expenses included the upkeep of ‘Pibrac’.

Maintaining the house and grounds required employment of three full-time staff: 2 indoors and one gardener, with one other occasional employee.45

Joyce Remington died intestate. This is surprising since Geoffrey claimed eight months later, in an ‘Affidavit of payment of debts’ in the probate papers, that ‘I have always attended to all the business affairs of my sister the aforementioned Deceased, paid all her accounts, and had an intimate knowledge of her monetary affairs, especially during the six months prior to her death, when the deceased was an invalid quite unable to attend to any business matters and was residing at my house.’ His omission in reporting ₤1,568 of his 1926 income for income tax purposes was pointed out to him by the Federal Income Tax authority. This sum had been derived from income from ‘share interests of Estate of Late Mrs. C.M. Remington’.46 His own income tax return for the 12 months ended 30 June 1926 declares ₤408, ‘From share of profits derived from the partnership of Remington and Company’ as well as interest on mortgages (₤33), dividend and interest from his mother’s estate (₤7) and ‘From the

Trustee Marriage Settlement of C.M. Remington’ (₤26), thus ‘Total gross income from property’ (₤66) and ‘Grand total of Gross Income’ (₤474). When the overlooked amount picked up by the taxation authority is added and his substantial property ownership, Remington was a man of financial substance.

44 GCR to Mrs Margaret George, 24 Barker Street, Lidcombe, 22 August 1928. Remington Papers Mitchell MLMSS 808 Box 8 45 Note detailing Workers Compensation Insurance paid, 1928. Remington Papers MLMSS 808 Box 8 46The undeclared dividends and the shares to which they refer were: Bank of New South Wales, 36 @ ₤20=₤100; Tooth & Co.,1214 @ ₤1=₤374; Commercial Building & Investment Company,150 @ ₤3/10/-,₤920; Marcus Clark Ltd. 961 @ ₤1=₤174 Federal Income Tax authority, ‘Alteration sheet’, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, ‘Income Tax Returns’ in MLMSS 808 Box 8 ’ The date of the document is undated but appears to have referred to his income in 1926 or 1927.

69 By his 30th birthday on 23 November 1927, Geoffrey Remington must have been recognized as a wealthy young man about town. He had already developed the habit of dressing well which he continued throughout his life. Several of his own tailors’ bills survive in his papers in the Mitchell Library and reminiscences of acquaintances later in his life described him as dapper. To quote someone who encountered him in

1948, he was ‘sun tanned, dressed well and very active’.47 Family legend had it that he and his brother Phillip lived at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron when they left

‘Pibrac’ in 1928. An inquiry to the Squadron’s Honorary Archivist revealed no trace of either Remington having lived there.48 In May 1928 Geoffrey signed a lease for a flat in Kirribilli.49 and wrote to the gas company in August about his bill.50 Wherever he had lived, by the late 1920s his filial duties had been discharged and his business was launched with a reliable partner to take care of it in his absence. No wonder foreign travel was the next item on his agenda.

Three weeks after his sister Joyce’s death, Geoffrey embarked on an overseas tour, which had almost certainly been planned considerably earlier since powers of attorney covering himself and his travelling companion, Harry Dangar, had been lodged at

Remington & Co. in June 1927.51 Dangar was a great friend of Remington’s from their school days at The Armidale School. He was an artist, who lived in Terrigal and

47 Eoin Wilkinson, Interview on telephone with Carmel Maguire, 23 March 2004. 48.Carmel Maguire, letter to Mr Andrew McIntyre, Club Secretary,Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, 16 June 2004. No relevant information was found in Jim Murrant’s The Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron 1862-2000, Milsons Point, NSW: Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, 2000. The impression gained was that the Squadron has no comprehensive archive, even to the absence of membership lists for the 1920s, etc. 49 Lease for Flat no.7, ‘Renown’ Holbrook Ave., Kirribilli, signed by G.C. Remington, dated May 1968. Remington Papers, Mitchell Library MLMSS 808 Box 5A 50 Remington to North Shore Gas Co. Ltd., 16 August 1928, regarding gas account. Remington Papers, Mitchell Library MLMSS 808 Box 8. 51 [Powers of attorney] dated 14 June 1927. One of these documents, has ‘GCR’ pencilled on outer cover; and is addressed to ‘Remington & Co. or Reichenbach & anon’, and the other is to ‘Dangar Reichenbach and anon’.

70 whose influence was strong in Remington’s decision to buy land and build a holiday house there in 1950.52

They left Sydney in the ‘Makura’ on 20 June, 1927 on what was to be an eventful trip.

Remington kept a travel diary written faintly in pencil, of which only the first 15 pages have survived. On arrival in Wellington the ‘Makura’ was discovered to have

‘sprung a few rivets and strained a plate or two, making a good deal of water in one of the holds’. The young travellers were advised of the best hotel for lunch and ‘found it an excellent place’, followed up by of a musical show. On return to the ship they were reassured by a notice that they were to sail at 3pm next day. Obviously, the original of the diary was meant to be shared with family and friends, since a note at the end of Day 1 reported sending cables and going to the Post Office ‘for stamps and sent our letters off & the first instalment of my diary’.53 Contrary to expectations, the

‘Makura’ did not sail next day, and Remington wrote: ‘We feel rather disappointed at not going on to America immediately but are glad of the chance of seeing New

Zealand a bit’. On the fourth day of their adventure in preparation for a two-day excursion to Rotorua, Remington reported that he took a few photos and that his attire was of interest to bystanders:

I put on plus fours for the journey and on going out on deck seemed to upset the immediate population – the wharfies almost stopped work to tell each other not to miss the extraordinary sight – luckily they got used to it pretty quickly.

When the plus fours aroused similar interest at the Tourist Office in the city, he surmised that ‘they probably had an extraordinary effect being worn with the heavy overcoat’. He was not impressed with ‘lying in a rather smelly warm bath’ at

52 Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000. 53G.C. Remington, ‘Travel diary’ Remington Papers MLMSS 808 Box 8 ‘Personal correspondence’

71 Rotorua’s baths but his good spirits were quickly restored by ‘an excellent & interesting guide’ whom he described as ‘a half or quarter caste Maori’ and who took them to a Maori village. Next day, even with Rangi, the famous Maori guide, he complained of ‘boring mud holes’ but waxed lyrical over the beauty of the site of the

Tarawera eruption, captured by ‘the blue of the lake, the grey of the mountain and the other shores of the lake all shades of brilliant green’. The diary ends with: ‘I am off to bed as it’s after midnight I will file this day’s doings when I get on board’. More than a hint emerges that Remington was not yet a sophisticated traveller in passages like the following: ‘So far we find the ship’s officers and staff etc. a most awfully decent obliging lot - everyone seems to fill the position he has in a most perfect way’.

Unfortunately no more of the diary seems to have survived. In reminiscences he recorded on tape in 1964, he recalled having visited the United States and Britain in

1927.54 The maximum length of his time overseas may be estimated from the gap in his involvement in the Pymble Golf Club. Remington had been very much involved at the beginning of 1927 in the liquidation of the old Club and in drafting articles for the new, but after May references to the Club do not re-surface until July 1928.55

This suggests that he may have been away for up to a year from June 1927 to June

1928.

Some of the effects of his journey can be discerned in the contacts he made, most notably with Sydney and Beatrice Webb with whom he corresponded for many years thereafter and visited on subsequent visits to Britain. There is no doubt that

Remington accepted much of the Webbs’ Fabian socialist philosophy. His daughter

54 G.C.Remington, Audio tapes, recorded at his home in Woollahra, August 1964. ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 1. 55 Correspondence regarding Pymble Golf Club in Remington Papers MLMSS 808 Box 8.

72 referred to the influence of the Webbs on her father and ‘the Fabian influence generally’.56 It is likely that his contact with the Webbs was arranged by W.G.K.

Duncan, who in 1927 was studying for a PhD at the London School of Economics.57

Despite his evident feeling at ease in England, the United States seems to have been something of an eye-opener to the young Remington. In the reminiscences he recorded in 1964, he describes himself in 1927 as ‘Very open and sensitive to ideas’, and he goes on to quote the inscription on the Monument to the dead of the

Confederate States Army in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC:

Not for fame or reward Not for place or for rank Not lured by ambition Or goaded by necessity But in simple obedience to duty as they understood it These men suffered all Sacrificed all Dared all and died.

The much older Remington goes on to pronounce this ‘the essence of the sentiment with which the citizen must regard his responsibility to society. 58

However sketchy the details of this first overseas travel, the experience was undoubtedly positive and one that he wanted his brother Phillip and his law partner

Reichenbach to enjoy as well. In October 1928 he wrote to make contacts for them

56Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000. An example of Remington’s Fabian gradualist approach to social change is contained in his letter to Beatrice Webb in December 1937, ‘My idea of libraries is only a means to an end. It is not much use our politicians and other prominent people yelling at our community to be democrats and to be well-informed and keep in step with world events, and always to be critical, and so on and so on, at great length, when our people cannot obtain books’. . (Remington to Mrs Sidney Webb, 7 December 1937, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808, Box 9). 57 Stretton, Hugh, ‘Duncan, Walter George Keith (1903-1987), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/duncan- walter-george-keith-12443/text22375, accessed 29 February 2012. 58 G.C. Remington, Interview recorded 13 July 1964, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808 Audiotapes, CY/MLOH/S44 Tape 5 Side A

73 both at a hotel in Chicago, at the National Geographic Society in Washington and in

New York to attorneys on Wall Street.59 On 2 November, he reported to his brother

Harry that ‘Phil and Reichy got away yesterday afternoon’.60

Remington seemed to relish opportunities for overseas travel from this time on. His first taste may not have marked the beginning of his internationalism and cosmopolitanism but undoubtedly contributed to their development. Already there were also signs of the stirring of his social conscience and his lifelong involvement in good causes. In 1928 he was involved in the Big Brother League and wrote to assure an anxious father in Leeds that he would meet and report on the progress of his son who was on his way to Australia under the scheme. Remington also wrote to the son on board ship in Melbourne that ‘I am to be your “Big Brother” until such time as you may feel that you have found your feet in this new country’.61 His ‘Big Brother’ role was to be played in many circumstances and with a myriad of adopted siblings throughout his life.

Emergence of the public man

Remington entered the 1930s as a man of property with an established professional career. The partnership which he formed in 1924 with Gabriel Reichenbach as

‘Remington & Company’ was successful and it persisted to the end of 1938. Their office was located at 17 O’Connell Street, a very convenient address for a law firm doing business in the city. Remington took on more personal responsibility when he

59 Remington to Stevens Hotel, Chicago, 21 October 1928; Remington to National Geographic Society, Washington DC, 29 October 1928; and to attorneys in New York City, 31 October 1928, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808 Box 8 60 Remington to Harry Remington, Makewa, Bundella NSW, 2 November 1928, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808 Box 8

61 Remington to [name indecipherable] c/- SS Largs Bay, Melbourne, September 1928, Remington Papers Mitchell Library MLMS 808 Box 8.

74 married Joan Daly, on May 7 1930.at St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, Phillip

Street, Sydney.

Joan Remington was usually referred to as “Babe”. It is not clear whether this was an established nickname before her marriage but presumably its adoption was influenced by the fact that her sister-in-law, Harry Remington’s wife, was also named Joan.

Geoffrey Remington seems to have recorded no memories of his marriage, as of his childhood. The fact that the marriage lasted until Remington’s death in 1968 suggested at least that there was no great incompatibility. Any of his incidental references to her suggest an equal partnership in which she was privy to his activities.

In reminiscence, two of their daughter’s friends recalled the Remingtons’ outstanding hospitality to them as young people and of Mrs Remington’s constantly preparing food for them in their holiday house at Terrigal.62 Remington paid his wife’s parking fines and the bills from the retailer, David Jones Limited, on her behalf. On

Remington’s own report, she reacted without alarm to a telephone call from New

South Wales Premier, Alexander Mair, asking whether her husband was in good health. The call was made in 1939 immediately after Remington had vented his rage to Mair on the delay in passage of the Library Bill.63 The story of Remington’s struggle in achieving library legislation in New South Wales is told in the following chapter.

62 Elizabeth Bowman, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 15 October, 2006; and Brian France, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 27 October 2006. 63 G.C. Remington, Interview recorded 13 July 1964, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808 CY/MLOH/S44 Tape 5

75 The Remingtons began married life at Flat 3, Claverton Flats, 311b Edgecliff Road,

Woollahra.64 According to their daughter Sue’s recollections, this property was owned by a member of the Allen family and she also referred to this as ‘a very social time in Sydney’.65 Evidence of tailors’ bills, golf club memberships, balls and receptions in the Mitchell papers suggest that their lives in the 1930s were indeed ‘a very social time’.66 The family moved from Woollahra towards the end of the 1930s although his daughter could not recall whether this move was precipitated by a rise in the rent at Woollahra or the owners’ offer to sell the property to him at a price which her father thought was too high. Instead he purchased a house in Wollstonecraft, on the other side of the Harbour but still conveniently located for access to the city centre after the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932.

However promising his legal career, and however satisfactory his social standing and domestic comforts, Remington was obviously not content to remain without involvement in wider public life. In his 1964 reminiscences, already mentioned above, Remington mused on his reasons for involvement in public life. In the fifth of the six audiotapes, Remington claimed he could not explain why he should have got engaged in ‘these matters which had nothing whatever to do with me in any shape or form’. He mentioned W.G.K. Duncan, who was then back in Sydney with his newly- minted doctorate from the London School of Economics, as the possible source of stimulation of his interest in politics. Duncan was a founding director of the

64 Sands New South Wales directory 1931. Remington is listed as resident in Flat no.3 Claverton Flats, 311 b Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, situated between Wallaroy Road and Roslyndale Avenue. Since the preface is dated January 1931, the published data must refer to 1930. 65 Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000. 66 The flavour of the times in Sydney was very well captured in the New South Wales Historic House Trust’s exhibition entitled ‘Thoroughly modern Sydney: 1920s and 30s glamour and style’, mounted at the Museum of Sydney from July to October 2006. Harold Cazneaux’s photographs of people and places were often featured in The Home with cover art by Thea Proctor and Hera Roberts.

76 Australian Institute of Political Science in 1932, and was almost certainly one of the

Fabian socialist influences on Remington at the time.67 In his memoirs he claimed that at the beginning of his public career, he rejected the possibilities of becoming a member of either Parliament or the Public Service. He also claimed to have rejected the idea of turning himself ‘into a public figure by writing letters to the press, articles in the press, becoming what is generally thought of as an authority on this that or the other’. There were certainly aspects of this third route to a name in society which he later pursued, but he expressed his motivation quite plainly:

What did appeal to me [was] to be engaged in activities that appeared to us to be worthwhile from the social point of view and gave us personally some satisfaction in carrying out the job. At this stage in my life I was very open and sensitive to ideas from wherever they came.

It was then that he quoted the inscription on the Monument to the dead of the

Confederate States Army which he had read at Arlington National Cemetery, in

Washington DC during his visit to the United States in 1927.68 Thirty years later, he remained unsure of his motivation to pursue good works. He says:

Again I raise the point and I have no answer to it. Why did I do these things? How did I do what I did do and why should have I done them? I don’t know. I don’t know at all.

However unclear his motives, it is obvious that Remington interested himself in politics in the broadest sense from early in his career. Maybe it was intuitive rather than deliberate, but his talent for building and maintenance of strong personal networks was a feature of his career from early on. His gifts for making and keeping friends were no doubt natural but they were used to good effect in developing his

67 Stretton, Hugh, ‘Duncan, Walter George Keith (1903-1987), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/duncan- walter-george-keith-12443/text22375, accessed 29 February 2012. 68 Remington, G.C. Mitchell Library CY MLOH 546/1- Tape 5

77 contacts with his brothers in the law, in the press, in parliaments, in the public service, in the trade unions and among diplomats. He made and developed an astonishing variety of contacts, from all classes, ages, callings and mindsets. His interactions were begun and pursued, not only with people in Australia but with visitors to this country and people whom he met in countries he visited.

Remington seems to have pursued good relations with the news media from early in his career. His contributions to newspapers and items about him began early in the

1930s. Some of his published book reviews have been preserved, pasted into the scrapbook which had been his Father’s.69 They are without source or date, but the reviews seem to date from the early 1930s.70 . His book reviews for which sources are known included that of F.D. Roosevelt’s Looking forward (London: Heinemann

1933) which appeared in Australian Highway 10/10/33; and of Sydney and Beatrice

Webb by Mary Agnes Hamilton (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1933) published in

The Australian Highway 10/5/34. In the issue of 11/8/34 of the same journal

Remington’s review of FDR’s On our way was published. 71 The tenor of the reviews confirms his attraction to liberal democratic views and to his strong attraction at that time to Fabian socialism. This British movement sought to advance the cause of democratic socialism, in which all would be free and equal in a just society which was to be brought about, not by revolution, but by gradual reforms. Fabian idealism no doubt attracted Remington as a young man, and his interest was certainly strengthened, not only by his friendship with W.G.K. Duncan, but also by his meeting

69 Remington Papers ML MSS 808, Box 5a Scrapbook 70 One was of The Spanish constitution by HRG Greaves, published in London by Hogarth Press, in1933. Another was The revolt of the masses by Ortega y Gasset , published in London by Allen & Unwin in 1932] 71 Not found under that title in online catalogues, including the US Library of Congress.

78 and subsequent correspondence with Beatrice Webb.72 In the first of the Mitchell tapes made in 1964 Remington goes along bookshelves in various rooms in his

Woollahra house identifying titles and remarking on those which had particular significance for him. Among the authors he mentions having read 30 to 35 years earliler are Montaigne, Dostoevsky, Erasmus, Mill on Liberty, and books on Soviet communism. He remarks that ‘I mention them as part and parcel of my learning – things that interested me’.73 The broad range of these interests continues to emerge as this study proceeds.

By 1933 not only his reviews of books on political subjects but also reports of his political activism were beginning to be published. In 1933 he was President of the

Constitutional Association of New South Wales and he later remarked that: ‘This is my first essay into public life or hold a position other than associated with my job as a solicitor. I enjoyed it very much’.74 His experience as a radio broadcaster also began at this time. The Daily Telegraph of 1 April 1933 carried a report of his radio broadcast of the previous night as President of the Association. His topic was the reform of the Upper House of the State Parliament, a topic then of current interest in view of an upcoming referendum. Remington is quoted as saying: ‘This principle

[defined in the Upper House Reform proposal] is the right of people to exercise proper control over politicians, instead of the politicians being absolute dictators over the public’. Remington’s vision of ‘reform’ is reported as a Council of 60 members elected by Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly members as one electoral body, with members to hold seats for 12 years, one quarter retiring every three years

72 For example, Remington to Mrs Sidney Webb, 7 December 1937, Remington Papers Mitchell Library, MLMS 808, Box 9. 73 G.C. Remington, Mitchell Library CY MLOH 546/1-6, Tape 2 74 G.C. Remington, Mitchell Library CY MLOH 546/1-6, Tape 1

79 but eligible for re-election. Such a conservative change hardly betokens a reform without a reminder that, at that stage, members of the Legislative Council in New

South Wales were appointed by the Governor for life.75 As well as his interest in parliamentary power, Remington was quick to recognize the power of the print and broadcast mass media to bring about political change.

Access to the Daily Telegraph may well have been facilitated through Remington’s reported relationship with Frank Packer, since, according to his daughter Sue, her father was a great poker player and she mentioned Packer as one of his regular partners. Remington also enjoyed very good relations with Brian Penton when he took over as Editor of the Daily Telegraph. 76 Remington, again in his role as

President of the Constitutional Association, gave a talk on Radio 2GB entitled

‘Babies, bonds and bewilderment’ in February 1934 and two months later he gave another broadcast address on the political party systems.77 The latter provoked a leader in The Bulletin entitled ‘The great imposture’, which argued that the party system had outlived its usefulness.78 What may be regarded as Remington’s riposte to that assertion was published in the United Australian Review in a piece entitled

‘Principles of party politics: a little study and reflection for the critics’ with the byline

‘by GCR’.79

75 Turner, Ken House of review?: the New South Wales Legislative Council, 1934-1968.Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1969. 76 Buckridge, Patrick, The scandalous Penton: a biography of Brian Penton. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1994, p.12] 77 Remington, G.C. ‘Babies, bonds and bewilderment’, radio broadcast on 2GB 11 February 1934; [title unknown] radio broadcast on 2GB, 16 April 1934 78 ‘The great imposture’ The Bulletin 25th April 1934. 79 Remington, G.C. ‘Principles of party politics: a little study and reflection for the critics’ United Australian Review 21 November 1934.

80 In 1935 and 1936 Remington continued to get good publicity for his public undertakings and a little of his private life.80 In neither his working nor his social life were there signs of personal awareness of the impact which the Depression was having on the poor. The Sydney Morning Herald, Smith’s Weekly, under Claude

McKay, and the Sun News Pictorial as well as a number of periodicals carried the messages which Remington sought to deliver on behalf of the associations in which he was interested. The Constitutional Association was soon joined in his interests by the Australian Institute of Political Science and the Institute of Public Administration.

An example of the respect with which his views were received in the press is an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled ‘An Economic Council’ which refers to ‘Mr Remington’s well-informed and thoughtful articles’.81 In the same issue is a letter to the editor from F.A. Bland, newly appointed Professor of Public

Administration at the University of Sydney, suggesting that “Mr Remington’s plea for an economic general staff should commend itself alike to harassed Cabinets and embarrassed taxpayers”.82 Bland’s letter shows that he was aware of the impact of swift publication of reinforcement of the approved views of others. This was a tactic

Remington used effectively in his campaigns for good causes, and perhaps he learned it from Bland. No doubt influenced by Bland, the cause of public administration and better government marked Remington’s emergence into public life and he was to pursue it throughout his career.

80 ‘ABC in an ideal way’, [caption of photograph] Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 1935. Picture includes Sue Remington as one of the children attending the kindergarten in the Lloyd Jones home, ‘Rosemont’ at Woollahra. 81 ‘An Economic Council’ Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 1935. 82 Armand Bland was, like Remington, active in the Institute of Public Affairs. In the foreword to the commemorative issue of Public Administration, the journal of the Australian Regional Groups of the Institute of Public Administration,( v.7 no.3 new series September 1948: p.127), Remington referred to ‘the unique contribution which Professor Bland has made during thirty years and more to the study and practice of government and public administration in Australia’.

81 The cause of public administration and better government generally

Remington took office in several organizations which acted as important parts of the base from which he reached out to ‘do good’. The assembling of his networks which had begun through the Constitutional Association of New South Wales continued and by the 1930s he could make use of his wide range of contacts among solicitors and barristers, some of which date from his time as an articled clerk at Allen Allen &

Hemsley. Norman Cowper is a notable example. He and Remington were associated in the Australian Institute of Political Science (AIPS). Remington’s daughter made mention in interview of several meetings having taken place in their home about formation of a new political party.83 The United Australia Party founded in1931 may have been an outcome of these discussions. Cowper was an unsuccessful

UAP candidate at the federal election in December in that year.84 He and Remington were more successful in getting Eric Harrison into federal Parliament as a UAP candidate for the seat of Wentworth. Later they both regretted their successful advancement of Harrison’s career, not least when he defeated Cowper to retain his federal seat in the 1940 elections.85 On the other hand, Remington had no regrets about his devotion to the cause of public libraries, an enterprise in which Cowper accidentally helped to involve him in 1935. A full account of this is given in the following chapter.

Remington’s work with the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) netted him many friends. Daniel McVey was one whose influence was important in facets of his later

83 Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000. Sue Remington was born in 1932 so that her memory could only have come from hearsay later in the decade. 84 Alfred James, ‘Sir Norman Cowper: biographical note. JRAHS v.86 no.1 (June 2000): 74-84. 85 Remington made clear to his daughter his disappointment in Eric Harrison as a Member of Parliament, and she remembered her surprise when she called on him in London when he was High Commissioner and he burst into tears. Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000.

82 life.86 McVey worked with Remington in the beginning and early nurture of the New

South Wales Group of the Institute. McVey, Scots born, communications engineer turned administrator, who went from a position as Superintendent of Mails in Sydney to the Commonwealth Public Service Board in Canberra in the mid 1930s and later became Director of Posts and Telegraphs. McVey’s influence was important in securing Commonwealth Government appointments during World War II for

Remington. McVey earned a fine reputation as a departmental head in the public service during and after the War, and this was followed by an equally distinguished career as a manager and director of important companies.

The IPA also brought Remington into contact with Sir Herbert Gepp, who was knighted in 1933, for his achievements as a mining metallurgist and industrial manager. Like McVey, Gepp was both government servant and leader of industry.

Gepp promoted the cause of science in industry and agriculture and took up the cause of good government generally in lectures, articles and broadcasts.87 His association with Remington probably began through their shared membership of the Institute of

Public Affairs. Remington used his influence with the Sydney Morning Herald to publish two articles he wrote to promulgate Gepp’s ideas.88 He also helped Gepp with the article in the Atlantic which attracted considerable attention in the United

States.89 Gepp paid for the publication of a selection of his addresses, entitled

Democracy’s danger, but Remington saw it through the presses at Angus and

86 Carmel Maguire, ‘Remington, Geoffrey Cochrane (1897-1968)’. Australian Dictionary of Biography v.16 (1940-1980) Pik-Z. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002: pp.76-77.

87 B.E.Kennedy, “Gepp, Sir Herbert William (1877-1954) ADB v.8, Melbourne University, 1981, pp 640-642 88 G.C. Remington, ‘Gepp proposals, an Advisory Council, I. SMH 28 August 1935; Gepp proposals, an Advisory Council, II. SMH 29 August 1935. 89 Herbert Gepp, ‘From one democracy to another’. Atlantic, June 1938: 770-775.

83 Robertson in Sydney in 1939.90 By this time both men were very concerned with the federal Government’s apparent concern about the situation in Europe and Australia’s lack of defence preparedness.

By the end of the decade Remington was corresponding with a large and varied cast of notables and had achieved friendship with several of them. They included ministers of the crown in the governments of the Commonwealth, New South Wales, and several other States, trade union officials, notably Dr Lloyd Ross, Secretary of the

New South Wales Branch of the Australian Railway Union, an acknowledged communist at that time91, and the Chief Justice of Australia, Sir John Latham. His contacts in the press have already been mentioned above and his media outreach included radio stations and managers of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.92

Remington’s interest in the Australian Institute of Political Science led him in 1932 to call upon John Metcalfe at the Public Library of New South Wales in an attempt to interest him in becoming a member of the Institute. In that year Metcalfe had been appointed to the newly created position of Deputy Principal Librarian.93 Remington was apparently not able to recruit him for the AIPS and it was more than two years later that their close and productive partnership in the Free Library Movement began.

90 Herbert Gepp, , Democracy’s danger. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1939. 91 Lloyd Ross invited him to meetings in his home in the late 1930s. Remington excused himself on account of his intense involvement by then in the Free Library Movement. (Lloyd Ross to Remington, 8 November 1938; Remington to Lloyd Ross, 9 November 1938 Remington Papers,ML MS808 Box 9) 92 One such was BH Molesworth, who left Sydney to become ABC manager in Queensland. In letters Remington addressed him as ‘My Dear Moley’. 93 Creation of the position was a defensive move by Principal Librarian William Ifould and the Trustees as the appointment of Mitchell Librarian had to go to the outstanding candidate who was a woman, Ida Leeson, Metcalfe’s salary was less than Leeson’s but his superior rank and right of succession was made clear to all interested parties. The story is well told in Ida Leeson: a life by Sylvia Martin. Cover title: Ida Leeson, a life: not a blue-stockinged lady. (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin 2006.) Details of Metcalfe’s appointment are also set out in David Jones’s thesis: Jones, David John, William Herbert Ifould and the development of library services in New South Wales, 1912-1942. A dissertation submitted to the School of Information, Library and Archive Studies in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. At head of title: University of New South Wales. Sydney, 1993.

84

By late in 1939 the country stood on the brink of war. The story of Remington’s part in it needs to be deferred in order to insert the Free Library Movement, which was his principal preoccupation in the second half of the 1930s. All his interests were to be used and to prove useful in this, the first great campaign of his career. Appropriately enough it began through his interest in the Australian Institute of Political Science.

85

II. Libraries for the people

86 Chapter 4

The Free Library Movement

Choice of public libraries as a major cause

Remington’s enlistment in the cause of free public libraries was both accidental and providential. In 1935 the report Australian libraries: a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement was published by the Australian Council for

Educational Research (ACER). The Library Association of Victoria had first asked the Carnegie Corporation of New York to sponsor such a survey in 1929. After long negotiations with library interests in Australia through the ACER, the Corporation agreed in 1934 to commission Ralph Munn, Director of the Carnegie Library of

Pittsburgh, to carry a survey of Australian libraries. Ernest R. Pitt, Chief Librarian of the Public Library of Victoria was chosen by the Corporation with input from Frank

Tate of ACER after some consultation with Australian leading librarians. The report pointed out that the Australian population was better served with public libraries in

1880 and was trenchant in its criticisms of the poor substitutes provided by ‘wretched little institutes which have long since become cemeteries of old and forgotten books’. 1 Later judgments were not all so harsh; Whitelock, for example, judges that

‘the institutes had made the concept of adult learning familiar and acceptable to many members of a frontier society. 2 Remington was unaware of the survey’s existence when he went with his friend, colleague in the law and in political manoeuvres,

1 Ralph Munn and Ernest R. Pitt, Australian libraries: a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1935. 2 Derek Whitelock, The great tradition: a history of adult education in Australia. St Lucia, Q.: University of Queensland Press, 1974, p.132.

87 Norman Cowper, to call on Frank Tate at ACER in Melbourne. The purpose of the visit was to seek funds for the recently established Australian Institute of Political

Science from the Carnegie grants made to ACER.3 According to Remington’s report:

Frank Tate heard us with his usual patience and interest and then Norman Cowper more or less facetiously said that I was always interesting myself in various activities, most of which did not concern me. Quickly Frank Tate with a laugh said to me ‘Well here’s something you can get your teeth into’ and with that he handed me a copy of the Munn Pitt report which he said he had only that day received from the press.4

Later commentators on the Report5 have pointed out that it was the shock of its trenchant criticism of the existing situation and the publicity created that proved a catalyst for development rather than the report’s specific recommendations.6 But the contents had a startling effect on Remington:

I hardly believed it - actually I was shocked at what it had to say and fascinated by the way it was said.7

Writing of the report was entirely Munn’s doing.8 Nearly all the metropolitan dailies carried comments on the contents of the Report: Australian libraries were ‘starved’, even ‘pathetic’. The Sydney Morning Herald’s editorial pointed out that until

Australia accepted the idea that public libraries were agencies for education and

3 The Australian council for Educational Research was set up and maintained by the Carnegie Corporation from its founding in 1930 until 1942, after which its financing became a local responsibility. Australian Encyclopedia, vol.2, p.268b. 4 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 5. 5 Munn, Ralph and Ernest R. Pitt. Australian libraries: a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1935. 6 David J. Jones, “Public Libraries: ‘Institutions of the Highest Educational Value’”, Chapter 9 pp.157- 175 in Martyn Lyons and John Arnold, eds. A history of the book in Australia 1891-1945: a national culture in a colonised market. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2001. and Carmel Maguire, ‘Advances in Australian library services’ in Advances in librarianship vol. 9 (1979): pp.258-289. New York: Academic Press, 1979. 7 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 5. 8 Ralph Munn to Frank Tate, 15 November 1936, ACER Archives, Series 41 vol.85.

88 culture, the country would continue to lag behind other countries9. The Age welcomed the Report as ‘an event which should awaken the library conscience’ of the nation’.10 Ian Morrison judged Smith’s Weekly’s comment as ‘the fiercest denunciation of the Munn-Pitt survey11. It ends with the claim that: ‘The only efficient library organisation here is in South Australia, where Mechanics’ Institutes work harmoniously to supply the State with efficient libraries’.12

Regarded by later writers as a watershed in Australian library history,13 in fact the impact of the Munn-Pitt report would have been much less without the work on which

Remington embarked.

On his return to Sydney, Remington swiftly enlisted as a collaborator John Metcalfe,

Deputy Principal Librarian at the Public Library of New South Wales.14 In discussing the report, Remington and Metcalfe decided that a movement to promote free libraries had to be set up. Metcalfe, whose ‘clear and incisive mind’ Remington was quick to acknowledge, defined separate roles: one was for a layman as propagandist while the librarian roles were to be left to librarians.15

9 ‘What are libraries for?’ Sydney Morning Herald, 16 February 1935, p.14. 10 The Age, 26 Jan 1935, p.5. 11 Ian Morrison, ‘The popular press and the Munn-Pitt Report’. Australian Library History Forum V: Libraries and life in a changing world, the Metcalfe years, 1920-1970 School of Information, Library and Archive Studies, University of New South Wales 6 - 7th November, 1992. Sydney: 1993 12 ‘Putting Pitt into Pittsburgh’ Smith’s Weekly, 18 August 1934, p.5. Morrison, p.127, says it was inspired – if not written – by J.H. Cochrane of Williamstown Mechanics Institute. 13 Biskup, Peter, Libraries in Australia by Peter Biskup with the assistance of Doreen M. Goodman. Wagga Wagga: Centre for Information Studies, 1994, p.1 14 John Metcalfe wrote the Munn Pitt report had ‘such a bettering effect’ that it began ‘a library renaissance’ and that Australian library history could be divided into AM ante Munn and PM post Munn periods. John Metcalfe, ‘Libraries in the Jubilee’, Australian Quarterly March 1951, p.19. The Public Library of New South Wales is now called in name as it always was in fact, the State Library of New South Wales. 15 G.C. Remington Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 5.

89 The layman’s job was Remington’s from the beginning, and clearly the librarian co- pilot was to be Metcalfe, who had already demonstrated his interest in Australian public libraries. In 1934 he had published an article on ‘Public library systems in

Australia’ in the Library Association Record, the official journal of the Library

Association, the national association of British librarians.16 Remington and Metcalfe were very different in background and personality. One was wealthy and privileged, the other from a family which was working class; one was socially adept, the other inclined to eschew social graces. Remington’s disposition was to flatter, Metcalfe was more prone to confront. Their friendship and mutual regard were based in their shared passion for libraries for the people, and their regard for each other increased in their shared missionary journeys. In the second half of the 1930s, their mission was to foster the branches of the Free Library Movement and in the 1940s their aim was to convince local government authorities to adopt the Library Act. One commentator has referred to their ‘railway crusade’17 as they crossed and re-crossed the State by train in first creating and then sustaining branches of the Movement. Whatever the contrasts between them, without their combination of talents, it is difficult to see how the legislation allowing free public libraries in New South Wales could have been achieved in 1939. According to Remington’s report, Metcalfe was the tactician who planned the strategy for the Free Library Movement. Metcalfe also wrote, or at least made the first drafts for many of the Movement’s statements and publications, and he frequently supplied information for others to send as letters to newspapers or articles

16 Metcalfe, J.W. Public library systems in Australia. A paper based on one read to the Federal Library Conference held in Melbourne on November 22nd and 23rd, 1933, Library Association Record, 4th series pp.314-321, 367-374 Sept/Oct 1934,with a postscript December 1935 (in which Munn Pitt and some reactions to it described). FLM correspondence files, No.3 file in folder Miscellaneous libraries. 17 Jones, Public libraries: 'institutions of the highest educational value', p.170.

90 for other publications. Remington frequently acknowledged Metcalfe’s contributions.18

They seemed united in their approach to their first hurdle, namely W.H. Ifould, the

Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales. Even though

Remington was somewhat ambivalent in his attitude to Ifould, he accepted Metcalfe’s assessment of Ifould’s importance to their cause, though he did not always seem aware of the restrictions on both Metcalfe and Ifould. As government employees, they could not be identified as prime movers in lobbying their employers for any cause. Thus Ifould may well have reacted ‘somewhat quizzically’ to their initial overtures because of his status as a public servant though Remington suspected more personal motives. In Remington’s view, Ifould had not much confidence in

Remington’s persevering with the job nor in his ability to do it. But Ifould’s support was crucial because of his access to the Minister for Education and therefore his ability to keep the State Government in touch with developments. Remington and

Metcalfe resolved that their lobbying would be directed at local government and ‘at what we called in the American phrase the grass roots’.19

Once the Remington/Metcalfe alliance had been formed, and with Ifould’s support, however skeptical in the beginning, the way was open to rally allies for the opening of their campaign for free public libraries in New South Wales. Their vehicle was the

Free Library Movement (FLM).

18 For example, Remington to Russell, CCNY, 9 June 1937: ‘I do not know that I have told you previously, but Mr Metcalfe has been the brains of this Movement from start to finish. He has prepared all our statements and literature and has been our guide, philosopher and friend, without whose aid the Free Library Movement should never have functioned so effectively’. FLM Papers, State Library of NSW,5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 19 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 5.

91

The Free Library Movement

Remington’s dominance in the Free Library Movement was not established until almost a year into its existence. The initiative for the Movement came from G.W.

Brain, accountant and President of the Middle Harbour Progress Association, whose city office was close to Remington’s in O’Connell Street. Brain organized a meeting of ‘Delegates from the Public and quasi-public bodies functioning within the

Municipality of Willoughby convened by the Middle Harbour Progress Association and held at the School of Arts, Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, on Wednesday 26th June,

1935’.20 He was motivated by his Progress Association’s concern ‘at the shortcomings of the Library position within the Commonwealth and particularly within this State’ revealed in the Munn-Pitt Report. Ifould, as Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales, addressed the forty representatives of parents and citizens and progress associations on free public libraries and emphasized the need for a State-wide system, cooperation between new public libraries and a central library and for a demonstration of unity in order to attract government support.21 In the election which followed, Brain was elected Honorary Secretary of the FLM and so was a provisional committee. W. Burley Griffin, the architect of Canberra, who was there representing the Castlecrag Progress Association, joined the committee..

Remington, who was present as President of the Constitutional Association of New

South Wales, was not elected.

20 FLM Archives State Library of New South Wales, [3rd] blue box – ‘F L M ‘on spine label with pencil ‘1’ beneath. Minutes – General Meeting’ pasted on front cover. 21 Jones, Public libraries: 'institutions of the highest educational value', p.253.

92 As Remington reported to Carnegie, ‘For various reasons this provisional committee failed to function’.22 A few months later Ifould met with members of the committee and helped resolve the Movement’s objects, namely ‘To advocate and work for the establishment of Free Libraries; and to create and foster public opinion on the value of

Free Libraries’. To encourage wide membership, fees were kept to a minimum one shilling per year for individuals and five shillings per year for organizations.

The second general meeting of the FLM was held in November 1935, five months after the first. Secretary Brain pointed out in the notice of meeting that the date marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrew Carnegie, Scots born industrialist who had donated to public libraries some of the multi millions derived from his enterprises in the United States. The notice ‘earnestly invited’ people to learn the aims and methods by which the FLM proposed ‘to advocate to establish free libraries in all important centres of the State, along the lines of those which owe their origin to the beneficence of Andrew Carnegie.’ Obviously the FLM was alert from the beginning to the possibility of funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which had funded the Munn-Pitt report. Bibliographer, collector of Australiana, and judge, J.A. Ferguson, who was also a Trustee of the Public Library of New South

Wales, addressed the meeting on the ‘life’s work of Andrew Carnegie and library matters generally’. Ifould then addressed the meeting on ‘library facilities or the lack of them here’. H.V. Evatt, then a High Court judge, proposed the vote of thanks and copies of a draft constitution were made available and it was ‘adopted by

22 Remington to Russell, 16 February 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

93 resolution’.23 Sydney newspapers the next day reported that delegates were urged to return to their districts to set up branches of the Free Library Movement and to involve local members of parliament, representatives of Progress Associations,

Chambers of Commerce, Municipal and Shire Councils, Parents and Citizens’

Associations and similar bodies.24

Remington was one of twenty Councillors elected at the first annual general meeting in March 1936, and one of six then elected to form the Executive, with Sir Frederick

Stewart KB, MHR, president and David Maugham, KC, chairman. The minutes of that meeting record the provisional council’s appreciation of Brain’s work at

Honorary Secretary with the acknowledgement that: ‘This movement was started by him and it is due to his energy and enthusiasm that so much has already been achieved’.25 Part of the Movement’s achievement to date was the ₤50 grant from the

CCNY funds made available through the good offices of the ACER.26 The AGM was immediately followed by the first meeting of the Council.27 Remington’s leadership potential was quickly recognized and he was elected Chairman of the

Executive.

The Movement’s objects, clearly set out in the constitution, were to advocate and work for the establishment of Free Libraries and to create and foster public opinion on the value of Free Libraries. The Constitution of the Free Library Movement, went to

23 . Minutes of General Meeting, Free Library Movement, 25 Nov 1935, FLM correspondence files [3rd] blue box – ‘F L M ‘on spine label with pencil ‘1’ beneath, SLNSW Archives. 24 See SMH and Sun (Sydney), 26 November 1935. 25 Minutes of the Annual General Meeting, 27 March 1936, FLM correspondence files, [blue box 1 of 3] SLNSW Archives. 26 Cunningham to Brain, 23 March 1936, FLM correspondence files from 1936-1938/ no.1 file/A.1 to E.32A/Miscellaneous, SLNSW archives 27 Minutes of First Meeting of Council of the F L M , 27 March 1936; Minutes – Council on front cover, blue box – ‘F L M on spine label with pencil ‘1’, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW archives.

94 three editions. Brain’s name appears at the end of the introductory notes, but joint authorship of the 2nd and 3rdeditions with at least Remington and Metcalfe is virtually certain.28 From its effective rebirth with Remington at the helm, the Free Library

Movement was ready for action, especially with Ifould and Metcalfe as spokesmen for librarians and as sources of technical knowledge. Leading citizens of both sexes were recruited. Remington leapt into a grand campaign of publicity and public relations, in which members of Parliament, captains of industry, trade union leaders, leaders of community associations, and the people in general were targets. No opportunity to speak at meetings was neglected. ‘White knights’ were recruited, some of them knights of the realm.29

The media were courted with assiduous skill and courtesy, including the country press which was acknowledged in FLM tactical thinking from the outset. A subscription to the Country Press clipping service was in operation by November 1936 and

Remington courted country press baron, E.C. Sommerlad of Gotham Australia

Limited, for publicity for his talk, ‘Free Books – The Free Library Movement’, scheduled to be broadcast over the national radio network. Remington asked

Sommerlad to arrange insertion before the broadcast of a short paragraph about it in the press throughout New South Wales and if possible the other States.30 H.B.

Whitham of Western Newspapers Ltd. was asked to send FLM publications to each of

28 Constitution of the Free Library Movement , with an introductory note[by G.W. Brain]. Sydney, Free Library Movement, 1935. 12p. Constitution of the Free Library Movement, with an introductory note and a model Branch constitution. 2nd ed. Sydney: The Movement, 1936. 16p. Constitution of the Free Library Movement: with an introductory note and a model branch constitution. 3rd ed. Sydney: Free Library Movement,1938 29[Sir Frederick Stewart KB MHR was elected chairman of the Executive, 27 March 1936 Minutes of First Meeting of Council, and W.M. Hughes accepted office as a Vice President, Hughes to Brain, 8 May 1936, 2H/Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW Archives. 30 Remington to Sommerlad, 28 October 1936, 3N/Newspapers – Correspondence to, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW Archives.

95 his editors, to use his influence to revive interest in the Movement in Lithgow and to

‘mould the public opinion of Leeton and Grifith’.31

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Remington was already skilled in dealing with the press and broadcast media before the FLM campaign began, and the radio campaign was under way by January 1936, when Remington gave an address on radio station 2GB in Sydney. Speaking under the auspices of the Australian Institute of

Political Science, Remington chose The Free Library Movement as his topic. The talk reads like a policy speech for the Movement and is interesting in revealing more of his motivation to public service in the broad sense. He began:

All of us at one time or another wish that we had the opportunity of doing something which will add to the comfort, well being and happiness of our fellow citizens: it gives us that feeling of satisfaction that we have played our part according to our capacities or opportunities

He then credits his listeners with sharing his determination to leave the world and the local community a better place, with gratitude of fellow citizens and a good reputation among them as sufficient reward.32 These sentiments seem to embody the ethic rooted in nineteenth century British Christianity. While he was without ostentatious religious belief, the Bible readings of his Pibrac youth had evidently left their mark.

While none of his other speeches were so revealing of his motivation, Remington’s ability to produce effective radio scripts was put to use many times over the life of the

FLM. So was his ability to recruit others to present either their own scripts or those

31Remington to H.B. Whitham, 18 December 1936, FLM correspondence files 3M[?N]/ Newspapers – Correspondence to 32 G.C. Remington, The Free Library Movement, under the auspices of the Australian Institute of Political Science. Talk broadcast through 2GB at 7.30 pm, Sunday 12 January 1936. Typescript.

96 which Remington supplied.33 The Movement’s access to the air waves was much enhanced by links to the Theosophical Society. The Society’s ideals included strong belief in education to which the FLM would have appealed. Although he was not a theosophist, Remington had been of some service to individual members of the

Executive of their Society.34 No wonder then that the Society’s Miss V.K.M.

Maddox brushed aside Remington’s thanks for having arranged six 15 minute broadcasts on Station 2GB in air time still available to the Theosophists, even though they no longer owned the station outright.35 She referred to the air time available as

‘a little fragment of the work our members intended our Station to achieve’.36 She had earlier written a highly emotional plea for Remington to arrange a Free Library

Movement rally in the Savoy Theatre which was available to the Society and cited the

‘triumphantly successful’ Peace Rally which the Society had sponsored there.37.

Remington replied, expressing appreciation of her ‘sincere and consistent work to further objects of the Movement.38 A date for the rally was set though Remington advised her that the FLM would not be able immediately to organize further meetings because of pressure of work.39 In fact, the rally scheduled for 6 June 1937 did not take place and no reason for its cancellation is recorded in the extant FLM files.

Perhaps by then the Peace Movement was suspected as a communist front and

Remington, Metcalfe and Brain, separately or together, were nervous about using the

33 A table of broadcasts publicizing the Movement is set out in Appendix 1 to this thesis. 34 Remington to Tate, 5 December 1936, No.1file, Letters from A.1 to E.3, 2A Miscellaneous, FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, SLNSW Archives. 35Remington to Miss V.K.M. Maddox, 22 December 1936, “M” 1M./Letters etc..FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, SLNSW Archives. 36 Maddox to Remington, 13 February 1937 FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, 2M./ Miscellaneous. 37 Maddox to Remington, undated, received 10 February 1937, FLM correspondence files 2M./Miscellaneous. 38Remington to. Maddox 10.2.37 FLM correspondence files, “M” 1M./Letters. 39 Maddox to Remington, 1/3/37, Maddox to Remington, 2/3/37 and 5/3/37 FLM correspondence files, 2M/Miscellaneous, SLNSW Archives.

97 same venue and sponsor as a successful peace rally.40 There was no effect on the radio broadcasts made possible by the Theosophists which continued apace41.

Perhaps also the sponsors had their own internal difficulties, as Jill Roe has reported that ‘by the early thirties, the theosophical movement was very subdued, and more evidently divided than ever’.42

The FLM did well out of the publicity opportunities provided by the Theosophists and

Remington’s patience and courtesy in dealing with Miss Maddox. Even though she may have been an easy convert to the FLM campaign, she may also have appreciated the lack of antagonism displayed by Remington to the Society in general and to her nervous disposition in particular, which imparted a frenetic tone to her letters sometimes verging on the hysterical. Throughout the FLM campaign, Remington’s tact, patience and tolerance of the eccentric and unconventional were important elements in his successful networking.

The Movement’s energy, like its publicity, was not all focused on the city. There were endless meetings and trips to non-metropolitan areas, and unrelenting efforts to have new branches formed and existing branches sustained. New South Wales

Education Minister Drummond was the representative of a country electorate and to have neglected the rural areas would have been a bad tactical error. Remington was swift to take every opportunity for publicity. Following on a leader on libraries in the

40 The peace movement was not flourishing in Australia at the time. The Czech writer, Egon Kisch, was scheduled to speak at the 1934 Antiwar Congress in Melbourne. Refused permission to land here, Kisch made a dramatic leap from ship to shore in Melbounre. Despite Kisch’s extraordinary qualities and the unexpected publicity gained by his illicit entry, Saunders reports that his sponsor, the MAW&F (Movement against war and fascism), were unable to capitalize on the event. (Malcolm Saunders, The Australian Peace Movement: a short history by Malcolm Saunders and Ralph Summy. Canberra: Peace Research Centre, Australian National University, 1986, p.25. 41 See Appendix 1 42 Jill Roe, Beyond belief: theosophy in Australia 1879-1939. Kensington, UNSW, University of New South Wales Press, 1986, p.359.

98 Sydney Morning Herald a letter to the editor bemoaned the lack of school libraries and suggested that the Free Library Movement ‘appears to be doing good by stealth’.

Whether the letter was a plant or not, Remington turned it into an excellent publicity opportunity. In his response he assured readers that ‘Far from wishing to do good by stealth, the Free Library Movement prefers to do it with the knowledge and with the co-operation of every citizen’. Remington also took the opportunity to publicize the branches being formed with the hope of arousing public opinion. The branches were also to recruit local support and survey local needs. He pointed to active branches in

Chatswood-Willoughby, Ashbury and North Sydney, and interest in other suburbs.

In the country there were branches at Casino and Lithgow, with interest shown in

Wagga, Goulburn, Forbes, Maitland and Nowra. In Newcastle the Council had set up a Committee to consider the establishment of a reference and lending library for the

City.43 A branch at Muswellbrook was soon added. Between April and September

1936, seven public addresses had been delivered in a variety of locations by

Remington, Metcalfe and Brain and a growing cast of other speakers44.

43 Remington to Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September 1936, FLM correspondence files, 4N/Newcastle. 44 Date Place Occasion Speaker/s 8 April 1936 Burwood Burwood Heights M.C. Cadogan Branch UAP 12 June 1936 Lithgow Public meeting G.C. Remington, G.W. Brain J. Metcalfe F.W. Butt W. Cook. 25 June 1936 Chatswood Public meeting G.C. Remington H.M. Storey G.W. Brain 2 July 1936 Ashbury Public meeting Mr Justice Maugham, G.C. Remington, J.W Metcalfe, F.W. Butt 20 August 1936 North Sydney Public meeting J. Metcalfe, G.C. Remington, G.W. Brain 14 September 1936 Lane Cove Address to Council G.C. Remington, ditto Sydney ? Women’s Guild of C.E. Martin Empire

99

Careful preparations were made before forming branches. Possible leaders were identified, names of susceptible citizens were compiled in a sort of snowball sampling technique, then they were contacted and publicity arranged. Care was taken to ensure that they were representative of as many interests as possible, rather than dominated by any particular faction. There was also usually a need for Remington, sometimes with Metcalfe or another FLM identity from the central group in Sydney, to attend the preliminary and the inaugural meetings of the branch. Remington’s precise instructions to the Secretary of the Dubbo Mechanics Institute are typical of his determination to leave nothing to chance:

The most effective method we have found is for some interested person, such as yourself, to hold a preliminary meeting at which you might invite a dozen or so people who might be interested, and discuss the question of the formation of a branch of The Movement. This preliminary meeting might decide to ask the Mayor to hold a public meeting for the purpose of formally launching a branch of The Movement. The Mayor could be invited to become the President or Patron and you could agree at the preliminary meeting as to the persons, whom you would submit to the public meeting, to be the other office bearers.

See that your preliminary meeting and all your proposals are given the widest publicity, and that your local member of Parliament is informed of what you are doing and invited to support the aims and objects of The Movement.45

Speeches at meetings and on radio, however effective at the time of presentation, were essentially ephemeral so a program of publications was simultaneously vigorously pursued.

45 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W., “M” 1M./Letters etc.

100 While the publications program had to be vigorous, it had also to be economical of scarce financial resources. Existing publications advocating setting up of public libraries were not overlooked. Before the end of 1936, Remington prepared, probably with Metcalfe, and almost certainly at his suggestion, How to organize a library campaign.46 It was closely modelled on the American Library Association’s How to organize a county library campaign,47 a copy of which with amendments in pencil, possibly by Remington is among the FLM Archives.48 He was swiftly told by C.E.

(Clarrie) Martin, one of his brother lawyers, that the outline submitted to him for comment ‘bears too strong an American impress – it needs to be revised in accordance with NSW conditions’49.

Authorship of FLM publications was shared around from the beginning. Members were encouraged to write letters to newspaper editors and to prepare more substantial publications. Alderman C.C. Faulkner of North Sydney wrote a pamphlet ‘How to get a free library: Chatswood-Willoughby shows the way’. The manuscript is among the FLM papers, with many deletions and other changes and interpolations in

Faulkner’s scratchy cramped writing.50 By October 1936 the Executive of the

Movement reported to its Council that the statement ‘Free Public Libraries’, which

Remington described as ‘almost entirely the work of Mr. J.W. Metcalfe’,51 was ready for printing. ‘How to Organize a Library Campaign’ was in preparation, but funds

46 Free Library Movement How to organize a library campaign. Sydney: 1936. [4]p. Typescript. 47 How to organize a county library campaign. Chicago: Library Extension Board, American Library Association, 1931. 48 For drafts prepared in October 1936, see no.3 folder, Miscellaneous libraries FLM Correspondence Files 1936-1938, SLNSW Archives. 49C.E. Martin to Remington, 3 October, 1936, no.3 folder, Miscellaneous libraries FLM Correspondence Files 1936-1938/C. 50 ‘The Library Movement/North Sydney’s response’ Written at top ‘Suburban Herald, Crows Nest 6/8/36’. There is another copy ,‘by C.C. Faulkner’ FLM, Correspondence files 1936-1938, Folder 2.. 51 Remington to Russell, 16 February 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

101 were low with £33.1.9 in the Bank and most of the £50 Carnegie money granted by

ACER had been spent on printing and stationery. Brain as Honorary Secretary did not have enough funds to respond to correspondence from metropolitan and country areas all over the State. Moreover, the Movement needed funds to rent an office, purchase office furniture and equipment including a typewriter, and pay a salary to an assistant secretary. To achieve this, the Executive considered that at least ₤400 per annum would be required and to cover the cost of printing, stationery and postages.52

Hon Secretary Brain made clear his difficulties in keeping up with demands. When

Deputy Sydney Municipal Librarian Bell asked for an update on FLM activities for the Teachers Federation, Brain explained that it was difficult to say just how many

FLM members there were but that Casino alone had 500. Brain also asked that ‘you do not urge the Teachers Federation into too much action at the present time, as frankly I am finding it almost impossible to keep up with correspondents as it is’.53

Remington sent a statement of accounts to Tate and hoped that the ACER Council

‘will be satisfied that we have not wasted its very generous donation, or rather the half

ACER Council’s - ₤25, which we have spent already’. But the Movement’s limited funds were hampering their organizational work and Remington was ‘not very hopeful’ that his Council, some of whom were ‘fairly wealthy and influential’ would respond to the request he was about to put to them for suggestions for ways and means of raising some money. 54

52 Report of the Executive to the FLM Council, October 1936 FLM Correspondence files/1936- 1938/folder:Notices & apologies re meetings. 53 Bell to Brain, 18 October; Brain to Bell, 28 October 1936 FLM Correspondence files/1936- 1938/2B./Miscellaneous correspondence. 54 Remington to Tate, 2 October 1936,FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938/ no.1 file/A.1 to E.3 2A/Miscellaneous

102

Remington’s misgivings about the likely success of his appeal to his Council for funds were justified. A month later he sent 30 begging letters to individuals and firms in

Sydney. In another month he wrote a very detailed appeal to 14 firms for funds, with a background statement which began with reference to the findings of the Munn-Pitt report.55 Byron Wrigley, of the US chewing gum dynasty, replied swiftly with

₤10.10.0 (ten guineas).56 Remington was acquainted with Wrigley who was a friend of Hartley Grattan but very few of his acquaintances in Sydney business were moved to donate. No-one, moreover, could have accused Remington of not going the extra mile. He sought out O.E. French and told him about the FLM because French was associated with several of the companies from which donations were sought.57

Similarly the Hon. James Ashton, a director of both the Commercial Banking

Company (CBC) and the Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP), was pursued by Remington.58 The immediate provocation seems to have been a letter from the

AMP of the same date, signed illegibly for the General Manager, advising ‘with great regret’ that ‘according to the advice of our solicitors, the Society is unable to make such donations as that for which your appeal is made’.59 The Sydney Manager of the

Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) wrote that ‘having submitted this matter fully to my M/D who asked that I kindly inform you that, at the present time, we cannot see our way clear to be interested in the movement along the lines suggested by you’.60 The Sydney Chamber of Commerce left aside for later decision by its

55 Remington to multiple recipients, dated 20 and 24 November, and 18 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, 2D./Donation correspondence. 56 Wrigley to Remington, 11 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files 2D./Donation Correspondence. 57 Remington to French, 23 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files,“F” 1F. Letters to companies, etc. 58 Remington to Ashton, 29 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files, 3A/Letters to companies etc. 59 AMP to Remington, 29 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files, 2D./Donation Correspondence 60 BHP to Remington, 18 January 1937, FLM Correspondence files, 2D./Donation Correspondence

103 Council the question of appointment of a representative to the FLM but suggested that

‘The matter, however, might be brought before the members of the chamber by a short notice in our monthly Journal “Commerce”’.61 The only response to the short notice was not a donation but the perception of a commercial opportunity. The management of the NSW Bookstall Co. Ltd. wrote that, having read about the movement for the establishment of free public libraries in the January 1937 issue for the Chamber of Commerce journal, they were ‘prepared to assist you by supplying books at special rates for this worthy purpose’. Brain’s reply offered them the opportunity to contribute funds to the ‘worthy purpose’. No such donation ever seems to have been received.62

Lesser optimists than Remington and Brain may have been deterred by this evidence of a dearth of philanthropy for libraries in Australian business. Maybe they were heartened by the Movement’s rapidly growing membership attested by the abundance of Brain’s correspondence in January and February 1937, sending publications, acknowledging renewals and new memberships. There were also contributions like the ‘widow’s mite’ received from the Honorary Secretary of Bryant’s Playhouse with the note that ‘Miss Bryant has heard about the proposed Free Libraries with Dramatic

Sections and sends you this donation of 1/- [one shilling].’63 Response was more generous from FLM office holders when five of them each put up ₤25 to guarantee an overdraft of ₤125 on the Movement’s account at the Bank of New South Wales. The

61 Sydney Chamber of Commerce to Remington, 4 December 1936, FLM Correspondence files, 2D./Donation Correspondence. 62 NSW Bookstall Co. Ltd to Brain on 8 January 1937’ Brain to NSW Bookstall Co. Ltd, 14 January 1937 FLM Correspondence files 2D./Donation Correspondence. 63Hon. Sec. Bryant’s Playhouse to Brain, 27 November 1936, FLM Correspondence files, 2B/Miscellaneous Correspondence.

104 guarantors were Ifould, Sir Frederick Stewart, Andrew Lyell Scott, Ruth Beatrice

Fairfax and W.M. Hughes.64.

Possibly encouraged by the promises of the overdraft guarantee, the FLM expanded its office space in Brook House.65 On the same day on which agreement for lease of extra room was concluded, Remington wrote with pride to Tate at ACER that: ‘We now have our office and a full time assistant secretary’ while printing of the

Movement’s Statement, ‘Free Public Libraries’, was proceeding and the second edition of the Constitution was in press.66

Ideas for further expansion went well beyond aims for more commodious office space. Branches of the Movement in other States were very much in Remington’s sights. Tate appears to have expressed no surprise when Remington told him that he was writing to Sir Herbert Gepp seeking support with ‘The Victorian Movement’67.

Remington also tried to recruit Professor A.G.B. Fisher as his agent in the creation of a branch in Western Australia.68

64 FLM Correspondence files, 2B/Miscellaneous Correspondence. Hughes was then federal Minister for Health and Repatriation. His acceptance of Brain’s invitation for him to speak at the FLM Council meeting on 19 October 1936 was notably affable and not in accordance with the crusty stereotype of his later years. He wrote: ‘Let me know what you would like me to do or say – I am very much at your disposal’. Hughes to Brain, 10 October 1936, FLM Correspondence files 2H/Miscellaneous. 65 Secretary, Brook House Limited to Brain, Hon. Sec., 24 November 1936, FLM Correspondence files, Unmarked folder. 66 Remington to Tate, 24 November 1936, FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous 67Remington to Tate, 24 November 1936 FLM Corres1936-1938 no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous 68 Remington to Fisher, 22 December 1936 FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938 “F” 1F Letters to companies.

105 ‘Free Public Libraries’, the Movement’s booklet, newly published at the end of 1936 and always referred to as the ‘Statement’, was given wide distribution.69 The text, mainly the work of Metcalfe, explained the aims and methods of the Movement and argued the need for libraries available free to the public. With several quotations from the Munn-Pitt Report, the inferiority of libraries in Australia to those in Britain and the United States was pointed out. There was also hope that libraries in schools of arts could be replaced with those supported by local government rates and support from the State.

The importance which Remington and the Movement in general placed on the

Statement is obvious from the number of times it was issued, kept up to date, and energetically publicized and distributed. After it first appeared in 1936, a shorter version attributed to Remington was published in the Australian Quarterly for June

1937 and reprinted with both Remington and Metcalfe as authors by the New Century

Press in Sydney in 1938.70 In June 1937 Tate wrote from ACER to congratulate

Remington after his second reading of the Statement as an article in The Australian

Quarterly. He liked ‘a breeziness and careless ease about it which is quite attractive, although one does not associate this with the somewhat stodgy articles usually in such publications’. Tate, working to found a similar movement in Victoria, also allowed himself ‘the liberty of lifting a phrase here and there for our booklet’.71

69 Free public libraries / issued by the Free Public Library Movement. Sydney: The Movement, 1936. 31 p. 70 Remington, G.C. The Free Library Movement. Sydney: Free Library Movement, 1938. Cover title: ‘From "The Australian Quarterly," June, 1937’. 71 Tate to GCR 22 June 1937, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 to E.3. The Melbourne version was longer when it appeared in 1937. Free public libraries / issued by the Free Library Movement. Melbourne: The Movement, 1937. 27p.

106 Support for the Movement through Frank Tate and the ACER, with the Carnegie

Corporation of New York in the background, was important in its continuing progress as it had been in its beginnings. Remington was punctilious in his correspondence with ACER, and exhaustive in his reporting to the Corporation. He told Russell at

Carnegie that ‘Mr Ifould tells me it would be sufficient if I wrote to you once a month’. Far from accepting what Ifould might have meant as a mild rebuke,

Remington continued to Russell:

I do not consider myself entirely to blame for this sudden outburst of letter writing. After all the Corporation must accept some of the responsibility because if Mr Ralph Munn had not visited Australia and published his survey “Australian Libraries” The Free Library Movement would never have come into existence.72

Neither Remington nor Metcalfe welcomed the influence of The Library Group, created under ACER auspices. It was formed after the visit of Dr Keppel, President of the Carnegie Corporation, in 1935 when it became evident that the Corporation was not averse to making funds available to assist free public library development in

Australia. Keppel and Tate were concerned that Carnegie moneys should be distributed according to specialist advice. A Committee of Librarians was set up under ACER auspices to provide a channel of communication with the Corporation and it came to be known as the Library Group. It lasted from 1934 to 1948.73 The members were Ifould as Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South

Wales, and the chief librarians of the National Library, Kenneth Binns, the Public

Library of Victoria, E.R. Pitt, the Public Library of South Australia, H.R. Purnell, or their deputies. The Group held its first meeting in April 1935 in Melbourne and

72 Remington to Russell, 12 February 1937, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York David Jones 1993, p.250. 73 The Library Group’s activities are well documented in Norman Horrocks, The Carnegie Corporation of New York and library development in Australia,1971, Chapter 7,and also by an author who was close to the action, K.S. Cunningham, The Australian Council for Educational Research. Melbourne: ACER, 1961, pp.17-18.

107 Ifould took a major role. He hoped, through the Library Group, to put the case to the

Carnegie Corporation for support for the regional library scheme for New South

Wales on which he had already worked and discussed with Ralph Munn.74

In the meantime, Remington continued to develop his rapport with ACER, especially in the person of Frank Tate. He and Remington shared a belief that Australian libraries should take steps to raise local funds and not just be going cap in hand to outside sources of funds, that is, to Carnegie.75 But Remington despaired of the commitment of the wealthier members of his FLM Council. He mentioned wryly to

Tate that ‘the prices of shares are up, dividends are increasing, the budget is about to be balanced so who the -- -- needs to worry about education, libraries, or the future!’76

By November 1936 the Library Group had decided that Carnegie could best assist in the development of the library movement in Australia by making money available ‘for furtherance of publicity directed towards the development of a library conscience’. In passing on the Library Group’s resolution to Remington, Tate’s close colleague and

ACER Executive Secretary, Dr K.S. Cunningham, also made it clear that the Library

Group would decide how any Carnegie moneys granted would be spent.77 The importance of the Carnegie Corporation, ACER and the Library Group continued but the New South Wales Government was about to enter the scene.

74 D.J. Jones, “Public Libraries: ‘Institutions of the Highest Educational Value’”, p.250. Evidence from an interview with Ifould’s secretary at the time suggests that Ifould was not entirely content with the membership of the Library Group since he used to refer to the South Australian member as ‘the infernal Mr Purnell’.(Dulcie Penfold, former Canberra Public Librarian, Interview with Carmel Maguire,9 November 2000). 75 Tate to Remington, 15 October 1936, FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938 no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous, SLNSW Archives 76 Remington to Tate, 17 October 1936, FLM Correspondence files, 1936-1938 no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 2A/ miscellaneous, SLNSW Archives 77 Cunningham to Remington, 12 November 1936 FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938 no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous

108

The friendship and trust of a cabinet minister is usually an asset in any campaign.

Ifould was a trusted friend and golfing partner of D.H. Drummond, New South Wales

Minister of Education. In March 1937 the Minister addressed the second Annual

General Meeting of the Free Library Movement on his recent visit to overseas libraries.78 But the big news was his announcement that a committee was to be appointed to advise the Government on the drafting of a Bill to provide machinery for the establishment of free libraries throughout the state and that the Free Library

Movement would be represented on this committee. Drummond also congratulated the Free Library Movement on the valuable service it had performed in promoting recognition by the people of the need for libraries.79

Remington, with Ifould and Metcalfe present, had met Drummond in the previous month and told him of the Free Library Movement’s hopes for a Library Act and training for librarians. Drummond proposed establishment of a committee with FLM members - Ifould and Metcalfe and someone from his own office. Minutes of this discussion record that Remington urged Drummond not to delay as he had heard that, following the Grenfell Price Report, South Australia was planning library legislation’.80 Whatever the reasons for Drummond’s resolve to appoint the

Committee may have been, Remington and Ifould sprang into action after

78 D.H. Drummond, Report of Inquiries into various aspects of education. . . Sydney: Government Printer, 1937. 79 Minutes of the 2nd Annual General Meeting of the Free Library Movement, 18 March 1937 [3rd] blue box – ‘F L M’ pencilled on spine label, cover title: Minutes – General Meeting. FLM correspondence files, SLNSW Archives. 80 Jones 1993, p.271. The South Australian report referred to was A.Grenfell Price, Libraries in South Australia: report of an inquiry commissioned by the South Australian Government into the system of management of libraries maintained or assisted by the state. Adelaide: Government Printer, 1937.

109 Drummond’s announcement at the Movement’s March 1937 general meeting and

Council meeting.

Determined always to keep the Carnegie Corporation in the picture, Remington wrote to John M. Russell, Assistant to the President, disclosing his and Ifould’s efforts to persuade Drummond to appoint the Committee and revealing his participation, without formal warrant, in the drafting of the terms of reference. Remington also reported Ifould’s effort to have the inquiry broadened to take in special libraries, expansion of library collections and better systems for the training of librarians.81

The Libraries Advisory Committee

In June 1937 the Libraries Advisory Committee was appointed by Drummond with the following terms of reference:

To inquire into the adequacy of library provision already made in New South Wales by the Public Library of New South Wales, the Sydney Municipal Library, Schools of Arts, Mechanics Institutes, and any other agencies, and the means of extending and completing such provision, regard being had to the relation of library provision to the general system of education and the provision of scientific, technical and sociological information, and to draft any necessary legislation.82

The Minister enlarged the scope of the inquiry by addition of the Sydney Municipal

Council to the Committee but he did not give it authority to inquire into all libraries and librarians as Ifould had sought. Ifould and Remington fought hard to ensure that

Sydney’s Town Clerk, Roy Hendy was appointed to the Committee rather than C.H.

81 Remington to Russell, 6 April 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 82 Libraries Advisory Committee, Public library services: report to the Honourable D.H. Drummond, M.L.A., Minister for Education in New South Wales. Sydney: Government Printer, 1939.

110 Bertie, the Librarian. There is no sign of malice in their machinations only evidence that Ifould shared Remington’s conviction that the Movement’s appointments should be the tallest possible poppies.83 Ifould was appointed Chairman, Metcalfe its

Secretary, and A.W. Hicks, Assistant Under Secretary of Drummond’s Department of

Education, who was also a Vice President of the FLM, the Department’s representative. A few days later, Drummond added Brain to the Committee. He also increased the influence of the FLM at the Public Library, by appointing as Trustees

Remington and Ruth Fairfax, a Vice President of the FLM. Thus in 1937 the Trustees had, as Jones points out, their greatest infusion of new blood in twenty years.84

As the only lawyer on the Libraries Advisory Committee, Remington was given the task of preparing a suitable Bill. He took clauses from the English Library Acts of

1892 and 1893 and sent them to members of the Committee for their consideration. 85

However, English legislation at the end of the nineteenth century and Remington’s expertise confined to commercial law were not sufficient. The Committee made slow progress until R.A. Johnson, legal officer of the Department of Works and Local

Government, was made a member, bringing not only legislative drafting expertise but also familiarity with the Local Government Act.86 As was his custom, Remington was quick to send congratulations to Johnson on his appointment, along with a number of FLM documents for his further information.87 Johnson’s appointment must have been approved by the Hon. E.S. Spooner, Minister for Local Government.

83 Remington to Tate, 15 May 1937, no.1 file, Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, SLNSW Archives. 84 Jones,1993, p.274. 85 Remington to Russell, 2 August 1937, 5C, Carnegie Corporation of New York, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW Archives. 86 Jones, 1993, pp.286-7 87 Remington to Johnson, 16 November 1937 and Johnson to Remington, 19 November, 1937, 2L./Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW Archives.

111 This contact along with information available to Spooner in the New South Wales cabinet seems to have engaged his interest in libraries. Spooner told the Association of Local Government Clerks Conference in October 1937 that he intended to ask certain country towns to lead the way in the establishment of municipal libraries.

Some members of the Libraries Advisory Committee did not welcome this announcement since it would be months before their report could be ready and their allegiance was to Drummond.88 Remington, however, was not displeased with this development. He reported to Russell at CCNY that Spooner’s support will be ‘most helpful and powerful’, despite his ‘reputation of being something of a dictator and he is not famous for his reputation of playing second fiddle to anyone’. Remington voiced his only concern that ‘I hope it will not lead to differences of opinion between he [sic] and Mr Drummond’.89 So much for Remington’s pious hope. The incident proved to be the beginning of enmity between Drummond and Spooner.

The momentum generated by the Movement accelerated after the appointment of the

Libraries Advisory Committee. Existing alliances were strengthened and new ones forged. Contacts were pursued in educational administration and schools, in local government, and in trade unions and employer organizations. Visitors from overseas with knowledge of any aspect of public library affairs had little chance of escape without provision of a statement if not a whole publication in support of the

Movement’s cause.

Remington was anxious to involve the inspectors of schools. He detected a hint of interest in a remark by the State Director of Education. He passed it on to one of the

88 Jones,.1993, p.288 89Remington to Russell, 26 October 1937, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of NY, FLM correspondence files

112 inspectors, asking for his guidance on ways to ‘carry forward any suggestions you may have made’ to a meeting of the Inspectors’ Conference.90 The influence of the

Department with the inspectors was strongly reinforced by Remington’s obvious respect and energetic support for their efforts. Inspectors of Schools all over the State rallied to the FLM cause, and several of them addressed clubs in their areas on the

Movement and how to form branches. One such was C. Harrold, who had addressed both the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce in Wollongong in support of the

Movement.91 Most energetic was E.J. Dowd, an inspector based in Tamworth, whose work in Casino, North Coast and Tamworth Remington described as ‘outstanding’92.

School teachers were naturally susceptible to both the attitudes of inspectors and the promise of better resources for teaching and learning. Many of them also welcomed the promise of increased involvement in the social and political life of their towns offered by formation of branches of the FLM. One, R.A. Page wrote from Taree

High School to announce his intention ‘to wake this place up’.93

Involvement of Minister Spooner and his Department of Local Government also heightened interest in public libraries among elected officers, mayors, aldermen and shire councillors, as well as local government officials, town clerks and shire clerks.

In fact not only promotion of the FLM and its branches but also Spooner’s unexpected announcement in October 1937 may have given Remington added motivation to

90Remington to G.R. Thomas, 28 January 1937, 3D /Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature, FLM correspondence files 91 C. Harrold to Brain, 29 November 1937, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature, FLM correspondence files. 92Remington to H.C. Carter MLA, 21 August 1938, 4M/Members of Parliament – correspondence, FLM correspondence files. 93R.A. Page, to Hon. Sec, 12 August 1937, 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W., FLM correspondence files.

113 undertake his extensive program of visits to local government areas in the country.

He, Ifould and Metcalfe were obviously anxious that local initiatives for creation of libraries in municipalities and shires should not get under way without some input by the FLM.

Remington told Tate that he disliked ‘this travelling about’ because ‘it is quite impracticable for me to be away from my practice continually’. He also pointed out that his travels involved expenses for which he was not adequately compensated.94 In

April and May 1937, Remington had spoken at public meetings in Brisbane to raise interest in forming an FLM branch in Queensland, and then in Newcastle on his way back to Sydney. He told Tate ‘we’re broke’ but he wanted to visit Orange and then

Bathurst on the way back, which he did before the end of June.95 His involvement with Metcalfe in creation of the Newcastle Branch continued until its inauguration in

November 1937.

Brain also had plenty to do. He not only distributed FLM publications and kept the accounts, but he encouraged inquirers to form branches and to collect and send in names of citizens in the various areas, country and city, likely to be interested in taking an active part in the FLM. But the initiatives came largely from Remington.

He arranged addresses such as that to the conference of the Graziers Federal Council of Australia in June and to Woollahra Council in July 1937; he maintained the busy schedule of radio talks and made sure to reward the speakers with praise; he had FLM leaflets placed in branches of the Rural Bank, the Bank of New South Wales, and the

94 Remington to Tate, 31 March 1937, no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files. 95 Remington to Tate, 5 June 1937, FLM correspondence files 1936-1938/no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files.

114 Commercial Banking Company of Sydney; and he developed contacts with trade union representatives and employer organizations.

Remington’s lack of partisanship, whether in party politics or in relations between labour and management, was a feature of his work on the FLM. One example was his contact with J.J. Myles, the head of the local branch of the Australian Railways

Union in Cootamundra. When Remington asked him for support in forming a branch of the Movement, Myles warned against mentioning his name in contacting the list of susceptible citizens, because he was seen as one who held radical views and therefore to be avoided as much as possible. Myles went on with some pride to assert that ‘the same views are held by the majority of the real men in this centre, and the movement when launched will have the cooperation of the 200 railmen who reside in

Cootamundra.’96

As well as making sure that the concerns of both labour and capital were catered for,

Remington was also careful to ensure that awareness of the Movement reached the top of New South Wales society. The State Governor’s Private Secretary sent a polite reply to Remington’s gift of FLM publications: ‘His Excellency and Lady Wakehurst are most grateful to you and are very glad to have the opportunity of reading something of the Movement’s activities’97 Remington was able to get much closer to the holder of the highest political office in the State. As Chairman of the

Constitutional Association, he arranged for the Premier, Bertram Stevens, to give a luncheon address on ‘Housing and slum clearance’. He told Tate that he planned at

96 Remington to .J.J. Myles, 5 January 1937; J.J. Myles to Remington, 18 January 1937, 4C/Cootamundra correspondence, FLM correspondence files. 97Private Secretary to Governor to Remington, 5 October 1937, “G” / 1G./ Letters to companies, FLM correspondence files.

115 lunch to ‘use my best endeavours to keep the time he should be eating with filling him up with libraries’.98

The testimony of overseas experts was eagerly sought after by the FLM. Delegates brought to Australia for meetings of the New Education Fellowship in 1937 were pursued for the weight of their testimony on the value of public libraries. E. Salter

Davies, former Director of Education in Kent, past President of the Library

Association in Great Britain and a member of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, delivered a public lecture entitled ‘Libraries and Citizenship’. Remington had extracts made and distributed.99 In particular, the assertion by Davies that ‘libraries are an essential part of any educational system’ was grist to the FLM mill. Remington asked Sir Percy Meadon, an English educationist, for ‘some definite statements in regard to the necessity of the people of Australia, particularly in this State, providing themselves with modern library services’.100

Meadon provided a statement headed ‘The development of the public library system in England and Wales, based on his contribution to a discussion in the conference of the New Education Fellowship in Brisbane.101 Remington sent it on to another guest speaker at the New Education Fellowship meetings, Dr I.L. Kandel, Professor of

Education in the Teachers’ College at Columbia University.

98 Remington to Tate, 15 May 1937, FLM no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.32A Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files 99 Extracts from/ a public lecture/delivered under the auspices of the New Education Fellowship/by/E.Salter Davies CBE MA(Oxon)/(Albert Hall, Canberra, Friday,MA(Oxon)/(Albert Hall, Canberra…August 1937. 100Remington to Meadon, 11 August 1937, 2M/Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files. 101Meadon, Percy, ‘The development of the public library system in England and Wales, 27 August 1937. 23p. typescript.

116 Remington’s exploitation of the opportunities offered by the New Education

Fellowship visitors did not end with soliciting their publications. As well as arranging for Kandel to talk with the Libraries Advisory Group, Remington also arranged ‘a small dinner for him to meet Sir Herbert Gepp, Mr Justice Evatt and

Norman Cowper, Chairman of the Australian Institute of Political Science.102 By

December 1937 Remington was well into distribution of Kandel’s statement, which was published by the FLM in 1938 as The Free Library Movement and its

Implications.103

Resources available for the FLM campaign were not lavish and the real costs in time and energy were borne mostly by Remington. His zeal in following up leads for publicity and for the exercise of individual influence was exemplary. Having secured statements from distinguished visitors, Remington set out to ensure that they enjoyed maximum publicity in newspapers, metropolitan and provincial. In all his requests, whether for publicity or other forms of assistance, his approach was ‘cause in hand’, rather than ‘cap in hand’.

The phrase ‘in your valued newspaper’ was a politeness which very often accompanied Remington’s requests for publication of FLM material. Remington sent

Kandel’s strong statement of the value of libraries in education to the Editor of The

Tweed Daily in Murwillumbah, with assurance of his appreciation of its publication

‘in your valued newspaper’.104 Intimations of interest in newspaper editors were

102 Remington to Russell, 26 September 1937, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of NY, FLM correspondence files. 103 Kandel, I.L. The Free Library Movement and its Implications. Sydney: The Free Library Movement, 1938.7p. 104 Remington to Editor, Tweed Daily, 14 February 1938, 3M/Newspapers – correspondence to, LM correspondence files.

117 quickly followed up. For example, the Goulburn Evening Penny Post was the

‘valued newspaper’ to which FLM publications were sent on the recommendation of a

Vice President of the Movement who was a friend of the editor, and his particular attention was drawn to the importance of the Kandel statement.105

Not all Remington’s requests for publication met with success. The Associate Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, refused to publish Kandel’s statement in its entirety, as Remington had asked. McClure Smith reminded Remington that ‘the general needs of New South Wales’ had been given a great deal of publicity in leaders and news items although ‘We might have been able to use half a column or so of extracts from the article but I gather you do not want this done’.106 The Herald, Melbourne, was also approached by Remington seeking its publication.

Remington was not easily put off nor likely to miss an opportunity for publication or for using a promising contact. He also sent the Kandel statement to K.S. McGill, editor of the Newcastle Morning Herald, strongly advocating publication in its entirety. He had made McGill’s acquaintance on a train journey from Brisbane to

Grafton.107 The Kandel statement went to the Advertiser, Wagga, the National

Advocate and The Times in Bathurst, the Orange Leader and The Advocate in

Orange.108 When he sent it to the Daily Telegraph in Brisbane, he told them that it was at the request of Sir Donald Cameron, who was at that time a member of the

105 C.C. Faulkner to Brain, 9 March 1938, No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc.; Remington to S.P. Dart, Editor, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 15 March 1938, 3M/Newspapers – correspondence to], FLM correspondence files. 106 McClure Smith to Remington, 1 December 1937, 3M /Newspapers –correspondence to, FLM Correspondence files 107 Remington to Russell, CCNY, 30 April 1937, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York, FLM Correspondence files. 108 Remington to various newspaper editors, December 1937, 3M[N]/Newspapers – correspondence to, FLM correspondence files.

118 lower house of the federal government.109 The implication was that Cameron, soldier, pastoralist and politician, knighted in 1932, would be pleased ‘if you could have the Statement published in full in your valued newspaper’.110

Not all newspaper publicity in Australia was valued. An article in the Sydney Sun on

24 April 1937 which implied that Carnegie money was about to be poured into New

South Wales libraries angered Remington and he was quick to assure the Corporation that it was none of his doing, even though ‘we are finding it difficult to kill the idea that the Corporation ladles out hundred of thousands of pounds, libraries and books and librarians just for the asking’.111 At the same time, no-one had been more diligent than Remington in increasing expectations and demands for library service, especially with intensification of the publicity barrage after the appointment of the

Libraries Advisory Committee. ‘Nobody dodges Remington’ was the remark in an article in Smith’s Weekly in a feature headed ‘Little known celebrities’ with a subheading ‘An organiser of intellect: Sydney lawyer’s quaint hobby’. He was described as ‘Sydney’s most ardent crusader of massive intellectual idealism’.112

None of his family, friends or acquaintances was exempt from the FLM. His sister

Doris on a property out from Gundagai was sent a copy of the Statement ‘Free Public

Libraries’ with the only half facetious hope that she and her husband would ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’113. Harry Dangar, his first overseas travelling

109 See S.W. Wigzell, ‘Cameron, Sir Donald Charles (1879-1960)’. Australian Dictionary of Biography,volume 7. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979, pp.532-533. 110 Remington to Editor, Daily Telegraph, Brisbane, 13 December 1937, 3M/Newspapers – correspondence to, FLM correspondence files. 111 Remington to Russell, 30 April 1937, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York, FLM correspondence files 112 ‘An organiser of intellect: Sydney lawyer’s quaint hobby’. Smiths Weekly 19 June 1937. Claude McKay, a founder of Smiths Weekly was a good friend of W.H.. Ifould. 113 Remington to Mrs Bruce Minter, Carinya, Gundagai, 23 December, 1936. “M” 1M./Letters etc. FLM correspondence files.

119 companion, was also sent the statement with the hope that he would later form a branch of the Movement at his property at Coolah.114

Newspaper editors and friends and relatives presented fewer challenges to the

Movement than the need for careful handling of Schools of Arts and their libraries, especially regarding their history, with which the Munn/Pitt Report had dealt severely.

There were also sensitivities among local government people, elected and employed, and in local communities generally.

Schools of Arts libraries had been a feature of Australian life in cities and country towns since mid nineteenth century. The Munn/Pitt report described them as having

‘long since become cemeteries of old and forgotten books’.115 The phrase was memorable and, like most memorable generalizations, might not have been entirely fair.116 In New South Wales the libraries of the Railway Institute and the Sydney

Mechanics Institute were of some substance. So were others in Victoria and South

Australia. After all, the Free Library Movement’s inaugural meeting took place on

26 June 1935 in the premises of the School of Arts in the Sydney suburb of

Chatswood.

Existence of the Movement provoked a variety of reactions in different communities.

In several places willing sacrifices were offered of existing School of Arts libraries.

In Nowra the School of Arts Committee wanted the Municipal Council to take control

114 Remington to H.V. Dangar, Coolum, 24 December, 1936, 1D/Letters etc., FLM correspondence files. 115 Ralph Munn and Ernest R. Pitt Australian libraries: a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement. Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Research, 1935, p.24 116 See, for example, George Nadel, Australia’a colonial culture, 1957 and Derek Whitelock, The great tradition: a history of adult education in Australia, 1974

120 and conduct it as a public library.117 The librarian of the Bowral School of Arts, having called at the FLM office in Sydney and got advice from Remington, sent a list of 53 local people who would be helpful in forming a branch of the Movement.118

Several other Schools of Arts were active participants in bringing about change in their status. One was Drummoyne.119 Another was Temora.120 Others like Stroud and Dubbo were at least interested enough to inquire.121

Most active of all was the Casino School of Arts. J.T. Reid, MLA for the area, sent to Remington their balance sheet and newspaper cuttings and the news that four other

District centres around Casino were taking up the Movement. Reid’s hope was that they would be linked with the Casino School of Arts which would be able ‘to provide them with books of a reference character’. Remington’s response was immediate and laudatory as he pointed out that he had repeatedly used the example of Casino in encouraging other places in Victoria and Queensland as well in New South Wales ‘to take practical steps towards establishing modern library services’. In fact, Reid a few months later reported the success of a deputation from the Casino School of Arts in persuading the local Council to promise £175 per year to the library.122

117 Metcalfe, Acting Principal Librarian, Public Library of NSW to Secretary, School of Arts, Nowra, 20 August 1936, FLM correspondence files No.3 file in folder N, FLM correspondence files. 118Sidney Beale to Brain, 14 June1937, 7B Bowral and District, FLM correspondence files. 119 Newton to Five Dock Business People’s Assn, Sunnyside Progress Assn (Five Dock), Fairlight Progress Assn (Five Dock), Abbotsford P&C, Sunnyside P&C, Five Dock P&C, Russell Lea P&C, 22 December 1936, 4A/Letters to companies etc., FLM correspondence files. 120 G.R. Herford, Hon. Sec., Temora School of Arts to Brain, 9 October 1937, 5M/Misc country correspondence/ N.S.W., FLM correspondence files. 121 Herbert H. Adcock, Honorary Secretary to Remington, 22 July 1937; and R.S. Lane, Secretary, Dubbo Mechanics Institute to Brain, 29 October 1937, 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W., FLM correspondence files. 122 J.T. Reid to GCR, 9 August 1937; Remington to J.T. Reid, 10 August 1937; J.T. Reid to Remington, 21 October 1937, No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc.

121 Schools of Arts whose committees seemed reluctant to recognize their condition of near bankruptcy were apparently dealt with patiently and strong allies were sometimes developed in the process of negotiation. At Deniliquin a local resident, W.J. Salter was determined to dislodge the School of Arts altogether if the Minister could be persuaded to write off their ₤500 debt.123 FLM publications sent by Remington to the

President, Reverend C.E.O. Keays and to all other Committee members seemed to have had no effect.124 Salter continued to send Remington cuttings from his letters to The Pastoral Times and the newspaper’s report in September 1938 of ‘another unsatisfactory year financially’ experienced by the Deniliquin School of Arts. Salter also argued the positive case for public libraries in the same newspaper while a committee member from the School of Arts argued the negative. Salter’s arguments were robust and he confidently rebutted his opponent’s data on the cost of a free library at Deniliquin. He may be regarded as one of the Movement’s White

Knights.125

When local government representatives displayed arrogance, their interactions with the Movement could be shortlived. The Town Clerk of Murwillumbah replied to

Brain in April 1937 that his letter and accompanying FLM Statement were unnecessary since ‘a local School of Arts is conducting an adequate and up-to-date library service which is meeting the needs of the people’.126 Remington replied promptly with considerable sarcasm which may have been his own, and with a request for detailed information on the collection, loan statistics, financial details and staff of

123 W.J. Salter to GCR, 14 January 1938, FLM Correspondence files 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W., FLM correspondence files. 124 Remington to Keays, 30 September 1937, 4D/Deniliquin, FLM Correspondence files. 125 W.J. Salter to GCR, 14 January 1938, FLM 2 – 51/52 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W. 126 Town Clerk, Murwillumbah to Brain, Hon. Sec., 24 April 1937, FLM Correspondence files 6M/Murwillumbah.

122 the library, which was almost certainly based on Metcalfe’s technical understanding of salient indicators of library performance. The Town Clerk was assured that the information was required so that their School of Arts may serve ‘as an example of one

School of Arts which is conducting an adequate and up-to-date library service’. In reply, the Town Clerk wrote to Brain rather than to Remington: with the request that he apply to the Murwillumbah School of Arts for the information requested.

Remington followed up with a letter to the Secretary of the Murwillumbah School of

Arts, enclosing the Town Clerk’s letter and asking for the information. 127 Six months later, the Inspector of Schools in the Murwillumbah district wrote requesting a

Munn Pitt report for the School of Arts library as ‘The Librarian of the local School of

Arts is very interested in this library movement, and would like a supply of literature’.

Remington asked ACER to send a Munn Pitt report to the Murwillumbah School of

Arts. 128

School inspectors in country districts continued to come forth as white knights. The

Murwillumbah case was by no means the only time that school inspectors helped the

FLM cause. On the same day on which Tompson wrote to him about Murwillumbah,

Remington wrote to Morrow, Inspector of Schools, Young, sending more publications with ‘hope that under your leadership a branch of the Free Library Movement will be formed at Young’ and suggesting that the School of Arts Committee would be a suitable organization to sponsor the formation of the branch.129

127 Remington to Town Clerk, Murwillumbah, 30 April 1937; Town Clerk, Murwillumbah to Brain, 6 May 1937; Remington to the Secretary, Murwillumbah School of Arts, 8 May 1937, FLM Correspondence files, 6M/Murwillumbah. 128Tompson to Brain, 8 February 1938; Remington to Tompson, 15 February 1938, 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature, FLM Correspondence files. 129 Remington to Morrow, Inspector of Schools, Young, 8 February 1938, 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature, FLM Correspondence files.

123 Sometimes local activism outstripped the Movement’s ability to guide and control.

At Inverell extreme enthusiasm caused Clarrie Marin, a Vice President of the

Movement , to ask Remington to get Metcalfe’s guidance to assist the ‘Library

Committee’ which consisted of two aldermen and two representatives of the former

School of Arts Committee. Martin had tried to slow down the immediate establishment of an Inverell Municipal Library and he attached copies of the

‘Applications for position of librarian/ questions to be answered’ and the ‘Inverell

Municipal Council/List of librarian duties/ 19/12/38’.130 A paragon to meet the

Committee’s exacting specifications apparently was not found.

The most complex and prolonged of the FLM’s negotiations with a local authority and a school of arts committee involved the industrial city of Newcastle, the second largest in New South Wales. Newcastle was significant to the Free Library

Movement because of its size and its contribution to the economy of New South

Wales. Remington, moreover, came to regard it as a bell wether for the progress of public libraries in Australia generally. He believed that the Newcastle district was

‘ready to develop it’s[sic] library services and I am sure if it develops them along sound lines what it does will give a lead to the rest of Australia.131

Newcastle was no tabula rasa with regard to a free public library service. After just one of the many meetings involved in the Movement’s negotiations, Remington described Newcastle as ‘a very difficult problem due to local personal jealousies and a

130 Martin to Remington, 8 January 1939, folder 2C, FLM Correspondence files. 131Remington to F.O’Malley Jones, 4 May 1937, 4N/ Newcastle, FLM Correspondence files. Remington was not the only one to see Newcastle in this way, as Beverley Kingston points out in A history of New South Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): p.230.

124 number of other influences’.132 History was one of the other influences. The School of Arts had resisted attempts to enforce cooperation with the Municipal Council dating back to 1910. By the second half of the 1930s, the Council, tourist industry representatives and interested citizens, without hope of cooperation from the School of Arts committee, were planning a Cultural Centre, consisting of a Free Library, Art

Gallery and Museum. In May 1936 Education Minister Drummond came to

Newcastle to give an address on the subject.133 The presence of competing interests, longstanding mistrust, not to say enmity in some quarters, called for good judgment, patience, careful planning and diplomatic skills from the FLM. Much time and effort, and not a little guile, were needed before a Newcastle branch of the Movement was inaugurated in November 1937, and thereafter.134

Remington always pursued ideals of inclusiveness in dealing with the organizational stakeholders in Newcastle. He was therefore exasperated that the Library Group was not prepared to support the Newcastle School of Arts librarian, McDonald, for a

Carnegie grant until they were sure that Newcastle intended to develop its library system. Remington complained to Russell at the Carnegie Corporation that the

Group was risk averse, lacking conviction that Newcastle would develop a modern public library service and that, once development was under way, Mr. McDonald would be found ‘far too valuable and necessary to be spared to go abroad’135

132Remington to Tate, 30 April 1937, FLM correspondence files no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous. 133 D.H. Drummond, ‘Newcastle: establishment of a Cultural Centre, consisting/of a Free Library, Art Gallery and Museum’, 29th May, 1936,. FLM correspondence files, No.3 file in folder Miscellaneous libraries. 134 A useful historical account of Newcastle School of Arts can be found in Barbara Heaton’s thesis, Aspects of the School of Arts movement with particular reference to the Newcastle institution. BA Honours thesis. University of Newcastle, Department of History, 1985.

135 Remington to Russell, 2 August 1937, 5C./Carnegie Corporation of New York FLM correspondence files

125

The development at Newcastle was not easily achieved but the Movement’s efforts were not wasted. Before the end of 1938, Remington was able to refer to

‘Newcastle’s splendid action in resolving to proceed with the erection of a building to cost £55,000 and agreeing to provide library services costing £7,000 a year.136

Newcastle’s central library did not come to fruition until the second half of the century but the Free Library Movement had helped build the base in local government there. It also won over, or assisted at the demise of nearly all the Schools of Arts in

New South Wales.

The complete lobbyist

The FLM campaign waged in 1937 and 1938 provides ample evidence that

Remington acted with none of the deference and caution which would have been expected and exacted from public servants by and on behalf of their political masters.

Remington’s correspondence with the Carnegie Corporation, the Australian Council for Educational Research and the New South Wales State government was notable not only for its volume but the independence with which he put forth his views and the ease with which polite attempts to curb his direct approaches were ignored. As he told Cunningham at ACER:

Mr Ifould will tell you that I am quite an impossible person at least as far as correspondence is concerned and that I am given to writing letters in all directions and then expect immediate replies.137

His behaviour extended well beyond the bounds of other people’s decorum and there is plenty of evidence of his willingness to influence Cabinet Ministers in New South

136 Remington to A.J. Dowd, 18 November 1938, 5M./Misc country correspondence/ N.S.W., FLM correspondence files. 137 Remington to Cunningham, 24 February 1937, no.1 file, Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous

126 Wales and to play a leading role in formation of branches of the Movement in other

States. Ifould seems to have been notably patient and forbearing. He may have appreciated Remington’s untrammeled interference, even when it extended to persuasion of Education Minister Drummond to use him as a go-between in negotiations for Carnegie sponsorship of two American librarians, an idea of which

Ifould disapproved.138 Remington was not a public servant and therefore not necessarily constrained by ties of loyalty or confidentiality to the State or the

Government. His tactics in dealing with sources of authority for making policy and distributing funds are examined in more detail in Chapter 5. Ifould was apparently ready to tolerate Remington’s relaying to Carnegie regular reports on progress of the

Libraries Advisory Committee and again he may have welcomed this unofficial channel of communication to the Corporation. Ifould may also have been realistic about any possibility of his tracking, let alone curbing any of Remington’s multifarious activities.

These extended to New Zealand. In 1937 and 1938 he corresponded and exchanged publications with Jos Norrie, who was both the representative of the New Zealand

Library Association and Chief Librarian of the Wellington City Council.139 While no great trans-Tasman cooperative movement was generated, the contacts with Norrie and other librarians were productive of good will.

138D.H. Drummond. to Remington, 13 October 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C./Carnegie Corporation of New York 139 Remington to Norrie, 8March 1937; Norrie to Remington, 31 March, 1937, Norrie to Remington, 1 April 1937, Remington to Norrie, 12 April, 1937; Norrie to Remington, 24April 1937; Norrie to Remington 28 June 1937; Remington to Norrie, 10 July, 1937; Norrie to Remington, 31 July 1937; Remington to Norrie, 21 July, 1938; Norrie to Remington, 27 July 1938; Remingto to Norrie, 4 August 1938; Norrie to Remington, 9 August 1938; Remington to Norrie, 28 October 1938; Norrie to Remington, 15 November 1938, FLM Correspondence files, 5N/New Zealand Correspondence.

127 In Australia Remington made great efforts to spread the Free Library Movement to every State. Victoria was first off the mark in pursuing a State branch of the

Movement and Remington attempted directly and indirectly to mobilize other states.

Queensland was soon into the race but faded after early promise. Tasmania enlisted, but resistance was encountered in South Australia and interest was difficult to stimulate in Western Australia despite Remington’s best efforts. Results were mixed and none of the other States approached the Movement’s success in New South

Wales. His efforts and tactics are briefly explored in the following outline of the attempted diaspora.

Tate and Cunningham late in 1936 sent Remington a list of people in Victoria who might form the back-bone of the Movement there and he was quick to counsel them on the wisdom of recruiting public figures for top office holders. 140 Tate pointed out the complicating presence of the Victorian Library Association with strong roots in the Schools of Arts libraries.141 Remington immediately contacted a number of people in Melbourne and complained to Tate about Cunningham’s having replied to only two of his seven letters.142 The ACER people remained notably forbearing, while Remington without authorization continued to recruit possible office holders for the proposed Victorian branch. Tate reported the branch’s inaugural meeting in May

1937 as ‘highly successful’, although he added that ‘Unfortunately we have not a

Metcalfe or an Ifould over here but I hope we shall discover some good men yet’143

140 Cunningham to Remington, 27 October 1936; Remington to Tate, 5 December 1936, FLM correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters from A.1 to E.3/2A/Miscellaneous. 141 Tate to Remington, 25 January 1937, FLM correspondence files, no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous. 142 Remington to Tate, 17 February, 1937 FLM correspondence files, no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous 143 Tate to Remington, 4 May 1 937 FLM correspondence files no.1 file Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous.

128 Remington’s reaction was extreme, believing wrongly that his suggestions for officeholders had been ignored and that some of the ‘less significant’ among those elected should be replaced with his nominations. He proposed as ‘one of our fundamental dogmas‘ that such a Movement ought to gain the support of as many important persons as possible because ‘They give us social prestige which is absolutely indispensible’. At the same time Remington acknowledged that ‘On the other hand, we must engage the active sympathy of less known individuals who will put in the hard work and really get things going’. Remington said he was

‘exceedingly pained’ to have to write such critical observations and offered a somewhat thorny olive branch in absolving Tate of any personal guilt with the remark: ‘Nevertheless you were the man that inspired me to do what I have done in regard to The Free Library Movement’.144

Remington was wrong on nearly all counts as Tate’s measured though firm reply pointed out. Sir Herbert Gepp and Sir Keith Murdoch were aboard, and the ‘Herald’ had been very sympathetic before the meeting and was about to publish a special article on the subject. With his respect for Tate personally, Remington might have been rather more moved by the rather poignant conclusion of Tate’s letter in which he refers to his “gastric attacks” and the fact that ‘Indeed today is the first day I have been out of my room for some time’. He went on to reassure Remington: ‘However, you need be under no apprehension that we have not had a successful launching’.145

144 Remington to Tate, 8 May 1937 FLM correspondence files no.1 file Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous 145 Tate to Remington, 11 May 1937, FLM correspondence files No.1 file /letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous.

129 Clearly Tate bore no hard feelings after this exchange since a week later he acceded to

Remington’s request to write to the Hon. E. Dwyer Grey, Acting Premier of

Tasmania, expressing ACER’s interest in the Movement in Tasmania.146 In the

Movement’s files at the Mitchell Library there is a circular from the Secretary of the

Launceston Trades Hall Council inviting representatives of ‘all public bodies to a meeting at the Public Library to consider ‘ways and means of securing establishment of a Free Municipal Library for the City of Launceston’.147 Whether this initiative was associated with the Movement is impossible to tell. The only other mention of

Tasmania does not appear in Remington’s papers until 1939 when Minister

Drummond passed on a letter from J.D.A. Colllier, at the Tasmania Public Library, asking for six copies of the Libraries Advisory Committee Report for the Tasmanian

FLM.148

Meanwhile things went noticeably better in Queensland, at least in the initial stages. Very important people were approached and excellent press was obtained. Sir Donald Cameron was to be President, and Remington prepared notes for his address at the ‘most successful’ inaugural meeting of the

Branch.149 Remington wrote to Queensland Premier, Forgan Smith, at his home address and then told Cameron ‘I hope you will not think I am butting in’150

146 Tate to Remington, 18 May 1937, FLM correspondence files No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 147 Launceston Trades Hall Council, Circular signed Charles A. Lamp, Secretary, 4 August 1937. FLM correspondence, 5N/New Zealand. 148 Drummond to Remington, 16 January 1939, File 2C, FLM correspondence files. 149 Remington to Russell, 30 April 1937 FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York; Remington to Tate, 30 April 1937 FLM correspondence files no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous.

150 Remington to Cameron, 28 January 1937, FLM correspondence files 2C/Miscellaneous

130

To increase support for the idea of the Movement and attendance at the inaugural meeting, Remington and B.H. Molesworth, Brisbane representative of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, spent three days ‘interviewing ten to twelve people a day from Ministers of the Crown across to Trade Union

Secretaries and from Archbishops to business men’.151 After the success of the meeting, Remington asked Tate for ‘a fairly generous donation’ of

Carnegie money to assist the Queensland Movement and ₤30 was quickly provided.152.

After such a promising beginning the Queensland Movement seemed to be sleeping if not dead by the end of 1937. Remington offered as one reason for the slowdown the promotion of B.H. Molesworth to Sydney as Director of National Talks for the

Australian Broadcasting Commission.153

While Remington may have been hasty in his lack of confidence in the Victorians, his efforts to spread the Movement to other states were not without disappointment.

South Australia is a case in point. Remington had sighted the report by Archibald

Grenfell Price on libraries in South Australia, which was the result of an inquiry commissioned by the State Government. 154 He wrote to an old acquaintance, J.W.

Wainwright, Auditor General for South Australia in December 1936, asking for a

151 Remington to Tate, 30 April 1937 FLM correspondence files no.1 file/Letters A.1 – E.3 2A Miscellaneous 152 Remington to Tate, 5 July 1937 ;Tate to Remington, 9 July 1937, FLM correspondence files No.1 file/letters from A.1 to E.3/ 2A/ Miscellaneous 153 Remington to Russell, 24 August 1937 FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of NY 154 Price, A. Grenfell, Libraries in South Australia: report of an inquiry commissioned by the South Australian Government into the system of management of libraries maintained or assisted by the state. Adelaide: Government Printer, 1937.

131 copy of the report.155 When no reply had been received Remington wrote again to

‘Dear Bill’ in February 1927. Ever ready with a compliment, Remington told the

Auditor that even a ‘cursory glance’ at Grenfell Price’s recommendations had convinced him that ‘South Australia will be leading the rest of the Commonwealth in taking the first step towards modernizing library services.’156 Wainwright told ‘Dear

Remington’ that he had not replied to his first letter because he had nothing to say, that it was uncertain that Grenfell Price’s report would be printed, but if it was he would send a copy. He admitted that the recommendations were comprehensive and

‘no doubt will suit your ideas on the matter’ but neither their implementation nor the

Government’s policy was certain. He added that ‘you will realize there is certain to be very definite opposition’. 157 The Auditor General was right. ‘Very definite opposition’ to the idea of free public libraries from the South Australian institutes ensured that their libraries were much more difficult to dislodge than the schools of arts in New South Wales.158

Remington was however a difficult man to snub. He was quick to send on to New

South Wales Education Minister Drummond a copy of a letter from Grenfell Price on the disheartening result of his work in South Australia. As Remington pointed out to

Drummond it was necessary for an organization like the Free Library Movement ‘to arouse public interest in the development of library services before the authorities take

155 Remington to J.W. Wainwright, 23 December 1936, FLM correspondence files. no.3 file: Letters from O.1 to U.1 with pink slip “W” 156 Remington to J.W. Wainwright, 25 February 1937;,FLM correspondence files no.3 file: Letters from O.1 to U.1 with pink slip “W”. 157 Wainwright to Remington, 2 March 1937, ,FLM correspondence files no.3 file: Letters from O.1 to U.1 with pink slip “W”. 158 How the South Australian Institutes preserved their antipathy to free public libraries is revealed in Talbot, Michael R. A chance to read: a history of the Institutes Movement in South Australia. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1992 As late as 1978 a ‘Committee to investigate the possible transfer of the duties and responsibilities of the Institutes Association Council to the Libraries Board’, that is to have the Institutes join the State system of public libraries, did not have immediate effect since the last South Australian Institute was not wound up until June 1989.

132 any definite steps’. Remington also disclosed to Drummond that he had sent FLM literature to 400 South Australians whose names and addresses he had obtained from

‘my friend J.W. Wainwright (Auditor General in South Australia)’. Remington, the self-styled ‘impossible person’ impervious to insult, told Drummond that he had ‘at the same time suggested to Dr. Grenfell Price that it would be advisable to start a Free

Library Movement to arouse public opinion in support of his recommendations before he proceeded to translate his report into legislation.’159 Despite Remington’s efforts, no branch of the Free Library Movement was ever established in South Australia.

Remington’s attempts to bring about a Western Australian branch of the Movement were also to prove fruitless. In December 1936 he tried to enlist A.G.B. Fisher, a

Professor at the University of Western Australia, in the FLM cause. Remington described the Movement as ‘rather a baby of mine. . .now learning to take its first tottering first steps, having obtained sufficient financial nourishment’160 Apparently

Fisher did not respond. A few months later Remington leapt to express his delight at mention of the Movement by Walter Murdoch, well-known essayist as well as West

Australian academic. Just where and when he mentioned the FLM is not clear, but

Remington was quick to ask, ‘Could you form a provisional committee immediately?’, and in the next 2-1/2 pages Remington instructed him on how to do it.161 The only evidence in the FLM archives was a one-page typescript on which

Remington has noted in blue pencil that it was an extract from a broadcast by

Professor Walter Murdoch given in August 1937 over Station 2FC. It includes the

159Remington to Drummond, Personal, 4 November, 1937, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature 160Remington to Prof A.G.B. Fisher, 22 December 1936, FLM correspondence files“F” 1F. Letters to companies. 161GCR to Walter Murdoch, 13 March 1937, FLM 2 – 39 2M/Miscellaneous. FLM correspondence files.

133 following, which may have been the reason that Remington preserved the fragment: ‘I hope to live to see free libraries all over Australia, lending libraries from which people in the country outback can borrow good books.162

A year later Remington assured Fisher, as he set out for an English study leave, that despite no sign of any Western Australian branch, ‘The Free Library Movement continues to flourish in this State [New South Wales]’ and that it has ‘built the frame work for our main vehicle “The Library Act”, which I hope will take the road next year’.163

When Remington heard from C.R. Badger, Acting Director of Adult Education at the

University of Western Australia that a decision had been taken to form a Free Library

Movement in that State, he immediately sent twelve copies of each of the Movement publications and wrote with details of ‘The methods we use here and which were followed to some extent in Victoria and Queensland’.164 Perhaps deterred by the amount of work and dedication suggested in Remington’s outline, Badger seems not to have proceeded but a few months later he was reminded. At Hartley Grattan’s suggestion, Catherine King sought Remington’s help in preparing a broadcast on children’s libraries. Along with information provided from Remington and Ifould and a collection of FLM publications, Remington suggested that she should ‘join forces with Mr Colin Badger of the University of Western Australia in an endeavour to

162Walter Murdoch, extract from broadcast over 2 FC, August 1937. 1p. typescript, FLM Correspondence Files 1936-1938 FLM 2 – 39 2M/Miscellaneous. 163 Remington to A.G.B. Fisher, 17 November 1937, FLM correspondence files 3W/Western Australia. 164 Remington to G.R. Badger. 29 December 1937, FLM correspondence files 3W/Western Australia

134 launch a Free Library Movement in that State’.165 Subsequent letters showed that she tried but no branch seems to have resulted.

Despite the doubtful outcome of the attempted national diaspora, the

Movement continued to grow in New South Wales. By the end of 1937

Remington was writing to Tate, happy to be able to report on most successful meetings at Cessnock, Maitland and Newcastle, though no ‘specific development in the library field generally’ was to be expected ‘until we get the Act which is being drafted by the Libraries Advisory Committee’.166

In November 1937 he reported to Drummond:

I have heard whispers that some of our friends in Victoria have suggested that we seem to be spending a lot of money with no result in the way of libraries to show for it. Notwithstanding this suggestion of criticism it is our intention to carry our campaign along the same lines for some time to come. I am sure that the more people think and know about libraries the more anxious they will be to provide themselves with a modern library service.167

Perhaps Remington thought it unlikely that a New South Wales Cabinet Minister would take offence at hearing ill of Victorian sentiments. But probably, retailing the rumour suited Remington’s intention to reinforce Drummond’s opinion of both the nobility and the political practicality of the approach of the Free Library Movement.

Ever vigilant, Remington was quick to challenge a State Government claim that

Sydney had public libraries which ’cater for the entertainment of the people’. Having

165 Remington to Catherine King, 22 June 1938 and 1 August 1938, FLM correspondence files 3W/Western Australia. 166 Remington to Tate, 13 December 1937, FLM correspondence files No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 167 Remington to Drummond, Personal, 4 November, 1937, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature]

135 found this fiction in the Official Programme of the State’s 150th Anniversary

Celebrations he reminded Premier Bertram Stevens in no uncertain terms that:

As you will know we have no “Public Libraries” in the sense in which they are understood in other parts of the world, particularly England and the United States. The institution which we call a Public Library is exclusively a Reference Library and in our opinion the building in which the library is housed and the conditions under which both the staff and the students are called upon to work merits the criticisms often expressed that – “It is a disgrace to the people of the State”.

The Premier was also reminded that only the Sydney Municipal Library was providing anything like a public library service for the city and that institution had been described by eminent British library authority, E. Salter Davies, as ‘two rooms above a wine shop’. It was, as Remington hammered home, ‘not the kind of institution which we should be proud to encourage tourists to come and see.168

Remington listed for the Premier those to whom he had sent a copy of his letter.

Among them was Ifould and so was the Minister in charge of the Celebrations, J.M.

Dunningham.169 Ifould at least was pleased: ‘I hope the Premier pondered over it after he received it. It is an excellent letter’.170

At the end of 1937, the Libraries Advisory Committee was well into its work and

Remington had good reason for satisfaction with the Movement’s progress in New

South Wales, even though any hopes of a national organization now seemed highly unlikely.

168 Remington to B.S.B. Stevens, 23 December 1937, FLM correspondence files 4M/Members of Parliament correspondence 169 Others listed were the Lord Mayor, Archibald Howse, and C.H.Hay. 170 Ifould to Remington, 4 January 1938, FLM correspondence files 4M/Members of Parliament correspondence.

136 The Library Act, 1939 (NSW)

Preparation of the Libraries Advisory Committee Report required frequent meetings and preparation of drafts amid increasing pressure for its completion. By October

1938 when the Report was presented to Minister Drummond, 36 meetings of the full committee had been held.171 At the same time, the very fact of LAC’s existence intensified pressure on the Movement and therefore pressure of business on

Remington and Brain. The workload is evident in the increased volume of correspondence , with requests for speeches as well as the need to keep up the flow of informative and persuasive publications and radio addresses. Some of the increase can be attributed to raised expectations, some reaching cargo cult dimensions.

Pressure from the Minister increased after the New South Wales State Government was returned at the election in March 1938 and Drummond became impatient to obtain the report. Ifould had to tell him that he thought the report and a draft bill were still two months away. Remington wanted as little delay as possible between approval of the Committee’s report and commencing missionary work in country centres. When he visited Cessnock in November 1937, he was so impressed by the organisational abilities of a young teacher, Ron McGreal, that he asked Ifould to secure his services for the Movement. Ifould agreed and secured McGreal’s secondment to the Public Library.172 Before the State election, both Remington and

171 Jones, 1993, p.299. 172:Rodney Paul Snibson, The Free Library Movement in New South Wales 1935-1944. Thesis submitted to the Graduate School of Librarianship in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts, 1982, p.70. Ronald McGreal, like Remington and Metcalfe, was a member of the AIPS. His secondment marked the beginning of his long career in the Public Library of New South Wales and he later became the first secretary of the Library Board which was created by the Act.

137 Ifould counselled restraint in badgering the Government for action. 173 Remington’s own restraint evaporated in the flurry of activity just before the election when he used

Deputy Sydney Municipal Librarian Frank Bell’s report on his Carnegie-sponsored world tour of libraries. Remington’s press release, about half of which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 24 February 1938, claimed unequivocally that the suburban Municipalities of Sydney had utterly neglected the provision of public libraries and that country areas must also be catered for. He also drew attention to the state of the Public Library building and called upon the premier to do something about it.174 175

Metcalfe and Remington prepared a draft statement for the policy speech of Labor

Party candidate, R.G. Heffron, at the request of one of the Movement’s Vice

Presidents, C.E. Martin, who was working as Heffron’s secretary.176 Their efforts seem to have been successful since Remington afterwards remarked that ‘for the first time in the history of this State all the political parties had included reference to library development in their policy speeches’.177 Remington was never the exclusive creature of any particular political party. Acknowledging Remington’s congratulations on his re-election, Drummond remained optimistic for the future, even

173 Salter to Remington, 12 February 1938; Remington to Salter, 15 February 1938, FLM correspondence files, 4D./Deniliquin; Ifould to Florance, 15 February 1938, FLM correspondence files, 5M/Misc country correspondence

174 Remington, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1938

175 Remington, Press release, 1 page typescript,. FLM correspondence files 3M/Newspapers – correspondence to. The copy of the press release in the FLM correspondence files has a note, ’Given to Mr Crackell of “The Sun” 28/2/38’ 176‘Draft statement prepared by J.Metcalfe & G.C. Remington for C.E. Martin, R.G. Heffron’s policy speech – telephoned to C.E. Martin 27/2/38’, FLM correspondence files Folder GCR/ Private.. 177 Martin to Remington, 18 March 1938; Remington to Martin, 21 March 1938, FLM correspondence files No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc.

138 though he was afraid that ‘the war clouds are likely to divert money from the arts of peace’178.

This is the first reference to the situation in Europe in the extant FLM papers.

According to the correspondence, Remington paid no attention to events in Nazi

Germany or the annexation of Austria in March 1938 . He was preoccupied with other matters such as the launch of the Queensland Movement and the work of the

LAC, as well as busy fielding inquiries about the financial support which the New

South Wales State Government was likely to provide to municipalities and shires. He remained characteristically upbeat about the future, confident that the State

Government would make generous grants to the municipalities and shires for establishment of modern library services within a reasonably short period. He referred to both Drummond’s and Spooner’s attitudes in support of his optimism.179

At the same time, Remington was making strenuous attempts to involve powerful community organizations in the Movement. The New South Wales branch of the

Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia registered its support for the Free Library Movement and asked that its 425 sub-branches support the

Movement in their own districts.180 The influence of Mrs Ruth Fairfax as State

President of the Country Womens Association was enlisted to raise enthusiasm for the

178 Drummond to Remington, 11 April 1938, FLM correspondence files 3D/Department of Education Correspondence & Literature.

179 Remington to Moores, 14 April 1938, FLM correspondence files 5M/Miscellaneous country correspondence/ N.S.W.

180 The Free Library Movement/progress in New South Wales/ Notes for Sir Donald Cameron KCMG to report to the Queensland Free Library Movement, 19/4/38, FLM correspondence files pp. 10 & ll,.

139 Movement in country areas. The C.W.A. was then one of the most numerous and influential women’s organization in Australia, and Mrs Fairfax had a profound effect on it since first taking office as State President in Queensland in 1922.181 as a Vice

President of the FLM, had already proved effective as a speaker and broadcaster in delivering Movement publicity which had been prepared by Remington and Metcalfe.

182

The Carnegie Corporation of New York was another organization which Remington continued to cultivate assiduously, not only communicating details of the FLM campaign but also giving freely of his advice. Remington told Carnegie President

Keppel that he saw the Movement’s job was to make sure that the LAC report was made public and that, with its publication, the Government ought to state its policy on library development. 183 Only the thread of Carnegie’s involvement in the Free

Library Movement is included in this chapter. Detailed analysis of Remington’s relationships with the Corporation is reserved for Chapter 5.

The LAC had completed its draft of the Library Bill in September 1938 but its report was still a few weeks away from presentation. Ifould urged the Movement lobbyists to get their local members to keep on raising questions about public libraries in the

State Parliament, not to the Minister for Education but to the Premier.184 Remington,

181 Rutledge, Martha, ‘Fairfax, Ruth Beatrice (17-194)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fairfax-ruth- beatrice-6134/text10527, accessed 26 September 2012. 182 Remington to Russell, 19 March 1937, FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York

183 : Remington to Keppel, 1 September 1938 FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York

184 Ifould to Remington, [marked ‘Confidential’], 1 September 1938, FLM correspondence files 2I./Miscellaneous.

140 seldom totally compliant, agreed to do so at a later stage in the campaign.185 This he did. 186

In final preparation of the LAC report and presentation to the Minister, there was obviously intense pressure on Committee members, especially on Ifould as Chairman but hardly less so on Remington and Metcalfe. Ifould discussed with Drummond the draft report and the draft Bill at the end of June 1938. The Minister seemed to Ifould happy with the thrust of the report although he believed the Bill would be crowded out of the current session of Parliament.187 Ifould took Drummond’s comments to the

Committee and they ‘worked towards a final draft, paragraph by paragraph, their revisions recorded by Metcalfe, pored over and further annotated by Ifould, until all members were satisfied not just with the content, but with what Ifould termed the

“verbiage”’.188 Four months had elapsed before Ifould sent copies of the Libraries

Advisory Committee report to Drummond, with apologies for the delay citing the other commitments of Committee members. He was able also to assure the Minister that the resulting report was unanimous.189

Remington, as usual full of optimism, wrote a week later to a country supporter of the

Movement with the hope that the Government would soon announce ‘its policy towards the development of Libraries for the people’. 190 In fact Drummond was prompt to find fault in that the minima for a library service in the Report were extremely small and could lead to a repetition of the experience with the creation of

185Remington to Ifould, 2 September 1938, FLM correspondence files 2I./Miscellaneous. 186 Remington to J.R. Firth, 14 October 1938 FLM correspondence files “F” 1F. Letters to companies. 187 Jones, 1993, p.296 188 Jones, 1993, p.296. 189 Jones, 1993, p.299.

190 Remington to Fenton, 26 October 1938, FLM correspondence files 5M/Misc country correspondence/N.S.W.

141 the multitude of inadequately financed schools of arts. He also wanted a limit placed on the proportion of expenditure on buildings.191 Drummond and Ifould then stipulated an expenditure of at least ₤1000 per year, which would only be possible for communities of ten thousand, and a library rate of two shillings per head. Provision was also made to encourage pooling of resources by smaller communities, and such encouragement was to be part of the duties of the Library Board to be set up under the proposed legislation. Thus the LAC Committee’s Report was ready for action.

The way now seemed clear for presentation to the Parliament of the proposed Library

Bill. 192 Drummond submitted the revised Report to Cabinet in November, and recommended its adoption and publication. He further recommended that legislation be enacted in early 1939, and that funds to implement the Report be provided for in the 1939/40 estimates. The scheme was placed on the agenda for the first meeting of

Cabinet in 1939.193

The quality of the LAC Report can hardly be blamed for its subsequent history. It was clearly written and comprehensive. Matters of social, political and financial policy were covered in sections on the need for public libraries, their present condition in New South Wales, their relationship to Schools of Arts, their minimum costs and the need for legislation. The recommendations on the need for, and nature of legislation were based on the preceding argument and were followed by presentation of the scope and intention of the recommended legislation. Existing legislation which needed to be amended to allow operation of the proposed law was described and so were the conditions under which Local Government authorities

191 Jones, 1993 p.302. 192 Libraries Advisory Committee, Report on public library services, 20th October, 1938. 93pp. typescript. 53pp text of report; 20 p. of ‘Draft of a bill for a Library Act, 21p. Appendix of statistics: ‘Council contribution and government subsidy for each municipality and shire. 193 Jones, 1993, p.303.

142 would be able to adopt the act. The possibility of striking a library rate and the conditions under which local authorities could apply for a State Government subsidy were also covered. Library buildings were discussed and the Report warned against

‘too much emphasis on the building as an end in itself’.194 Sections on book stocks and on supplementary collections and inter-library loans were very likely to have been drafted by Metcalfe, as secretary to the LAC. The section on ‘Cooperation between councils’ covered the relationship with the Sydney Municipal Library as well as ideas for regional cooperation between councils. Proposed expenditures and the proportions to be distributed between State Government and local government areas of different population size were set out in a series of tables, based on up-to-date statistical information. Detailed figures for all these statistical parameters were set out in an appendix to the Report, the text of which ended with three year projections of the effect on State Government finances and expenditure on public libraries as a percentage of the total expenditure on education.

The Report had thus prepared the way for the ‘Draft of a Bill for a Library Act’, which embodied most of its recommendations in appropriate legislative language.

The Committee wisely omitted from the draft bill matters likely to be contentious, such as the recommendations pertaining to the idea that the State Library, through an expansion of the Country Circulation Department, should function as a central lending library for the State, on the model of the National Central Library in Great Britain.

The draft legislation mirrored the Report’s insistence that the scheme should be

194 LAC report, p.15 This warning no doubt stemmed from knowledge of the history of Carnegie library buildings, donated to many countries including Australia from the late Nineteenth Century to the first third of the Twentieth. Many of these ‘Carnegie libraries’ were inappropriate architecturally to the communities in which they were sited and funds for their subsequent upkeep and provision of services were lacking.

143 permissive rather than attempting to force establishment of public libraries on local government authorities. As Metcalfe claimed later after its passing by Parliament,

‘The Act in this respect is permissive, not mandatory. It is a democratic act’.195

Schools of Arts were permitted to transfer their libraries to a local government council. A council which did not adopt the legislation could be petitioned by not fewer than one-fifth of the electors for a poll on the matter. The result of such a poll was to be put into effect forthwith. There was also provision in the Report for co- operation between councils in order for the setting up of joint public library services.

Again such regional action was to be permitted rather than mandated.

The bill proposed by the LAC was also permissive in that it exempted members of the proposed Library Board from any of the provisions of the Public Service Act during their term of office. In view of Remington’s total disregard of such regulations in dealing with ACER and the Carnegie Corporation in his FLM activities, such a clause would presumably have been essential for him. Apart from demonstrated insolvency or insanity, Library Board members were to serve at the Governor’s pleasure. There was provision for charges to be made for fines for overdue, damaged or lost items but charges for loans could only be levied on borrowers not resident or rate-paying in the local government area, or on materials ‘not classified by the librarian as being of literary informative or educational value’.196 Provisions regarding the training and certification of librarians and library assistants were decidedly less permissive and, naturally, provisions for the payment of State subsidy were firmly set out.

195 Metcalfe, J.W. “Library Act”: an address [to the 1939 conference of the Australian Institute of Librarians] by Mr J.W. Metcalfe, Executive Member, Library Board and Principal Librarian, Public Library of New South Wales. 196LAC Report, p.49.

144 Remington had no illusions that the report would be persuasion enough for legislation to be enacted and that the FLM could go into recess. On the same day on which

Ifould presented the LAC report to Drummond, Remington had written to all Cabinet

Ministers in New South Wales. He suggested to E.S. Spooner, Minister for Works and Local Government that public libraries could supply a municipal information service –an idea not earlier expressed in the FLM campaign. He also told Spooner his hope that ‘the Government will announce its policy on library development at the earliest possible date’.197

Education Minister Drummond noted ‘with some amusement’ Remington’s letter urging prompt announcement of Government policy on library development, since it had arrived before he received the LAC report from Ifould. 198 Such a good- humoured rebuke seemed only to give faint pause. Remington soon wrote to Tate that the LAC report was in the hands of the Minister but this was not to be made public as the Minister had asked that no-one should be inspired to bring pressure on the

Government to publish the Report until the Cabinet has had time to consider it.199

Remington’s respect for the Minister’s wishes had been dissipated by November 1938 when neither public release of the report nor policy announcement had occurred.

Remington prepared notes for a speech in support of the establishment of libraries which was to be delivered by one of the delegates to the UAP convention. The notes seem designed to serve as a wake-up call to the Premier and Government on sitting on the LAC report and on their lack of action on calling tenders for new Public Library

197 Remington to E.S. Spooner, 19 October 1938, FLM correspondence files 4M/Members of Parliament – correspondence]

198 Drummond to Remington, 20 October 1938, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature 199 Remington to Tate, 1 November 1938 FLM correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters from A.1 to E.3. 2A/Miscellaneous.

145 building.200 Remington urged upon A.J. Dowd, one of the FLM’s stalwart allies among inspectors of schools, the necessity of raising the pressure on the Government.

Dowd was to ask everyone he met to write to the Premier and to their local Member of Parliament asking for the Government’s policy towards library development.

Local Government officers were being urged to get their Councils to resolve to ask the State Government for their plans for library development. Naturally no hint of the FLM involvement in these moves was to be disclosed. Remington’s final advice was: ‘Keep the campaign going until the Government says something’. In a rare reference to the demands of his day job, Remington told Dowd that ‘I am particularly busy attempting to earn a living’.201

In December 1938 Remington continued to urge the application of pressure on the

State Government. Correspondents were advised to make representations to the

Premier. The Report of the Libraries Advisory committee had not yet been made public, nor had the Government made any announcement of its policy for public libraries. Those who asked for copies of the LAC Report, like R.S. Lane, Secretary of the Dubbo Mechanics Institute, were advised to write to the Premier and to bring more pressure on him by initiating questions from their local members. Remington never failed to give precise instructions to FLM members. Lane was advised to ‘write to the Secretaries of the branches of The Free Library Movement at Orange and

200 Remington,G.C. ‘Notes for Mr Combe for his address to the UAP convention 10/11/38 in support of the establishment of libraries prepared by G.C. Remington’. 2p. typescript. 2A Miscellaneous, FLM correspondence files. 201 Remington to A.J. Dowd, 18 November 1938, FLM correspondence files 5M./Misc country correspondence/ N.S.W

146 Bathurst seeking their collaboration in forwarding the campaign for libraries in the

West’.202

By mid December, Remington’s patience was exhausted and FLM tactics were effectively sharpened. Two letters were sent to Premier Stevens. One was signed by

Brain, as Honorary General Secretary of the Movement. It set out the resolution passed by the FLM Council at its November Council meeting that a deputation of three should wait upon the Premier to ask for a declaration of library policy, to urge completion of the State Library building and to request that the LAC Report be made available as soon as possible. The persons appointed to the deputation were Sir

Frederick Stewart (entrepreneur, benefactor and member of the Federal

Government),203 the Hon. Walter Cambridge (member of the New South Wales

Parliament, with rural background and work as a printer and for farmers’ organizations and the Land newspaper)204 and J.P. Abbott, (President of the Graziers

Association of New South Wales). A date and time were requested for them to wait upon the Premier.205 With the official letter Remington enclosed a personal letter to

Stevens which carried this element of threat that he and Sir Frederick Stewart had agreed ‘that there would be no necessity to proceed with this deputation to you if the

Report of the Libraries Advisory Committee had been made public’.

202 Remington to R.S. Lane, Secretary of the Dubbo Mechanics Institute, 10 December 1938, FLM correspondence files 5M/Misc country correspondence /N.S.W. 203C. J. Lloyd, 'Stewart, Sir Frederick Harold (1884 - 1961)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, Melbourne University Press, 1990, pp 87-89. 204 Heather Radi, Peter Spearritt and Elizabeth Hinton, Biographical register of the NSW Parliament 1901-1970. Canberra: ANU Press, 1979. 205 Brain, Hon.Gen.Secretary, FLM to B.S.B. Stevens, Premier, 14 December 1938 FLM correspondence files 4M./Members of Parliament - correspondence

147 Never half-hearted in his advice to leading citizens, Remington suggested authorization of publication of the LAC Report before any announcement of

Government policy on library development. In that way local government bodies and organizations such as Schools of Arts would have an opportunity to absorb the Report and great public interest would be aroused. Benefit would, in Remington’s view, accrue to the Government, since ‘By allowing some time to elapse before announcing the Government’s policy you would be in a position to temper what the people should have with what they desired.206

The Premier’s Private Secretary, assured Remington that his communication had been placed specially before Mr Stevens and then, two days later, no doubt after further prompting by Remington, responded that ‘appropriate action has been taken in regard to the suggestion you were good enough to make’.207 Not easily reassured,

Remington sent a copy of the Executive Report to the last meeting of the FLM

Council and the text of the Council’s resolution about the deputation to wait on the

Premier to 26 local newspaper editors in 24 different towns.208

The tactic worked. Less than a week later, Remington was advised that the Minister wanted to meet Libraries Advisory Committee members ‘in order that he might thank

206 Remington to Premier Stevens, 14 December 1938, FLM correspondence files 4M./Members of Parliament - correspondence]

207 L.J. Rose, Premier’s Private Secretary to Remington, 14 December and 16 December 1938 FLM correspondence files 4M./Members of Parliament – correspondence. 208 The towns were Kyogle, Albury, Bourke, Uralla, Muswellbrook, Bowral, Glen Innes, Singleton, Wollongong, Ballina, Inverell, Goulburn, Forbes, Wagga Wagga, Bathurst (National Advocate and The Western Times), Orange, Murwillumbah, Maitland, Newcastle (The Sun and Newcastle Morning Herald & Miners Advocate), Tamworth, Lismore, Grafton, and Casino. FLM correspondence files 3M/Newspapers – correspondence to].

148 them for the very excellent report’.209 All mention of the deputation to the Premier had disappeared, although the projected meeting with the Minister did not take place until the end of January 1939.

On the same day of the Minister’s invitation, Remington wrote in elation to Russell at

Carnegie and to Tate at ACER. To Russell he reported that Metcalfe was sending the

LAC Report and rejoicing that ‘It has been extremely well received by the press’.210

Since the Report had yet to be printed, how Metcalfe was to send it is not explained.

The reference to press coverage must have been to the press notices received in response to Remington’s wide distribution of the FLM November Council report and the appointment of the deputation which was to have waited on the Premier.

Disclosure of the Report’s existence was made in the Sydney Morning Herald on 19

December.211 M.C. Cadogan, a Vice President of the Movement, referred to the item in a letter of praise for Remington for his having carried the Movement on his shoulders thus far.212

Remington told Tate that he had contacted every town and shire council in New South

Wales immediately on news of the release of the LAC Report. They were then bidden to let Minister Drummond know how many copies of the Report they required.213 At the beginning of January 1939, Drummond acknowledged Remington’s requests and told him that the Government Printer was to print more and was ‘to keep the type

209 Drummond’s Secretary to GCR, 22 December 1938, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature 210 Remington to Russell, 22 December 1938, FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 211 ‘Plan of free libraries, State system, Advisory Committee’s report. SMH 19 December 1938, p.11. 212 Cadogan to Remington, 20 December 1938, FLM correspondence files No.2 file,Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc. 213 Remington to Tate, 22 December 1938, FLM correspondence files, no.1 file, Letters from E.3. 2A/Miscellaneous.

149 standing to meet any further requests’.214 Remington kept the requests pouring in –

12 to Glen Innes, 9 to Scone and 6 to Gerringong. Drummond assured Remington that each local government body would get a copy of the Report though he remarked that ‘The Department is being inundated with such requests from all parts of New

South Wales, not only from local governing bodies, but from other public bodies also’.215

At the end of January 1939, Drummond called the meeting mooted earlier when he invited members of the Libraries Advisory Committee to meet him. Cabinet met on

18 February 1939 and adopted the Libraries Advisory Committee Report and draft

Bill in principle, and agreed to the establishment of a Library School at the Public

Library. The Libraries Advisory Committee Report was printed and distribution began immediately.216 Remington’s frantic activity continued to get the Report distributed to all interested parties, and to promote interest in any not yet conscious of their need for public libraries. As well as requesting that copies of the Report be sent to various places, Remington asked Drummond for 500 copies for the FLM, a request swiftly put into perspective by the Minister’s secretary who offered ‘a limited supply’ when copies are available.217 The Movement’s ‘Report on activities since last

Executive Meeting on 9/12/38’ records despatch of more than 2,000 communications.218

214 Drummond to Remington 3 January 1939; Remington to Drummond, 10 and 13 January 1939 FLM correspondence files, 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature 215 Drummond to Remington 16 January 1939, FLM correspondence files 3D. Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature. 216 Jones, 1993, pp.304-305. 217 Remington to Drummond, 30 December 1938; Minister’s Secretary to Remington, 5 January 1939, FLM correspondence files 3D./Dept of Education Correspondence & Literature 218 864 communications, including 311 packages to Town and Shire Clerks sent with the Executive Report to Council with letters asking them to communicate with Drummond re the LAC, and there were letters to FLM branches with the same message. Listed also are letters about the LAC Report, 24 were to NSW Apex Clubs, 50 overseas and 13 interstate and 53 reminder letters to Town and Shire

150

Members of the Libraries Advisory Committee may well have taken heart from the

Minister’s foreword to the published version of their Report. As well as his unstinting praise for them and ‘this fine report’, he wrote not only that the proposed bill had been approved in principle by Cabinet, but also that the necessary legislation should be passed in the current year, and that ‘the scheme’ would commence operation on 1

January, 1940. In addition to this, Cabinet had approved ‘the immediate formation of a library School for the training of librarians in order that as little delay as possible will take place where Councils are in a position to adopt the scheme’.219 The

Minister also embraced as a new principle in library administration State and Local

Government financial co-operation in the establishment and maintenance of libraries.220

The mood of satisfaction of the office-holders in the Movement and no doubt of

Remington, its chairman, is obvious in the Report of the Executive to be presented /to the Council of the Free Library Movement/ at its meeting to be held on Wednesday,

29th /March 1939. This well written and clever report on a successful campaign could serve as an excellent potted history of the FLM to that date.221

Local Government Minister Spooner tried to cut across Drummond’s bows by playing on the misgivings of the local government community about some of the provisions of

Clerks. At the end of the document are listed ‘Shires, councils, organizations who have communicated with the Minister for Education for copies of the LAC report: 11 shires; 45 municipal Councils; Broken Hill Municipal Library; 5 branches of FLM; 3 associations; E.M. Robson (Vaucluse) Total: 1793 FLM correspondence files, No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F, FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc. 219 Ifould and Metcalfe had lost no time in recruiting students for the Library School and they were welcomed at the fourth Annual General Meeting of the FLM in April 1939. 220Report of the Libraries Advisory Committee [foreword] p.[iii] 221 FLM correspondence files, Folder: Notices & apologies re meetings.

151 the proposed Library Bill. He told the Institute of Public Administration in a speech in June that Parliament was not likely to agree that library services could be an activity of the Education Department instead of his Local Government Department.

This dismayed some members of the Institute who, like Remington, were also active in the Free Library Movement and Remington conveyed their concern to

Drummond.222 He was assured that transfer of control of libraries from Education would be a matter for Cabinet decision and that he would be told of it as soon as possible. Drummond added acknowledgement that he fully recognized ‘the importance of such decisions to the Free Library Movement which has rendered such yeoman service in educating public opinion to the necessity of Free Libraries in New

South Wales’.223

Ever vigilant for obstacles in the path of legislation for public libraries, Remington entered into negotiation with Local Government Association representatives. As throughout the campaign, however, team work was important. Ifould was very active among fellow senior public servants with ideas for face-saving devices and obfuscations in the best traditions of the most able bureaucrats. The Spooner threat disappeared when he resigned from the Stevens Ministry in July. Then in August

Stevens himself resigned and Alexander Mair became Premier.224 Ifould also seems to have been the decisive influence in getting the Library Bill patched up for submission.225 However, the times for its consideration by State Parliament could hardly have been less propitious.

222 Remington to Drummond, 26 June 1939, TLS, SLNSW archives box. Libraries Advisory Committee (contd). 223 Drummond to Remington, 29 June 1939, FLM correspondence files, SLNSW archives box Libraries Advisory Committee (contd) 224 Jones, 1993, p.315 225Jones, 1993, p.321

152

Germany annexed Austria in March 1938 and invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and France and Britain pledged to defend Poland. In May the German and Italian alliance was concluded, and in August the Russians signed a non-aggression pact with

Germany. In Australia defence spending had been increased, contingency plans were being developed to put industry on a war footing, a national register for military service had been established, and evacuation and air-raid precautions were being devised.226

The New South Wales Government was unstable and Ifould had previously found

Mair, now Premier, nervous about the Library Bill, though Drummond remained

Minister for Education and committed to the cause of libraries. Preparation of the

Library Bill was not abandoned.227 Even after Australia’s declaration of war with

Germany by Prime Minister Menzies on 3 September 1939, the Library Bill remained in the lists. The Free Library Movement took Ifould’s advice at the September meeting of the Executive to carry on, pending announcement of the Government’s intentions, even though there was little confidence that Drummond would even be allowed to introduce the Bill.228

The blow fell on 27 September when Cabinet resolved to defer it. The news was conveyed to Remington only three or four days before Parliament was due to rise.

Ifould and Remington immediately began lobbying. At first, the complete public servant, Ifould offered the Minister a way out with advice that he stick to the library

226 Jones ,1993, p.321 227 Jones, 1993 p.315 228 Ifould, Memorandum, 22 September 1939, TD, SLNSW archives box ‘Libraries Advisory Committee (contd)’ cited in Jones,1993, p.326.

153 Bill and press Cabinet to go on with it, even if he had to defer the Government subsidy until a date to be fixed. Then, not at all discreetly, Ifould continued:

If the Government drops the Library Bill at this stage every important metropolitan newspaper will hammer it as showing no courage or leadership. I will give the newspapers all the pabulum they require for such a campaign. I must, of course, first resign from the service.229

Despite the obstacles, local and international, Remington seems to have remained characteristically optimistic though surely not quite candid when he wrote to

Drummond on 6 October 1939 that he was ‘somewhat dismayed’ that the Government did not intend to introduce the Library Bill that year.230

By his own account on audiotape,231 Remington recalls that he burst in upon Premier

Mair, who said that Drummond was adamant that the Library Bill should not go to

Cabinet. Cabinet consideration was of course necessary before a bill’s introduction for debate in the Parliament. Mair claimed not only Drummond’s opposition but also that of the Labor Party, the New Staters, and the Taxpayers Association. Mair then remarked to Remington: ‘You seem to be extremely upset. Do you enjoy good health?’ Remington asserts that he replied: ‘I did up to this morning. I don’t like my friends double-crossing me’.

According to Remington, he went first to William (Billy) McKell, then Leader of the

Opposition Labor Party, who assured him that ‘The Labor Party has never opposed an educational bill yet and is not likely to start now particularly with libraries’. There is

229 Ifould to Drummond, 6 October 1939, TL SLNSW archives box ‘Libraries Advisory Committee (contd)’ 230 Remington to Drummond, 6 October 1939, FLM correspondence files, 3D. 231 Remington, G.C. Interview. Audiotape recorded by Remington on 18 July 1964 Mitchell Library CY MLOH S46/5.

154 also on file a copy of a note from Remington to McKell dated 24 October reminding him of ‘our luncheon engagement tomorrow’. This meeting may well have been a follow-up to Remington’s initial contact with him.

When Remington lobbied John Menzies White, head of the Taxpayers Association, he was told that he was asking a good deal in seeking their support for a bill which would bring extra taxes. Yet he assured Remington that his own and the community’s support for libraries generally persuaded him, and that he had put his support in writing for the Premier. Evidence on file confirms White’s assurance ‘that the

Taxpayers association will take a broad view of the responsible expenditure of public monies on a purpose socially so desirable’’. Press coverage continued to be very important, as evidenced in White’s statement that ‘The special leader appearing in today’s Telegraph sets out a reasonable approach to the Question of funding such a movement’.232 Remington’s recourse to the editors of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph and their editorial support paid off.233 The effectiveness of the

Daily Telegraph publicity is obvious in White’s letter quoted above.

Armed with the results of his lobbying, Remington claims that he confronted Mair again and, despite Remington’s again losing his temper, Mair telephoned Drummond for his agreement. He told Remington that the Library Bill would be restored to the

Cabinet agenda.

232 J.M. White to Remington, 9 October 1939, Remington Papers: Personal correspondence: Uncat. MSS set 808, Box 9. Remington may have deemed impolitic any reply to White’s invitation dated 13 October to an informal meeting to ‘launch a public campaign’ to implement ‘a growing and insistent public demand for abolition of State parliaments’. 233Remington to Gratten, ‘Most of the newspapers were most helpful with their support. Brian Penton wrote a very effective short editorial comment in the Telegraph at the psychological moment, prior to the Cabinets [sic] reconsidering as to whether it would introduce the Library Act before Parliament rose..4 November 1939 FLM correspondence files

155 This was not the end of the saga. According to Remington, a few hours later the

Parliamentary Draughtsman telephoned to say that he had a considerable amount of work to do before he could issue a certificate so that the Bill could be read in

Parliament for a first time. He had therefore concluded that the Bill would not be presented in that session. At this point the accuracy of Remington’s account has to be called into question as he claims that he rejected the idea that the Bill should be sent to committee. Yet he wrote to Sir Herbert Gepp on 23 October that ‘the Library

Bill is now in the committee stage in the House’. Remington reports that his next move was to persuade his friend, Sir Henry Manning, the head of the Government in the Legislative Council, to have the Standing Orders set aside and the Bill dealt with as a matter of emergency. Remington asserts that he then persuaded the Government

Whip in the Lower House to treat the Bill as a matter of urgency. But this prerogative is that of the Leader of the House, not the Whip.

It was probable, however, that it was the final rush to push the Bill through that impressed itself on Remington’s memory and that his influence in having the Act passed was not exactly as his tape-recorded reminiscence portrays. At the same time, his record of the events surrounding achievement of the Library Act is a compelling account in that it shows his passion about the issue and his pride in his role in it.234

The Library Act was passed in the early hours of 3 November 1939 and proclaimed in the New South Wales Government Gazette on 22 December. Proclamation of its financial and other provisions was deferred, and did not take place until 1944.

234 Remington, G.C. Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 5 Side A.

156 On the day after the Library Act was passed, Remington wrote to Hartley Grattan in

New York City sending him copies as well as the debates in Hansard and other press reports. He assured Grattan that ‘I had quite a lot of personal fun in the last stages of getting the Library Act through. I found myself the complete lobbyist’. 235

The fact that the Act’s financial and other provisions did not come immediately into force was disappointing to its champions, but given the times the passing of the Act was remarkable. The State Government’s release of the Libraries Advisory

Committee Report represented ‘the peak of the Free Library Movement’s success to that point’, according to one of its Vice Presidents.236 Passing of the Library Act of

New South Wales 1939 was clearly the pinnacle of its achievement. From then, the

Movement like nearly all Australian activities unconnected with World War II. went into abeyance.

235Remington to C. Hartley Grattan, 4 November 1939 FLM correspondence files, G Miscellaneous. 236 Cadogan to Remington, 20 December 1938, FLM correspondence files No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc.

157 Chapter 5

Authority, Collegiality, and Effrontery: Remington’s Relationships with the Carnegie

Corporation of New York, the Australian Council Council for Educational Research

and the Library Group

Dealing with authority

Remington’s dealings with people and organizations in authority were always complex. On the one hand, he was much given to praise to the point of flattery of those whom he wanted to encourage or cultivate. On the other, he was also prone to issue instructions to those over whom he had no formal authority, regardless of their rank on the social and political scale and whether their importance was local, national or international. His attitudes towards people to whom he did and did not cede authority can be examined in his relationships with the three organizations most important in his quest for public libraries. They were the Carnegie Corporation of

New York, the Australian Council for Educational Research and the Library Group, formed by ACER to oversee distribution of Carnegie money to the Australian States.

Testimony about Remington’s relationship with those with equal or less authority than himself is mixed. He inspired great loyalty among his legal partners. The women who worked as secretaries in his practice and in the Free Library Movement office appeared happy in his service. The father of one of them thanked him for the ‘good job’ given to his daughter and reported that ‘She rates you easily No.1 boss, even though, according to her, you were occasionally “in a bugger of a mood.”’1 Some of

1 Roger Martin to Remington, 13 March 1940, Remington Papers ML MS808, Box 9.

158 the women librarians in the Public Library of New South Wales recalled him as well- mannered and charming, though they detected condescension in his attitude to them.

This feeling was expressed in its most extreme form, as having seen his presence among them as ‘slumming’. The prickles about condescension may have come from the quite hard depression lives of several of these women, whose earnings were important for their families while they strived for higher education in evening classes.2 Their intelligence might also have possibly made them aware of their lack of sophistication in social settings. They may simply have felt not up to Remington’s urbanity. One of the librarians whose family was solidly middle class, and who was a great admirer of Ifould for whom she had first worked as a secretary, described

Remington in an interview as ‘terribly autocratic’. Her family were their neighbours for some years and she described the Remingtons as ‘terrible snobs’.3

Remington in his dealings with sources of authority sometimes played the role of respectful servant and sometimes attempted to play the exacting taskmaster.

Nowhere is this dichotomy more obvious than in Remington’s dealings with the

Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) and the Australian Council for

Educational Research (ACER). His relationship with the Library Group comes into a different category. ACER, in the person of Frank Tate and after consultation with

Carnegie Corporation President Keppel, invited State librarians of New South Wales,

Victoria and South Australia, and the Librarian of the Commonwealth National

Library to form the Library Group. Their role was, under Tate’s chairmanship, to allocate any Carnegie funds made available to Australian libraries. Remington was

2 Pursuit of University degrees by evening classes was not limited to the women, John Metcalfe and Gordon Richardson also earned Bachelor of Arts degrees at the University of Sydney at evening classes. 3 Dulcie Penfold, Interview with C. Maguire, 9 November 2000.

159 very content in his direct communications with the Corporation and did not mean to allow the Library Group to become a stumbling block in that relationship.

Even before his involvement in the cause of public libraries, someone with

Remington’s interests and education could hardly have been unaware of Andrew

Carnegie’s life and legacies. How aware Remington was of the ACER is moot, though he must have surely read news reports of the Carnegie Corporation of New

York’s gift by which it had been set up in 1930. Remington certainly heard Mr

Justice Ferguson’s address on Andrew Carnegie at the general meeting of the Free

Library Movement in November 1935. In the minutes of that meeting, Professor

Tasman Lovell, who was Vice President of ACER, is noted as having suggested an application for a Carnegie Grant.

The Library Group, formed in 1935 under the auspices of the ACER, has been mentioned in Chapter 4 above. The members were Ifould, Principal Librarian of the

Public Library of New South Wales, and the chief librarians of the Commonwealth

National Library (Kenneth Binns), the Public Library of Victoria (E.R. Pitt), the

Public Library of South Australia (H.R. Purnell), or their deputies. The Group’s purpose was to advise the Carnegie Corporation through ACER on distribution of grants designed to promote library services. Tate was chairman of the Group and

Cunningham, executive officer of ACER, its secretary. When Tate died in 1939

Lovell took over as president and Cunningham was designated director and assumed responsibility for the Group. Its early work was concerned mainly with nomination of suitable candidates for Carnegie travel grants.

160 Remington’s first contact with CCNY is not recorded but it could hardly have matched the excitement of his first meeting with Frank Tate at ACER, already described in Chapter 4 above. Indeed the purpose of Remington’s presence at ACER was to support Norman Cowper in seeking Tate’s favourable endorsement of an application for a Carnegie grant for the fledgling Australian Institute of Political

Science. The result was a failure. Carnegie Corporation President Keppel later advised Cowper that he was unwilling to send on the AIPS proposal to his Board.4

However unsuccessful that meeting was in achieving its primary purpose, it proved momentous in its effect on Remington’s career. It was there, as described in the previous chapter, that he ‘caught the fever’ for libraries, in the phrase of one of the several visitors to the United States for whom he obtained Carnegie study tours.5

From March 1936, the beginning of Remington’s active participation in the FLM, his contacts with both Carnegie and ACER quickly gained pace. A year later

Remington had admitted to John M. Russell, Assistant to Carnegie President Keppel, that ‘Mr Ifould tells me it would be sufficient if I wrote to you once a month’. This apparent deference to Ifould’s opinion was quickly superseded by the mocking tone which became characteristic of his dealings with the Corporation, and might have already been established from first contact. In a passage already quoted in Chapter 4, he pointed out that some of the blame for all the letters lay with the Corporation since they brought Munn to Australia and published his survey, which caused the Free

Library Movement. 6

4 Keppel to Cowper, 6 January 1936, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 5 Bell to Remington, 3 July 1937, FLM correspondence files, 2B/Miscellaneous correspondence.. 6 Remington to Russell, 12 February 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

161 Development of the Carnegie relationship

The marks of Remington’s interaction with the Corporation were established early and persisted. Most obvious are the frequency and detail of his correspondence and the relative paucity of the Corporation’s replies. On the other hand, all their responses were marked by unfailing courtesy and forbearance despite Remington’s importunities, including his refusal to take no for an answer about where decisions about grants to Australia for library purposes were to be made. Early in Remington’s relationship with the Corporation, he provided Russell with ‘a little history’ of the

FLM which ran to seven pages of single-spaced typing on quarto paper. In it he sought to make clear to Russell his operating independence. He explained that he had only accepted office on the proviso that ‘I had an absolutely free hand in naming the persons to be invited to become the first office bearers of the Movement.7

Two days later, he wrote four pages of detail to Russell along with a brief biographical note:

It may interest you to know who I am. I am 39 years of age, Australian born, a practicing solicitor. I commenced practice in 1924, and have two partners, seem incapable of minding my own business. Am a director of the Australian Institute of Political Science, President elect of the Constitutional Association of New south Wales, organised and am on the Council of the Institute of Public Administration New South Wales Regional Group. I am very proud of my connection with the last named group as I am the only person not a public servant who has so far been deemed eligible to serve on this body.8

While keen that the Corporation should be aware of his confidence in his pedigree, his claims to fame were leavened by the reference to his inability to mind his own business, a piece of whimsical self-mockery designed to please. At other times in the

7 Remington to Russell, 16 February 1937, FLM Correspondence, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 8 Remington to Russell, 18 February 1937, FLM Correspondence, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New

162 correspondence with Carnegie, Remington’s tone verged on the hectoring but was usually redeemed by a mocking refusal to take either himself or events too seriously.

For example, in telling Russell of reactions among the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales to the election of his candidate, H.V. Evatt, as President,

Remington reported: ‘I have managed to become nearly wrecked in a storm in a tea cup’.9 But the enormous volume and persistence of his correspondence might almost at times been regarded as harassment. No details and no documentation were spared in Remington’s reports to the Carnegie Corporation. The letters and packages of newspapers which he sent to their New York office must have reached mountainous proportions during the Free Library Movement campaign.10 The Corporation made no effort to respond to every letter; but while replies were not frequent, they were always friendly and polite. Remington was asked several times not to forget that decisions regarding details would be reached in Australia, not New York. Russell’s letter to him in April 1937 pointed this out while at the same time assuring him that

‘We are still amazed at the cordial reception Australia gave Mr Munn, and his report’.11 Remington continued to seek reassurance from Russell that slowness of progress in New South Wales was not of concern to the Corporation. He confided his hope for rapid progress there once ‘we get our legislation’.12

York. Includes a long list of items being sent by newspaper post and packet post. 9 Remington to Russell 6 July 1937,pp.2-3, FLM Correspondence, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 10 In 1937, Remington wrote to Russell 22 times. The volume of letters lessened in 1938 with six to Russell and four to Keppel Dates of Remington’s letters to Russell were: 1937, 12/2, 16/2, 18/2, 4/3, 12/3,19/3, 20/3,1/4, 6/4, 9/4,16/4, 30/4, 11/5,15/6, 5/7, 2/8, 24/8, 26/8, 26/9, 29/9, 26/10, 19/10; 1938 , 23/6. 20/7, 19/10, 9/11, 22/12 and ‘Christmas 1938’ plus his letters to Keppel 2/3, 1/9, 18/10. and ‘Christmas 1938’ FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.. 11 Russell to Remington, 1 April 1937, FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 12 Remington to Russell, 2 August 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

163 In contrast to his stated deference to Carnegie opinion, Remington worked hard to mould their decisions and strategies. Thus he broached independent initiatives to them, without consultation of any prerogative other than his own. In September 1937 he proposed to Russell that two librarians who had ‘considerable experience in library organisation work’ could be sent on loan to Australia. As afterthought, he added that

‘I will discuss the idea with the Minister for Education and Mr W. H. Ifould and see if they will approach you officially.13

Three weeks later, lacking a reply from Carnegie, Remington had in hand a letter from Drummond, the New South Wales Minister for Education, approving his idea, and intimating that the necessary funds could come from the New South Wales

Government.14 This letter was remarkable in revealing Drummond’s willingness to use as go-between with a foreign corporation someone who was not a public servant and therefore not constrained with ties of loyalty or confidentiality to the State or the

Government. The Corporation was in no hurry to respond to the copy of the

Minister’s letter sent to them by Remington. Russell’s reply was not sent until nearly three months had elapsed and in it the decision-making authority of both the ACER and the Library Group was again plainly stated. Remington was advised to take the matter up with Frank Tate and the Library Group.15 With characteristic persistence,

Remington did not let the matter drop. He continued to reassure Carnegie that he had the Minister’s support even though he acknowledged Ifould’s lack of approval.16 In mid 1938 he again sought to bring pressure on Keppel for ‘the appointment of at least

13 Remington to Russell, 29 September 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C./Carnegie Corporation of New York 14D.H. Drummond. to Remington, 13 October 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C./Carnegie Corporation of New York 15 Russell to Remington, 20 January 1938, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 16Remington to Russell 2 March 1938, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York]

164 two library organisers to assist in the more practical work of library development here’. 17

Russell visited Sydney in August 1938. Remington achieved the interview with him but its content is difficult to establish. According to the notes Remington compiled before the interview, he planned to advise Russell, first, that no further grant should be made before New South Wales Government policy had been announced, and that the Public Library of New South Wales should not be made pre-eminent. If caution prevailed, Remington might have left out advice which smacks of an attempt to tell the Corporation how to do its job, for example advice that visiting experts were not to be treated as the ‘sole and final authority on any subject’. 18

Remington reported to Keppel on his interview with Russell in a letter not only remarkable in its length but also in its author’s confidence in his authority to set the ground rules for Carnegie. The Carnegie President is told ‘The time has come for action in the matter of selecting our Library organisers’. There is no acknowledgement in this letter, nor is there elsewhere in the correspondence any source of Remington’s warrant to take Carnegie support of the library organizer idea for granted. With full confidence, he made clear his preferences for the nationality

(American, ‘no Englishmen’), gender, age, appearance, personality and attitudes of the man who should be chosen to be library organizer in New South Wales ‘as soon as

17 Remington to Keppel, 23 June 1938, FLM correspondence files 5C./Carnegie Corporation of New York 18 ‘Notes for interview with John M. Russell of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 15/8/38’. 5 p. double-spaced foolscap typescript. Note on back of page 5: Retouched Notes for Interview by G.C. Remington with John M. Russell of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’ FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

165 the Act is passed’19. Naïveté is not a mark of any of Remington’s dealings.

Presumably then, there was for him no contradiction between his advice to Keppel that all Australian states should be treated equally with his confident assertion that

New South Wales would undoubtedly be the first State to develop library services.

He also pressed upon Carnegie the idea that the State’s development should not proceed ‘in fits and starts’.

In contrast to Remington’s bombast, Keppel’s response six weeks later was a model of diplomacy which did not lack warmth but which again put the emphasis on decisions about Australia being made here. The Corporation expressed appreciation of Remington’s predictions as to future developments but, in modest contrast to his strong views about the nationality of experts, Keppel remarked ‘Our own experience has proved that our judgment is not infallible’. 20

Remington’s aversion to Englishmen as the organizers he so badly wanted Carnegie to supply may well have been influenced by his brief encounter with the Carnegie

United Kingdom Trust (CUKT). The Secretary of the CUKT, J.M. Mitchell, had acknowledged and pointed out the ‘errors’ in the Movement’s ‘Free Public Libraries’ statement and in particular in the use of the word ‘free’.21 Remington’s reply explained that ‘free’ had to be used not ‘public’ in order to avoid confusion with the

Public Library of New South Wales. He assured Mitchell that ‘The title of the

19 Remington to Keppel, 1 September 1938 FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York

20 Keppel to Remington, 17 October 1938 FLM correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York

21 J.M. Mitchell, Secretary, CUKT (Dunfermline, Fife) to Brain, 28 April 1937, FLM correspondence,5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

166 Movement and the declaration of it’s [sic] objects to include the adjective “free” were only adopted after considerable discussion with Mr W.H. Ifould, the Principal

Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales, and his assistant, Mr J.W.

Metcalfe’.22 In the same period, Frank Bell, deputy Sydney City Librarian on his

CCNY-sponsored study tour, reported to Remington on the coldness with which he had been received on his visit to ‘Colonel Mitchell, the Director of the Carnegie

United Kingdom Trust’. No doubt this information confirmed Remington’s opinion of Mitchell as a Colonel Blimp.23

Bell was only one of the Australians for whom Remington worked to obtain Carnegie visitors’ grants, and others for whom he arranged Carnegie hospitality when they were visiting New York in other capacities. Several notables were recommended for

Carnegie help during their stay in New York, including H.V. Evatt, High Court Judge and a Vice President of the FLM, and New South Wales Government ministers,

Drummond and Bruxner. At the same time that they were pursued for their contributions to FLM publishing, the Carnegie visitors for the New Education

Fellowship meetings were also offered Remington’s help and hospitality. Hartley

Grattan came to Australia as a Carnegie Scholar, and Remington rated his publication for the FLM as ‘the most effective of all our publications’.24 Remington constantly made smooth his path in Australia and seemed to regard him as a part of the family.25

Remington constantly recommended his activities to the Corporation. His New York sponsors were given no hint of the waves caused some of his public lectures. When he spoke his mind in his journalism lecture in Melbourne, as he was apt to do, at least

22 Remington to Mitchell, 7 June 1937, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of NY 23Bell to Remington, 11 August 1937, FLM Correspondence 2B/ Miscellaneous correspondence 24 Remington to Grattan, 15 August 1938, Remington papers ML MS808, Box 9. C. Hartley Grattan, Libraries: a necessity for democracy. Sydney: Free Library Movement, 1938. 25 As well as ensuring with the Tax Office that Grattan’s earnings in Australia were tax free, Remington also arranged purchase of an opal bracelet for him to give to his girlfriend, Eleanor.

167 one of his audiences perceived him as positively dangerous.26 Grattan acknowledged

Remington’s as the only enduring friendship which he made in Australia.27

Despite his frequent advice to Carnegie on the decisions they should make about

Australian library matters, Remington was always quick to avoid any suspicion that he may have been trying to undermine Tate’s authority. In an early letter, he assured

Russell that ‘I am not for one moment seeking to ignore Mr. Tate or the Library

Group’. Remington’s admiration for Tate was undoubted; whether he sought to ignore the Library Group will be probed in the fourth section of this chapter. In relation to the frequency and detail of his reports to Carnegie, he was at the beginning and remained quite unrepentant. He told Russell that he knew that Tate and the

Library Group sent reports but he felt that ‘some of the colour and action of our work may be lost in their formal and necessarily reserved reports’. Thus he was using and would continue to use ‘this irresponsible method of keeping you informed direct as to the facts’.28

As well as the friendly and even indulgent tone in the Corporation’s correspondence, there is other evidence of their continuing regard for Remington. Eoin Wilkinson was the holder of a small Carnegie travel grant who, after his studies for a Master of

Library Science at the University of Chicago, made a courtesy call on the Carnegie offices in New York at Christmas time in 1958 or 1959. Senior staff mentioned

26 ‘The journalism lecture went off with a bang that is still reverberating. Sir Edward Cunningham, ex Argus editor was told off to second the vote of thanks and did so by delivering an attack on me in most emotional terms. The old boy actually shook with indignation. I planted a club on his cranium by way of reply and that didn’t improve matters. I am told he is going about muttering even yet’. Grattan to Remington, 14 October 1937, Remington Papers, ML MS808 Box 9. 27 Grattan to Remington, 6 September 1938, Remington Papers, ML MS808 Box 9. 28 Remington to Russell, 16 February 1937 FLM Correspondence 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York

168 receipt of a Christmas package which was a wastepaper basket, delivered from

Macy’s with a note from Remington, ‘For half the missives that I send you, Geoff

Remington’. Wilkinson commented: ‘The Carnegie people were very amused and obviously held him in very high regard’.29

ACER: steady hands on the wheel

In contrast to Remington’s dealings with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, his relationship with Frank Tate and K.S. Cunningham at the Australian Council for

Educational Research was not only less deferential, it was sometimes autocratic and occasionally tinged with bullying. Tate and Cunningham were both in their separate ways equal to it.

Mention has been made already of Remington’s instant rapport with Tate established at their first meeting at the end of 1935. They frequently exchanged letters and met personally from then to Tate’s death at the end of June 1939. The formality of their terms of address to each other was no doubt typical of the conventions of the time rather than lack of warmth in their regard for each other. First names were never used; their letters were addressed to ‘Dear Mr Tate’ and ‘Dear Mr Remington’. The only exception seems to be Tate’s ‘My dear Remington’ on 18 May 1937 when he applauded Remington’s appointment as a Trustee of the Public Library of New South

Wales.30 After telling Tate that Drummond’s place was inferior to Bruxner’s in the pecking order among ministers in the New South Wales Government, Remington

29 Eoin Wilkinson, telephone conversation with Carmel Maguire, 23 March 2004. Private communication. Wilkinson was for several years Librarian of Macquarie University 30 Tate to Remington, 18 May 1937, FLM Correspondence files, no.1 file/letters from A.1 to E3/2A/Miscellaneous

169 remarked that ‘You should know just how confidential you should treat my hopes and dreams as set out in my letters to you. 31

While the syntax is a little astray, the meaning could be read not as a sign of any lack of faith in Tate’s discretion but as a reinforcement of Remington’s trust in him.

There was also a little playfulness in their relationship. In acknowledging the return to him of a misdirected letter to G.W. Brain which was meant for one of Tate’s

Melbourne friends, Hugh Brain, Tate quipped that ‘You will be glad to know that all the Brains in the Movement are not in the New South Wales Branch’.32

Both Tate and Cunningham were well aware of Remington’s impatience. Early in the relationship, he complained to Tate in a letter marked ‘Personal and confidential’:

I would be very grateful if you could get Mr Cunningham to answer my letters to him. I have written seven letters to him and have only had two replies. My last letter to him of January 25 [three weeks earlier] still remains unanswered.33

Remington went on to say that he appreciated how ‘exceedingly busy’ they both were in arranging the New Education Conference which was held in several cities. In fact the responsibility for arrangements had fallen to Cunningham. Remington sent him what was at once an apology and an exculpation of his own impatience:

Mr Ifould will tell you that I am quite an impossible person at least as far as correspondence is concerned and that I am given to writing letters in all directions and then expect immediate replies. I do appreciate how busy you and Mr Tate are on other urgent matters.34

31 Remington to Tate, 8 April 1937, FLM Correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters A.1-E.3/2A Miscellaneous 32 Tate to Remington, 19 April 1937, FLM Correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters A.1-E.3/2A Miscellaneous 33 Remington to Tate, 17 February 1937, FLM Correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters A.1-E.3/2A Miscellaneous 34 Remington to Cunningham, 24 February 1937, FLM Correspondence files, no.1 file/Letters from A.1 to E.3/2A/miscellansous.

170 Tate was always generous to the Free Library Movement in New South Wales and to its fledgling counterparts in other States. He responded readily to Remington’s pleas for funds, whether giving them directly from the Carnegie funds ACER administered or through the medium of the Library Group, of which of course Tate was chairman.

Remington’s pleas for help were never ignored. Sometimes they were stark, as in mid 1937 when Remington wrote ‘Dear Mr Tate, We’re broke. . . ₤50 would preserve our existence – We have about ₤29 in hand and owe ₤67. . .’35 A year later, a warning to Cunningham that ‘our funds are running very low’ was apparently not effective36. Remington then explained to Tate that ‘at the moment we cannot pay our bills’ and asked for and received ₤100.37 Tate had also responded promptly to

Remington’s request for an advance from the Carnegie moneys for the Queensland

Free Library Movement.38

Both Tate and Cunningham were also ready to take up and broaden the impact of some of Remington’s publicity initiatives. When told that they thought Hartley

Grattan’s article particularly good, Remington responded with 500 copies of it and 50 copies of the Norman Lindsay drawing in TheBulletin in August 1938.39 The cartoon gives a good impression of the stir which the FLM had caused. A female figure with flowing hair and ample proportions holds aloft a flaming torch with ‘Literature’ written on its flame, while four little devil figures are slinking away. One is labelled

35 Remington to Tate, 5 June 1937, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 36 Remington to Cunningham, 11 October 1938, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 37 Remington to Tate, 20 October 1938, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 38 Remington to Tate, 5 July 1937, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 39 Cunningham to Remington, 16 September,1938: Remington to Cunningham 22 September,1938, FLM correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous; Norman Lindsay, ‘The light that never fails’, The Bulletin, 31 August 1938.

171 ‘smut’, another ‘lottery’, another ‘astrology’, and the fourth bears the stamp ‘S P’ on his forehead. ‘S P’ referred to Starting Price betting which was illegal though popular with ordinary working class people. The caption reads ‘The light that never fails’, and continues beneath ‘Australians look down on the people of the South American

Republics, but their libraries put ours to shame. A country without free libraries is a backward country.’40 Tate was also quick to accede to requests for Remington’s inclusion in attempts to launch the Movement in other places and to provide his expenses. He assured Remington that he was happy at Ifould’s suggestion that

Remington be included in the launch of a Free Library Movement in Victoria and to spend four or five days there with personal expenses paid. Tate saw ‘no difficulty in this matter at all’. Remington does not seem to have fully taken into account Tate’s added information that ‘The position in Victoria is not an easy one for, unfortunately, we have a somewhat jejune body known as the Victorian Library Association, which occupies the field but does nothing in particular’.41 The majority of the Association was wedded to subscription libraries.

Remington had experienced some frustration in the failure to resolve the stand-off between the Newcastle City Council and the Advisory Committee on the Culture

Centre with the Newcastle School of Arts. But he did not fully appreciate the thwarted attempts at concerted action by libraries in States where the schools of arts and variously named subscription institutes were powerful. The Library Association of Victoria and the Institutes Association of South Australia contained elements inimical not only to free public libraries but even more so to the idea of a suitably educated profession of librarians. Armed with South Australian experience of the

40 Copy of cartoon is in Appendix 2. 41 Tate to Remington, 25 January 1937, FLM Correspondence, no.1 file,Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous

172 Institutes Association there, Ifould had inhibited the spread of the Australian Library

Association by refusing to join it. No doubt Metcalfe passed on to Remington some of his encounters with the proponents of the status quo in the institutes. In New

South Wales, however, apart from sparks from Newcastle which was one of the few with substantial funds and income from rental property, several schools of arts welcomed the incorporation of their libraries in the new public libraries. Tamworth was one example. The few who showed signs of fight, like Murwillumbah, did not persevere for long. Metcalfe later claimed:

As early as 1935 Remington used the phrase “plough round” with reference to the Schools of Arts in New South Wales; this became a corner stone of our policy and I had difficulty in even getting agreement to include in the Act a provision for taking Schools of Arts over. The idea was simply to ignore them.42

Tate no doubt welcomed Remington’s assistance on a personal level. More than that,

Remington was delivering a dividend from the Munn Pitt report, not only to Carnegie but also to ACER. At the same time, Tate’s patience must at times have been tried, even though he coped calmly though forcefully with Remington’s negative reaction to the launch of the Free Library Movement in Victoria, described in Chapter 4.

In his interactions with ACER, Remington dealt with personalities different from his own. His instant rapport with Tate could be accounted in part by the latter’s outgoing, energetic, generous, and risk-taking nature. He had served as an exemplary head of the Victorian State Department of Education for 26 years and in retirement from that post he had seized the challenge offered by leadership of the ACER and seemed to relish the extra freedom and responsibility in representing Carnegie in

Australia. President Keppel was impressed with him on their first contacts and the

42 Metcalfe to Cunningham,19 December 1960, ACER Archives, series 49, item 189

173 Corporation’s good opinion of him never wavered.43 Cunningham, distinguished soldier and scholar, has been described as ‘undemonstrative, cautious and diplomatic’.44 His more reserved nature might have preferred more formal and less free-wheeling attitudes from Remington.45 At the same time, Cunningham demonstrated his trust in Remington. After clearly setting out the understanding about letting the Library Group know before ordering printed material likely to be useful to other States, Cunningham added a manuscript note that ‘Victoria is also making some progress, particularly in the actual improvement of existing libraries, but I would be happier if our F L M were a little more pugnacious’.46 Such a spontaneous remark suggests that by this time Remington had broken through Cunningham’s reserve.

Whether either or both Tate and Cunningham had to make adjustments to cope with

Remington’s style, the debt was not all on the FLM’s side. Remington’s energy drove the Movement and the Movement brought public libraries to Australia’s notice and prevented the Munn-Pitt survey findings from disappearing from the public agenda. Such enhancement of the effect of Carnegie moneys on the advancement of public libraries, the cause which was after all Andrew Carnegie’s own first priority, could only have enhanced ACER’s standing with the Corporation.47 This is not to suggest that dealing with Remington was always easy. He had no idea of behaving like a subordinate in, or in relation to any group, and his relationships with the Library

Group bore this out.

43 Selleck, Richard J W. Frank Tate: a biography. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982.

44 Williams, B. ‘Cunningham, Kenneth Stewart (1890-1976)’ Australian Dictionary of Biography. vol.13 (1993): 544-545. 45 ibid 46 Cunningham to Remington 7 April 1938, FLM Correspondence files, No.1 file/letters from A.1 toE.3/2A/Miscellaneous 47 See Horrocks, The Carnegie Corporation of New York and its impact on library development in Australia. . .University of Pittsburgh, PhD, 1971.

174

The Library Group: collegial authority and State jealousies

The Library Group, consisting of the State librarians of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, and the Librarian of the Commonwealth National Library, with

Frank Tate as Chairman, was the body responsible to make recommendations in connection with library matters to the Corporation. Remington’s attitude to the

Library Group was established very early in the relationship, when he referred to them in correspondence with Russell at Carnegie as having been ‘unofficially appointed’.

He gave his source as Ifould and Metcalfe’s report to the Free Library Movement’s

October 1936 Council meeting. He then added the assurance that ‘In writing to you I am not for one moment seeking to ignore Mr Tate or the Library Group’. Subsequent events strongly suggest that Remington would have liked nothing better than to ignore the Library Group. The barb in his reference to the Group’s ‘unofficially appointed’ status, can hardly be justified since the Group’s foundation in 1935 must have been with Tate’s concurrence if not on his initiative. Remington had given to Russell justification for his direct contacts with the Corporation. His aim was to convey

‘some of the colour and action of our work’ which would possibly be lost in the

Group’s ‘formal and necessarily reserved reports’.48

Remington had had early warning from Cunningham that distribution of any Carnegie moneys received for library purposes would most likely be ‘at the disposal of our

Library Group for use in such directions as it thinks best’.49 The backing of the

Library Group was useful in establishing FLM’s credibility in its early days. Ifould

48 Remington to Russell, 16 February 1937. p.3. FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 49 Cunningham to Remington, 12 November 1936, FLM Correspondence files no.1 file Letters from A.1 to E.3 / 2A/miscellaneous

175 assured the Movement’s second annual meeting that the Library Group of ACER and

Carnegie had ‘every confidence in the personnel of the movement in New South

Wales’.50 Ifould however was not willing to endorse to the Library Group some of

Remington’s more independent initiatives. Russell, as was Carnegie standard practice, told Remington that his suggestion for borrowing an experienced librarian from abroad who was expert in the organization of libraries should be referred to the

Library Group. When Remington sought Ifould’s advice he was told to submit it by all means but, after careful consideration, Ifould thought it was impracticable and did not feel at that stage he should support his suggestions. Sensible of Ifould’s influence in the Group, Remington then told Russell that he would leave the matter in abeyance for the present.51 Six months later he renewed his request to Carnegie for a library organizer. Keppel’s reply reinforced both his trust in the Library Group and in

Remington’s right of direct access to the Corporation. Keppel’s advice was something of a two-way bet. He told Remington that ‘It will be surprising if the

Library Group is not willing to give serious consideration to any proposal from a single State, but in any case, you know that you can always approach the Corporation direct’.52

A year later major turbulence was caused in the Library Group by Remington’s propensity not only to approach Carnegie direct but to propose to them models for library development in which states other than New South Wales were not considered.

Cunningham reassured Remington in November 1938 that all the Group’s librarians

50 Free Library Movement, Minutes of 2nd Annual General Meeting, 18 March 1937. FLM Correspondence files, cover title: Minutes – General Meeting. [in third of three blue boxes] 51 Russell to Remington, 20 January 1938: Remington to Russell, 2 March 1938, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 52 Remington to Keppel, 1 September; Keppel to Remington, 17 October 1938, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

176 were ‘most appreciative of the work that the Free Library Movement is doing in New

South Wales’ and that the major outlay of funds having been so far spent there was also pioneering the cause of adequate library services in all States. But Cunningham added a cautionary note that the distribution of Carnegie funds to New South Wales could not continue if the Library Fund was to have a sufficient balance for providing any assistance at all in West Australia, Tasmania and Queensland when they developed really active movements.53 In reply Remington told Cunningham how

‘very heartening to us [it is] to have the support of the librarians who form the Library

Group’.54 He made no reference to the warning about the needs of the FLM in other

States.

By August 1939 when the Victorian Branch of the FLM seemed to be going nowhere,

Cunningham tried to influence the Library Group to sanction a joint operation there of the Movement and the Library Association of Victoria. Binns from the National

Library and Purnell, Principal Librarian of the Public Library, Museum and Art

Gallery of South Australia, had very definite views on the subject of the Library

Association of Victoria and the incompatibility of its philosophy and goals with those of the Free Library Movement.55 Many of the Association’s members were proponents of subscription libraries and inimical to the idea of free public libraries.

Ifould also gave Cunningham his opposition to the idea at length. In his view, ‘any assistance in building up the institutes before there is a good scheme in operation in

53 Cunningham to Remington, 29 November 1938, FLM Correspondence files no.1 file/Letters from A.1 to E.3/2A/Miscellaneous 54 Remington to Cunningham, 6 December 1038, FLM Correspondence files, Letters from A.1 to E.3/2A/Miscellaneous 55 Binns to Cunningham, 24 August 1939; Purnell to Cunningham, 23 August 1939, ACER Archives, Series 41Correspondence relating to library matters, 1033-1950), volume 87.

177 Victoria for establishing free libraries would throw the plan back many years’.56

Binns suggested that what the Victorian FLM needed was ‘someone who would be more or less a Mr Remington for the Movement’. Purnell strongly endorsed the

Movement and in particular Remington’s insistence on the exclusion of librarians from it. Only Pitt, head of the Public Library of Victoria, is missing from this line-up of Library Group members. He seems to have put nothing on the record on the matter. He was a Vice President of the Library Association of Victoria from its inception in 1937. He was no doubt in a difficult position and had already earned a reputation for vacillation. Ralph Munn sympathized with Tate in a 1936 personal

Christmas letter about his difficulties with Pitt. Munn described him as ‘a fine gentle soul’, who, as a survey partner, lacked ‘practically all of the qualities which were needed on the job’. 57 Purnell, like Pitt, was in a less robust position than Ifould in regard to tolerance of subscription libraries since he had to cope with the power and influence of the Institutes Association in South Australia. In a formal letter to Tate at the end of 1937, Munn gave the impression gained of Remington from his Carnegie correspondence that he was a ‘live wire’ while he referred again to Pitt’s deficiencies as a communicator.58 Remington’s confidence in his right to make decisions was bound to conflict with the indecisive nature of at least two of the Group. His apparent disregard for the Group’s professional expertise in librarianship was another cause of friction. Remington was much displeased when the Library Group failed to endorse his recommendation of a study tour for Mr McDonald, who had the post of librarian of the Newcastle School of Arts but who had no professional training. In

Remington’s view, McDonald would not only have benefitted by the experience but

56 Ifould to Cunningham, 18 August 1939, ACER Archives,Series 41 Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87. 57 Munn to Tate, 15 November 1936, ACER Archives, Series 41, volume 85. 58 Munn to Tate, 22 November 1937, ACER Archives, Series 41, volume 85

178 would also have been a useful tool in smoothing over the rift between the City

Council, the Cultural Committee and the School of Arts. Remington also believed that, on his return, McDonald could have been a candidate for the librarian’s position in the new Newcastle Public Library. Remington’s strategies were never shortsighted.

On another matter discussed in the Group at the same period Pitt was not silent.

There was, according to Ifould, ‘a certain amount of feeling manifested by both Mr

Binns and Mr Pitt’ in discussion of his application for a grant to assist students from other States and New Zealand to attend the newly established library school at the

Public Library of New South Wales. Ifould stressed that he was asking for no assistance from the Corporation for this School, for which there were adequate funds from the State Government. Application for the grant had been suggested by

Remington and the Public Library was prepared to take in a certain number of students from other States and NZ from beginning of 1940. Binns claimed that he had already established a school in the National Library and Pitt that he was about to establish one in Melbourne. Ifould deplored ‘a tendency in the Group to want to share Corporation grants on a State and Commonwealth basis’. Ifould went on to offer to reduce the amount of the library school students’ assistance grant application and to forego altogether the sum offered to him by Keppel years before, when and if the warring parties in Newcastle had accepted the approved conditions for hand-over of the School of Arts Library to the newly founded Public Library.59 Ifould’s sang froid is admirable since he had no written evidence of what he had construed as a promise from Keppel in New York in 1936 when Ifould was there on a Carnegie grant. Coolness under pressure and the rationality of his suggestions might well have

59 Ifould to Cunningham, 24 August 1939, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87.

179 left both Binns and Pitt outflanked if not outfoxed. Ifould and Remington may also have been in cahouts on the financing of the library school at the Public Library of

New South Wales since Russell told Remington in March 1939 that the Corporation would ‘expect to hear further from you with reference to aid for the library school’.60

Ifould and Remington were often allies in dealings with Carnegie and in winning out in the interstate rivalries underlying the Library Group, yet Remington seemed more willing to share the contents of his letters to Carnegie with Tate than he was with

Ifould. Remington’s mixed feelings about Ifould are obvious in his taped reminiscences, where he described Ifould as a ‘patient soul’ with ‘a fine sense of humour. . .[He] regarded himself as a good friend of mine and up to a point he was’.61

Ifould’s patience stood him in good stead when one of Remington’s letters to

Carnegie caused a fracas in the Library Group in 1940.62

In writing it on the very day on which the Library Act had been passed in the

New South Wales Parliament, Remington shared with Keppel his occasional feeling that ‘it would have been kinder if Mr. Ralph Munn had never come to

Australia, and the Free Library Movement had never come into existence, then the libraries and their custodians could remain in that blissful sleep which has enveloped them for the last sixty years’. Remington also made a slighting reference to Ifould’s preoccupation with the details of the new Public Library of

New South Wales building. While Metcalfe may well have shared some of these views, there is no reason to doubt that Remington’s chagrin was genuine.

60 Russell to Remington, 17 March 1939, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. Begins: ‘Thank you very much for your letter of February 15th.’ 61 Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 5. 62 Remington to Keppel, 27 February 1940, FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

180 His fear was real that the Local Government elections scheduled for the end of

1941 would bring changes in country councils which would mean that the

FLM’s work would have to be done over again.

He wanted Keppel to see to it that as soon as the Corporation had the Library

Group’s approval that ‘if War has not prevented such an action – that the first instalment of the grant is remitted with as little delay as possible.’ He assured

Keppel that every penny the Carnegie Corporation could grant could be used to good effect for future public library development in New South Wales. He also asked for two study grants,63 and set out his plans to reinvigorate the Free

Library Movement in Victoria by enlisting Sir Keith Murdoch as its president.

Remington told Keppel that it would not be tactful to mention his idea of involving Murdoch ‘until I have had an opportunity to discuss it’ with him.

Such a warning could hardly have been necessary in view of Keppel’s position and prestige.64

Tate had died in mid 1939 and Cunningham appointed in his stead. Remington had earlier told Russell, that, apart from Ifould, the Library Group members had not appreciated the extent of library development in New South Wales, and in his opinion that it would be useless referring the New South Wales proposals to the Library

Group now that Mr. Frank Tate was not guiding its deliberations.65 Keppel returned

63 One was to allow W.G.K. Duncan to visit the United States as he believed that the new library organization might well get into adult education. Duncan was director of tutorial classes at the University of Sydney. The second request was for H.D. Black, lecturer in Economics at the University of Sydney, who in 1939 was appointed by Premier Stevens as adviser to the New South Wales Treasury. Remington wanted Black to head ‘an expanded research department of the new library system’. 64 Remington to Keppel, 27 February 1940. FLM Correspondence files 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York. 65 Remington to Keppel, 3 November 1939, SLNSW Archives - box, Library Advisory Committee (contd) folder 'Free Library movement.

181 Remington’s February 1940 letter to Cunningham for comment. When told of it,

Ifould seems to have maintained a cool head. He affirmed Remington as ‘very valuable and very enthusiastic’ and that ‘his enthusiasm leads him into expressions of opinion with which I cannot agree’.66 Ifould, who had not seen Remington’s letter, asked for a copy and Cunningham sent it to all members of the Library Group, asking for their help in drafting his reply to Keppel.

The atmosphere in the Group was already strained by the new reality of Tate’s death and the continuing reality of the States’ rivalry with the Commonwealth and with each other. Binns was furious. On the one hand, he was incensed that the proposal was likely to harm rather than help Ifould’s proposal for a system of regional libraries in

New South Wales. This was the proposal which was before the Group on which

Remington believed Ifould had not sufficiently pressed. On the other hand,

Remington’s letter was ‘typical of the N.S.W. technique, viz. that Remington asks for more than Mr Ifould will support’. He railed about Remington’s ‘tactlessness’ and, at the height of his objections, was ‘the naïve way in which Mr Remington disposed of the Library Group’. He wondered in a final paragraph whether he was ‘placing too much importance on this outburst of Mr Remington’s enthusiasm’, but his final message was unequivocal:

The only possibly serious aspect is the suggestion that the Library Group is not competent, at least in the eyes of those in New South Wales. It could hardly be that we have not been sufficiently sympathetic to the New South Wales projects, for, as you know, by far the greater part of the allocations which the Group has made have been to New South Wales.67

66 Ifould to Cunningham, 20 February [wrongly dated January] 1940 The Library Group Archives, ACER archives, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87.

67 Binns to Cunningham, 12 February 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87.

182 Purnell’s protest from South Australia began with his ‘profound’ admiration for

Remington and his ‘enormous’ services to librarianship. It ended on ‘the tremendous achievement’ in New South Wales, where it was ‘remarkable how much has been done in so short a time’. In between, Purnell deplored Remington’s lack of awareness of library legislation in South Australia, his attempt to squash the ‘very modest South

Australian request’ sent to Carnegie with the Group’s unanimous approval, and regarded as irrelevant Remington’s suggestion to encourage adult education activities taking place in public libraries.68 In an afterthought two weeks later, Purnell wrote again to Cunningham, anxious to correct Remington’s insinuation of ‘lack of confidence in the Group since the passing of Mr Tate’. He went on to assure

Cunningham that ‘we can look forward with confidence to the future under your chairmanship’.69

Ifould wrote to Cunningham at length after he had read Remington’s letter. When he disapproved some aspects of it, he did so without rancour. He discountenanced

Remington’s plea for every penny available from Carnegie, since he disagreed that

New South Wales could make use of every penny the Corporation could make available. At the same time, he saw no threat in Remington’s suggestions to the passing on to Carnegie of his (Ifould’s) regional plan on which the Group was soon to vote. Ifould also agreed with the suggestion that the free libraries would be ‘the best local centres for adult educational activities’. He exonerated Remington of any intended slight to Cunningham, since he could not have known when he wrote that

68 Purnell to Cunningham, 21 February 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87. 69 Purnell to Cunningham, 4 March 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87.

183 Cunningham would take Tate’s place as Chairman of the Group. Ifould also gave an unequivocal statement of his faith in the Group:

I feel in regard to the Group, that notwithstanding the bias towards their own States the members would be honest enough to analyse specific suggestions and express opinions which should greatly assist the Corporation in coming to a decision.70

Again no reaction from Pitt at the Public Library of Victoria appears in the surviving records, but his attention may have been totally focussed on the appointment of a

State Government advisory committee on libraries. In May 1940 Ifould strenuously opposed Cunningham’s suggestion that the Library Group’s Carnegie funds could be used for setting up such an inquiry. He reminded Cunningham that in New South

Wales, ‘we did our own choosing’ of members of the Libraries Advisory Committee and that ‘the whole work of the committee was done by Remington, Metcalfe and myself’. Ifould concluded with an offer that he and ‘Remington I am sure, would be prepared to go with me’ to Melbourne to appeal to Sir Keith Murdoch to get behind the Free Library Movement in Victoria. He offered also to support in the Group any request for travelling expenses for the Movement.71

Keppel acknowledged Remington’s November 1939 letter several months later and no doubt Remington relished his appreciation not only for his activities for the library movement but also ‘the comments you have sent us from time to time on the latest developments’.72 Ifould remarked to Cunningham about Remington that ‘It is hard for him also to recognise that the Corporation does and properly should look to the

70 Ifould to Cunningham, 20 February 1940 [wrongly dated 20 January 1940] ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87 71 Ifould to Cunningham, 3 May 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950, volume 87. 72 Keppel to Remington, 18 April 1940, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York.

184 Library Group for information concerning Australian library affairs and comments on our proposals for help from the Corporation’.73 In the light of Remington’s relationship with the Library Group, Ifould’s remarks tend to understatement.

At the FLM Executive meeting in early 1940 motions were passed expressing in strong terms disappointment with the New South Wales Government’s failure to implement the Library Act. Closing of the rented FLM office space and dispensation with the typist’s services were also reported.74 In mid 1940, however, Ifould continued to hope that the State Government was about to set up the Library Board, of which he was to be Chairman. He was still fighting for his regional library development proposal and hoping that his fellow Library Group members ‘will not attach to the proposal any difficult provisos, such as any suggestion of a proportionate amount being made available for other States’. He also made clear his wish to continue as a member of the Library Group after his retirement planned for June

1940.75 His wish was granted a few months later but by then he had to tell

Cunningham that, while he wanted to remain as a member of the Group, his retirement would not take place. He was to remain as Principal Librarian for at least for another year. He also reported that he and Remington were beginning to stir

Minister Drummond to recognize that this government had ‘no right to neglect important social and educational reforms on the excuse that the Empire is at war’. He predicted that the Government would lose office if it did not bestir itself in the following six months. At the same time Ifould still hoped Drummond would

73 Ifould to Cunningham, 3 May 1940, ACER archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950, volume 87. 74 Free Library Movement, Minutes of Executive Meeting, 7 March 1940, FLM correspondence files, [blue box 1 of 3] SLNSW Archives. 75 Ifould to Cunningham, 11 June 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950), volume 87

185 persuade the Premier to set up the Library Board and even to proclaim the financial clauses of the Act.76

Ifould’s prediction was realized in mid 1941 when the Labor Government headed by

William McKell took office. Other preoccupations were soon to replace the politics of promotion of public library services and the policies of the Library Group, the

ACER and the Carnegie Corporation.

The impact of war

To the people of New South Wales, the war that began in Europe in September 1939 seemed just another burden, and a sociological survey carried out in early 1941

‘found a high degree of hopelessness or apathy about the war in New South Wales’.77

Ifould and Remington seemed determined to ignore the war altogether, and there was nothing apathetic in their pursuit of the Library Act. Remington reported to

Cunningham:

Ifould is hopeful that our New Government may decide to proclaim the Library Act. Our new Minister for Education (C.R. Evatt, the younger brother of Dr H.V. Evatt) expressed an interest in libraries and promised a reference library for Newcastle when he spoke there on Thursday at the Technical College Prize Giving.

In the same letter Remington reported the possibility of a ‘job’ with Robert

Madgwick, a lecturer in Economics at the University of Sydney who from 1938 was

76 Ifould to Cunningham, 8 October 1940, ACER Archives, Series 41, Correspondence relating to library matters, 1935-1950), volume 87 77 Kingston, Beverley, A history of New South Wales, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.157

186 secretary of the University Extension Board.78 Madgwick might have noted

Remington’s zeal for widening the public’s cultural opportunities and might at the same time have influenced Remington’s idea that the free public libraries could be agents in adult education - an idea which had not found universal endorsement in the

Library Group.

In the first intimation of his projected war service, Remington told Cunningham that

‘If the Military people finally decide that they want me, I am looking forward to seeing you in Melbourne’. Remington’s attitude to the war could only be described as relaxed. Far from concern about the threat of war, Remington was concerned at the threat of peace. As he explained: ‘With the U.S.S.R. putting up such a good show, one becomes fearful we may be plunged into a devasting [sic] peace long before we are ready’.79

Federal elections were held in September 1941 amid the usual political squabbles, while the daily life of the ordinary citizen was little affected.80 Instability of the incoming government was not improved by the absence of Prime Minister Menzies in

London for several months after his win in the leadership struggle in 1941. Effective preparation for war was delayed and Remington’s efforts with Herbert Gepp from

1938 in trying to alert the nation did not seem very effective, though both were gratified by the appointment of Essington Lewis as Director General of Munitions.

Menzies was obliged by his party, the UAP, to resign in August. In the words of one

78 Madgwick was later first Vice Chancellor of the University of New England and Chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. 79 Remington to Cunningham, 24 June 1941, ACER Archives, Series 41 (Correspondence relating to library matters, 1933-1950) volume 87 80 E.R. Walker, (1947). The Australian economy in war and reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, p.35.

187 commentator, ‘The UAP had temporarily wrecked itself’ and ‘It had also set the course for the inevitable downfall of the non-Labor coalition Government’.81 Such was indeed the case and John Curtin became Prime Minister on 3 October 1941, formed his new ministry without delay and by the end of November the Government was stable.82

81 P. Hasluck,, The Government and the people, 1939-1941: Chapter 12: Political crisis, August- October, 1941, p.505. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952. 82 P. Hasluck, The Government and the people, 1939-1941: Chapter 12: Political crisis, August- October, 1941, p.519. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952

188

Part III. Adventures in public administration

189 Chapter 6

Remington’s War

War takes centre stage

When Curtin took over as Prime Minister of Australia on 3 October 1941, the

Japanese had already reached Thailand in their march on South Asia and they attacked

Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. With the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 there was nothing ‘distant’ about the war in Australia now. What was devastating to

Australian complacency was the Japanese bombing of Darwin in the same month, followed by the intrusion of midget submarines into Sydney Harbour in May 1942, while allied ships were being torpedoed off Australia’s East Coast.

In the rush to arms, the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales resolved at their monthly meeting in November 1941 that the Library’s treasures should be moved to a country location.1 At the December meeting, Remington, who was not present, was granted twelve months leave of absence. His war had already begun in earnest.

Remington’s enlistment was thanks to Daniel McVey who had been Director General of Posts and Telegraphs in Canberra and who was promoted in November 1941 to the post of Director of the Department of War Organisation of Industry in Melbourne.

He had been a close associate of Remington in the founding of the New South Wales

1 Minutes of 914th meeting, 17 November 1941. Public Library of New South Wales, Trustees Minute Book September 1941 to December 1945.

190 Group of the Institute of Public Administration. He wasted no time in inviting

Remington to join the Department and his offer was accepted three days later.2 The offer would have been neither unexpected nor unwelcome. Remington had kept

McVey aware of his reliance on him to get a job to contribute to the war effort, as he had told him mid 1941 that ‘If you do get a big job, or this streamlined administrative setup, the first thing you do is appoint me your secretary. I really mean this. I’ll hand you my undated resignation the day you appoint me’.3

Though the Department of War Organisation of Industry (DWOI) was nominally created in June 1941, its organizational structure did not begin to take shape until

December 1941. Its functions had already been defined as ‘Planning and co- ordinating measures for organising the industrial resources of the nation to achieve maximum production for essential needs.’4 The Department had a central office in

Melbourne and a Branch in each State. The Administrative head was a Director

General with a Deputy Director General in head office and a Deputy Director in each

State. Remington took up a position as Assistant Director of Labour Resources

Division of the Department on 10 December 1941.5 He was based in Melbourne in the central office, located at Wentworth House, 209 Collins Street, Melbourne.6 His permanent return to Sydney did not take place until the end of 1944, according to the record of his attendance at the monthly meetings of the Trustees of the Public Library

2 McVey to Remington, 28 November 1941; Remington to McVey, 1 December 1941, National Archives of Australia, New South Wales Branch, series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington.. 3 Remington to McVey, 21 June 1941 Remington Papers MLMS 808, Box 9 4 WOI: Department of War Organisation of Industry, what it is and what it does. Melbourne: the Department, 1943, p.2 and p.9 5 H.F. Yoxon, Secretary, Allied Works Council, Department of the Interior to Secretary, DWOI, 27 April 1943, NAA NSW Branch series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington. 6 National Archives of Australia, ‘Agency notes for agency CA45 [Department of War Organisation of Industry], p.4. http://recordsearch/scripts.AgencyDetail. Accessed 5 March 2010.

191 of New South Wales.7. Throughout the period, however, the Trustees continued to elect him to the Finance Committee and the Mitchell Library Committee.8

When Remington accepted the Melbourne post, many of his plans had to be put aside, including plans for ‘Organising Australian social science research’, the title of a paper dated 23 September 1941, of which there are two copies among his papers in the

Mitchell Library. Attached was the draft of an ‘Australian Council for Social

Research Act’.9 More pressing would have been the need to move his wife and his son and daughter to Melbourne and the letting of their Sydney home.

His daughter Susan mentioned in interview that they took up residence in the Hotel

Windsor in the centre of the City, but the length of their stay cannot have been prolonged. Remington’s told Newton on 20 January that ‘family arrived last

Thursday and are at present busily engaged looking for a house’.10 Less than a week later he reported that they were about to move into no.2 “Muyanato” 26 Kensington

Road, South Yarra.11 Little is known of the life of the family in Melbourne, except

7 Minutes of 951st meeting, 18 December 1944. Public Library of New South Wales, Trustees Minute Book September 1941 to December 1945. 8 Minutes of 930th meeting 15 March 1943; minutes of 942nd meeting 20 March 1944, Public Library of New South Wales, Trustees Minute Book September 1941 to December 1945. Public Library of New South Wales, Trustees Minute Book September 1941 to December 1945. 9 Remington, G.C. Organising Australian Social Science Research, 23 September 1941. Remington Papers MLMS 808, Box 9. There is no statement of its authorship on the typescript but the copy is in a folder marked ‘Social research – Mr Remington’s Notes, etc.’ The draft may well have been jointly the work of Remington and Metcalfe. One version of the typescript goes top to bottom of foolscap pages without margins and is reminiscent of the notes for students which Metcalfe used to type himself without margins top and bottom. 10 Remington to G L Newton, 20 January 1942, Remington Papers MLMS 808, Box 23. 11 Remington to G.L. Newton, 26 January 1942. Confirmation of that date comes in an undated letter from D.G. Chippindall, Director General of DWOI, to Remington at that address. (Chippindall to Remington, NAA MT 96/1). Information was also gleaned from an exchange of letters between Remington and H.M. Ridley in 1947 in which Ridley reminded Remington that he and his family had been next-door neighbours. Ridley gave his address as no.3 ‘Rosedale’ at 24 Kensington Road, South Yarra. He was an employee of the Shell Company and he asked Remington for a reference to help obtain a position with the Joint Coal Board Ridley to Remington, 5 March,1947; Remington to Ridley, 19 March 1947; Ridley to Remington, 20 March 1947. Remington Papers, Mitchell Library ML 808 Box 10 Uncat.

192 the report of one of his daughter’s friends that his wife, Babe Remington, ‘worked in a factory sticking on jam labels’.12 This implies that she may have been reached by the long arm of the Manpower regulations, which were strengthened from 1942 onwards.13 Melbourne in wartime was no bed of roses. Kate Darian-Smith reminds us that “the concept of Austerity demanded co-operation and blind acceptance of government decisions, even though such directives caused hardship and inconvenience’.14 The Manpower Directorate was also responsible for

‘womanpower’, though women could be exempted from industrial mobilization if they were engaged in extensive voluntary work. Perhaps Mrs Remington preferred factory work to being confronted on trams with a poster depicting ‘a large, angry woman, loaded with parcels, occupying a seat while tired workers were strap- hanging’.15

Remington left G.L. Newton, who was articled to him in 1929 and made a partner in

Remington & Co. in 1937, in charge of the firm. Remington’s patriotism seems effortlessly to have trumped his concern for his practice when ‘Bill’ Newton was called up into the Army. Not only did Remington facilitate his leaving but he also lobbied, Percy Spender, then Federal Treasurer, and McVey to allow Newton to get his wish to transfer from the Army to the Air Force.16 His brother John Newton stepped in when his brother ‘Bill’, became a soldier with the rank of Lieutenant. He let Remington know that dealing ‘with your accumulation of rubbish’ was ‘ a terrible job’ but he added the reassuring news that Robson & Cowlishaw were taking over the

12 Elizabeth Bowman, Notes taken at interview with Carmel Maguire,15 October, 2006. - 13 Hasluck, Paul: The Government and the people 1939-1941. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952. (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 4, vol. 1) 14 Darian-Smith, Kate On the homefront: Melbourne in wartime 1939-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p.34 15 Darian-Smith, pp.45, 58 16 Remington to Spender and McVey, 18 October 1940, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 9.

193 practice and that the only two partners who will be involved had been very helpful and Newton was confident about leaving matters in their hands.17 Remington wrote to Newton that ‘it seems to me it is the last any of us will see of the practice for many a long day’. This elegy for his practice would not have been excessively pessimistic in April 1942.18

The accidental public servant

Secondment of men who were not public servants was not unusual at that time. Most notable of these importations was Essington Lewis, the head of the Broken Hill

Proprietary Company (BHP). Prime Minister Menzies appointed him Director

General of Munitions and Curtin gave him more power. His Department of

Munitions employed 150,000 people at its peak.19 At a less exalted level, in Feb

1942 Ifould retired as Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales to become Deputy Director of the Department of War Organisation of Industry

(DWOI) in Sydney. 20 This is the same Department in which Remington took up a position as Assistant Director of Labour Resources Division of at the end of 1941.21

At the top of the tree, Essington Lewis’s salary was paid by BHP. Remington, on the other hand, was appointed on a salary of £1,112 per annum, at the top of the range,

£962 - £1,112. This salary level was that awarded to senior Commonwealth public servants at that time, and his appointment at the top of the range is also an

17 John Newton to GCR, 13 April 1942, Remington Papers MLMS 808, Box 23 18 Remington to G L Newton, 16 April 1942, Remington Papers MLMS 808, Box 23 19 Blainey, Geoffrey, The steel master a life of Essington Lewis. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1955, pp.162-3,168 20 Fletcher, Brian, Magnificent obsession: the story of the Mitchell Library, Sydney. Sydney, Allen & Unwin in association with the State Library of New South Wales, 2007, pp.144, 149 21 H.F. Yoxon, Secretary, Allied Works Council, Department of the Interior to Secretary, DWOI, 27 April 1943, NAA NSW Branch series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington.

194 acknowledgement of the seniority of his position and his ‘special qualifications’ for it.

His salary was also an outcome of McVey’s strong argument for it with the Public

Service Board.22 Two other salaries awarded at the time allow a comparison. Two economists were appointed at the same time. S.J. Butlin’s salary was approved at

£1012, £100 less than Remington’s, while Professor E. Ronald Walker from the

University of Tasmania was classified at £1700 per annum.

In March 1942 the DWOI appointed Remington to ‘establish the necessary liaison between the Allied Works Council and the Department of War Organisation of

Industry and to be available for consultation’.23 Remington was quick to distinguish himself in his new role. Six weeks later AWC Director General asked John Dedman,

Minister for DWOI, for his transfer to the Council as Assistant Director of Personnel.

Remington had been ‘particularly helpful since his appointment as Liaison Officer between your Department and the Council’ and ‘recently undertook a difficult mission at Broken Hill, in relation to the transfer of miners to certain Defence projects’.24

Remington recorded his own lively reminiscence of the mission at Broken Hill. He sought the help of trade unionists, first Paddy O’Neill, leader of the Barrier Industrial

Council, and then Ernie Wetherall in getting 1,000 men out of the mines. A.J. Keast, mine engineer and manager who opposed the transfer, described Remington as a

‘pettifogging solicitor and a lackey of Theodore’s’.25 Word went around, or was sent

22 McVey to Thorpe, 28 November 1941, NAA NSW Branch series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington. 23 Giles Chippindall, Director General DWOI to Theodore, Director General, AWC, 1 March 1942; Theodore to Chippindall, 5 March 1942, NAA, NSW Branch, MT/96/1, personnel file, Geoffrey C. Remington. 24 Theodore to Dedman, 14 April 1942, NAA, NSW Branch, MT/96/1, personnel file, Geoffrey C. Remington. 25 Remington Tapes, Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44 Tape 6. Asdruebal James Keast managed the Zinc Corporation’s mine at Broken Hill and postwar went on play a major part in Australian mining. His ‘energetic, impatient and aggressive nature did not suit him for managing people in situations of static production’. D.F. Fairweather, ‘Keast, Asdruebal James (1892-1980)’ Australian dictionary of

195 round Broken Hill, that the men had been put into the army not into essential war work with the AWC. Remington recalled that he was confronted by three very big men as he was leaving his hotel in Broken Hill and threatened with being dropped down a mine shaft. His call to Theodore about his plight brought an army captain; the train out of town was kept waiting for him; and he was woken up at every station by an army officer to see that he was all right.26

A contemporary newspaper account is full of praise for his war work as more evidence of his ‘active and official civil service (in the best sense of the words)’.27 It is one of several articles which appeared in Smith’s Weekly which no doubt reflected his good relations with the press generally and with Claude McKay, editor-in-chief of

Smith’s in particular, as well as his willingness to provide copy.

DWOI Director General, Giles Chippindall, acceded to Theodore’s request for

Remington’s secondment to the AWC although ‘the loss of this officer’s services will be seriously felt’. He added the proviso that ‘Mr Remington should not be divorced entirely from the activities of this Department, and if you agree, it is proposed that he should still carry out certain Trade Union and other liaison duties on our behalf, which will not make appreciable calls on his time’.28 Remington was released from DWOI

biography, v.14, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996. E.G.Theodore was the Head of the Allied Works Council (AWC) 26 G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library, Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs. 27 ‘From lawyer to juggler: G. Remington balances labour resources’, Smith’s Weekly, 24 January 1942.’ 28 Chippindall to Theodore, 15 April 1942, NAA NSW Branch, series MT96/1, personnel file, Geoffrey C. Remington.

196 on 18 April 1942 and went to the AWC as Assistant Director, Personnel, in charge of the Council’s Queensland activities.29

The AWC had been created by the Federal Cabinet in February 1941 as the constructing agency for the Australian Government for a great number of defence works, many of them projects in remote areas such as the building of airstrips. E.G.

Theodore, who had once been Federal Treasurer and before that Premier of

Queensland, was appointed Director General, and he was given wide powers.

Creation of a Civil Construction Corps (CCC) to supply some of the labour needed by the AWC was approved in April, and into it were pressed men over military age (45 to

60 years). By June 1941 the CCC had 53,000 men.30 In Remington’s recollection,

‘There was certainly never a dull moment working for Mr Theodore’31

According to Remington’s taped reminiscence, Theodore asked him to go to

Queensland to take over the job of Assistant Director of Personnel for the AWC after he had expedited completion of the Tocumwal Air Base for the Americans. Delay on that job had called forth a rebuke to Theodore from General Macarthur. Remington, twenty years after the event, recalled that Theodore obtained Curtin’s permission for the call up of every able-bodied man within a wide radius and that 2,500 of them were quickly on site. Despite assurances from the site engineer, Remington reported later that ‘there wasn’t enough food, there wasn’t enough sanitary accommodation, there were not enough beds, not enough blankets, not enough of anything’. Despite these

29 Chippindall to Theodore, 21 April 1942, NAA NSW Branch, series MT96/1 Geoffrey C. Remington barcode 12687104 30 Long, Gavin Six years war, pp.216-217, 31, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library , Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs.

197 challenges, Remington’s ‘boys’ own’ account summed up the adventure as ‘Really quite a spectacular job’.32

Leader of men

In Remington’s account, even greater challenges awaited him in Brisbane, where he took over a multi-storey building and a sizeable staff in Adelaide Street – a street address which he shared with General Macarthur who in that period had his headquarters in Lennon’s Hotel. One of the first achievements Remington recalled was the installation of 200 telephone lines. He needed to take over organization of the train-loads of men who were rushed to Queensland from the southern States. He deployed staff to meet them at the railhead at Wallangarra and, at least in memory, he urged his staff to appreciate the reactions of the men, taken with little notice from their families and familiar surroundings.

Remington has also recorded in his early days in Brisbane a visit from engineering entrepreneur, Manuel Hornibrook, who threatened violence on Remington if he did not remove the manpower inspectors from his works. Remington explained that the inspectors might report either that the works were over-manned or that more men were needed to speed up a job. In the latter case Remington would allocate him more men. Hornibrook apparently left their meeting satisfied with Remington’s answer.

Hornibrook was not only big in stature, he has also been reported as big ‘in personal magnetism, vision and spirit’ who ‘dominated his immediate environment, had a cool

32 ibid

198 head in crises and did not suffer fools gladly’.33 Remington remembered himself as winner of the encounter.

Remington’s self-report of his time with the Allied Works Council and the power he exercised under the manpower regulations is not a tale of unmitigated success. At the request of Brisbane’s Catholic Archbishop Duhig, Remington recommended exemption from the labour corps one of the lay assistants at the cathedral.

Remington recalled his humiliation when Trade Unions leader, Gerry Dawson, brought the man from a camp north of Cairns. ‘The man’s hands were literally raw.

His arms were burnt as if they’d been seared with a red-hot iron. I never saw anything so pitiful and horrible in my life’. The man’s file had been duplicated and the file with Remington’s authority for his exemption had been lost. Remington reported himself ‘horror-stricken’.34 To have been associated, albeit unwittingly, with the infliction of physical suffering on a less fortunate human being obviously burned into Remington’s memory.

He also recalled a notable brush with the military in the person of a colonel in the US

Army who summoned Remington to his office in the commandeered University of

Queensland. The colonel regarded as treason a strike among CCC men building the airstrip at Iron Ridge. He disdained the men’s demand to have the same kind of food

33 Raymond L. Whitmore, ‘Hornibrook, Sir Manuel Richard (1893-1970)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, Copyright 2006. 34 G.C.Remington Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library , Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs, Remington Tapes, Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6. Remington had met Archbishop Duhig at the launch of the Free Library Movement in Brisbane in April 1937. Remington recalled that Anglican Archbishop Wand remarked in his speech that it was the only occasion to that date on which he and Catholic Archbishop Duhig had shared a platform. It was probably the difficulty of fitting all the dignitaries into one photograph rather than sectarianism that the Courier Mail published two photographs of the event, Wand was at the extreme left of that published on 22 April with Duhig omitted, while that published on 28 April 1937 Duhig was on the extreme right with Wand omitted. Audiotapes. . . ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 5.

199 as the soldiers, as he pointed out: ‘Our men are soldiers. And they’ve [the strikers] got to be shot’. According to Remington’s somewhat unlikely account, he agreed to a telegram sent to the Colonel’s superiors seeking to implement the execution of the strikers. After this, the Colonel was returned to his base in New York.35

Remington’s recall of the incident, however unlikely, again demonstrates his wish to emphasize his championship of the under-dog. This is the only expression in his memoirs or elsewhere in the records of any resentment about behaviour or attitudes of the United States forces effectively occupying Australia at the time.

A rather more plausible anecdote from his taped memoir concerned his problems with the Commonwealth Auditor General’s Department. Never a man to wait for due authorization from entities he deemed recalcitrant, Remington immediately used a scrap of paper to order adequate rations of tea and tobacco for the AWC workers, even if only bore water was available in the Queensland camps. Again in

Remington’s account, an officer of the Auditor General’s Department came to his office with his scrap of paper and with the news that Remington’s salary will have to pay for the expenditure, which he recollected as ‘₤42,000 worth of tobacco, and something like ₤37,000 worth of tea’. Remington assured the public servant that he had no assets and no money of that dimension. The problem was solved in best bureaucratic style when all the copies of all the required forms were completed, pre- dated to the week before the rations had been sent out. Remington ‘s final comment was that ‘it was that kind of thing, due to my ignorance, that caused me to worry the

Auditor General’s Department’s officers and similar responsible officers of the

35 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs.

200 Crown’.36 It was also the kind of thing hilariously lampooned by Gwen Harwood in the passage quoted from an ‘Amendment to the National Security (War Damage to

Property) Regulations’ in her report of her service in a Commonwealth department in wartime Brisbane.37

However enhanced Remington’s self-report of his time with the AWC may have been, there is evidence of his popularity with trade union leaders and presumably with the men. In the second issue of the Candid Camp Critic, issued in February 1943, its editor introduced ‘with pardonable pride’ Remington’s response to the first issue.

Described as Deputy Director of Personnel for the Allied Works Council in

Queensland, he praised the initiative of the publication. In his view, it was most helpful to all concerned, including the Administrative Officers of the C.C.C. ‘to have the men on the job put down in black and white what they think and feel and know and want’. With a whiff of noblesse oblige C.C.C. members were reminded that the future success or failure of the Corps was up to them. ‘Good, tough, well-directed, well-informed criticism’ would do it good and Remington’s parting injunction was:

Remember it is, above all, a human organism. It is not a museum piece once perfected to remain in that static condition. – it is, and should be, dynamic. It must change with the times, and it must be built during time of war to be strong and flexible enough to stand the strain of peace. IN YOUR HANDS, MY FRIENDS, LIES ITS FUTURE SEE THAT YOU MAKE IT WORK.38 [capitals in original]

Unlike many senior administrators, before and hence, Remington got on well with trade union representatives, especially with Gerry Dawson who was President of the

Queensland Trades and Labour Council, and Clarrie Fallon, State secretary of the

36 G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs. 37Harwood, Gwen, Blessed city: the letters of Gwen Harwood to Thomas Riddell, January to September 1943. Edited by Alison Hoddinott. Sydney: Collins, Angus & Robertson, 1990, pp.131-2 38 CandidCampCritic v.1 no.2, 12 February 1943. Whinstanes. 2p. roneoed typescript

201 Australian Workers Union (AWU) in Queensland. Remington regarded Fallon as a

‘father confessor’.39 Remington recorded his pride in being guest speaker at the opening of both the Trades and Labour Conference held in the Trades Hall and the

AWU conference.40

Remington’s position as the AWC’s Assistant Director of Personnel would have been no sinecure. The labour force assembled under the manpower regulation was diverse.

‘In March 1942 the War Cabinet decided that the whole pool of alien labour (refugee aliens and enemy aliens) should be made available to the Allied Works Council.’41

Administration of the manpower regulations formed part of the ministerial responsibilities of John Johnstone Dedman as DWOI Minister. It has been reported that ‘The general public saw Dedman as the minister for austerity, or even

“morbidity”’.42 Remington was impressed by the competency of his senior staff, including Dr. E. Ronald Walker, and Professor T.W. Swann, and the quality of the speeches which they prepared for the Minister.43

In what Remington described as ‘the proper allocation of men for the war effort’,

Dedman delivered one of their speeches to convince the universities to release for military service all medical students not in their last couple of years. Walker prepared for his Minister a series of radio talks to explain the work of the Department

39 G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 5. 40 G.C. Remington, ‘Notes on organisation of the Allied Works Council Personnel Division ( Civil Constructional Corps) in Queensland’ [no date, 1949?] Remington Papers, ML MS808 Box 43: folder ‘Federal and State documents’ 41 Paul Hasluck: The Government and the people 1939-1941. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952. (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 4, vol. 1) p.595 42 Andrew Spaull, ‘Dedman, John Johnstone (1896-1973). Australian Dictionary of Biography, volume 13, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993: p.606. 43 G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs.

202 to the nation. In Remington’s view the Minister derived ‘a very very inflated idea of his own capacity and his own standing’44. It is difficult to decide whether what piqued Remington’s lack of appreciation for his Minister was his perceived excessive self-regard or the fact that he had come so early to prominence having been plucked as an undergraduate at Melbourne University, even though he was then already 42 years of age. Remington first praised Dedman as ‘a very nice man indeed’ and ‘we couldn’t have had a more hard-working Minister than Mr. Dedman’45. It is characteristic of the taped memoir that, after a laudatory introduction, Remington proceeded to more realistic appraisal. Whatever his demurs about Dedman,

Remington was whole-hearted in his admiration of Ronald Walker. Their friendship is described in the next section of this chapter.

Remington’s leaving of the AWC could not have been without incident. While no hint of any problem has so far surfaced in the official records, there is the evidence of an open letter published in the Building Workers Journal in April, 1943. Under the heading ‘Big men and little men’ is an open letter from Trades Hall, Brisbane to G.C.

Remington (late Assistant Director of Personnel, Allied Works) and signed ‘The

Building Trade Workers’. According to the Union, ‘Your resignation will, to decent people, be a greater exposure than any Allied Works inquiry could ever be’.46

Whatever precipitated Remington’s departure from the AWC, he seems to have left in a hurry. DWOI Director General, Chippindall, wrote to his counterpart at the AWC

44 G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape no.5. 45 G.C.Remington, G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs. 46 Building Workers Journal April 13, 1943..

203 on 21 April 1943 advising that Public Service Board (PSB) approval had been given for Remington’s re-employment in the Department which was to resume the following morning. On 27 April, H.F. Yoxon, AWC Secretary, confirmed his transfer and on 5 May 1943, the AWC’s Acting Director, W.J. Cole, informed DWOI that Remington ceased duty with the AWC on 21 April. Chippindall had wasted neither time nor effort in getting him back to DWOI. He told PSB Commissioner

Thorpe on 15 April that while it was not practicable to employ him in his original position in this department, he set out four areas in which Remington could be used at once. They ranged through ‘shortage of educational and other serious books’, opening hours for eating places in city areas and industrial districts, ‘the proposed increase in working hours’, and whether the Department should set up a section dealing with the fishing industry. The Commissioner was asked to send his response

‘by telegraph’.47 In an undated copy on file, Remington was offered the job, with title Administrative Assistant to the Deputy Director General on his existing salary, to commence on 22 April with the ‘type of work’ in the four areas proposed to the

Public Service Board, with the rider that ‘Particular duties, however, will be assigned to you by Dr. Walker from time to time’.48 Evidence of Remington and Walker’s firm friendship to be presented in the next section implies that any such assignment would have been happily performed by Remington. DWOI took over coordination of the activities of Australian Government departments concerned with procurement of supplies for UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) sometime in 1944. Walker, the Department’s Deputy Director advised that G.C.

Remington was to act as liaison between WOI and UNRRA. There followed long detailed negotiations on procurement procedures between the Department and

47 Chippindall to Thorpe, 15 April 1943, NAA series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington. 48 Chippindall to Remington, undated, NAA series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington.MT96/1

204 UNRRA, wherein the South West Pacific Administration (SWPA), in the person of

Frank S. Gaines, the Acting Director, acted mostly as a post office with officials in the

Washington Office. The careful legal language in which the various Australian suggestions and drafts are reported in the SWPA history suggest Remington’s legal hand and mind at work.49 In relation to ‘Australian candidates for high positions in

UNRRA’s Sydney Office’, the history reports that early in January 1945 WOI offered the services of Remington as Administrative Officer provided Washington had no objections. In mid January Washington agreed to the overworked Gaines’s wish to make the appointment immediately on a salary of ₤1,200 per annum.50

If the SWPA history is accurate, Remington must have taken up duty at UNRRA immediately since Gaines is reported to have handed on to Remington the problem of deciding salary scales for the expanded staff which was to about to arrive. In what seems to have been common post-dating practice in the Public Service at the time,

Remington confirmed with Chippindall on 15 February his agreement to the transfer.

Remington declared himself happy to accede to Chippindall’s wish that he should continue his service with two other wartime offices. He was Deputy Chairman of the

Book Sponsorship Committee and of the Book Publication Committee.51 Chippindall resigned with the amalgamation of DWOI with the Department of Post-War

Reconstruction (PWR) in February 1945. The new Director told Remington that Dr

H.C. Coombs was not so happy to have the Department represented on these

49 N.O.P. Pyke, UNRRA South-West Pacific Administration History. United Nations Archives, New YorkS-1021-0075-0008, p.83. 50 N.O.P. Pyke, UNRRA South-West Pacific Administration History. United Nations Archives, New York, S-1021-0075-0008, p.79. 51 Remington to Chippindall, 13 February 1945: NAA Series MT96/1 NAA NSW Branch, series MT96/1, personnel file, Geoffrey C. Remington. Pinner Report: Committee of Review: Civil Staffing of Wartime Activities. Report on the Department of Postwar Reconstruction from NAA Melbourne received 29/6/10)

205 committees ‘by someone who was not an officer of the Department, particularly as there are a number of people in Post-War Reconstruction who are especially well qualified to participate in work of such an educational character’. Despite this, in view of Remington’s long association with the Department, he reported that Coombs

‘thought that it might be possible to justify your continuing to act on an allowance of, say, ₤100 a year’.52

International bureaucrat

Remington’s arrival in UNRRA was celebrated in Smith’s Weekly. No author is mentioned in the article, ‘Talent scout for UNRRA’ but he is described as ‘long prominent in public affairs’ as well as ‘tall and robust, [with] a buoyant temperament, a quality of heartiness, backed by physical vigor, a sense of humor, incisiveness, decisiveness, and sociability’, while at the same time ‘somewhat reticent’.53 After six months he became Acting Director of the South-West Pacific Area Office and he later revealed his mixed feelings about his international post. In his memoir, he characterized his time with UNRRA as the ‘most interesting and I think rewarding job’. It was at the same time, ‘fascinating, stimulating, and completely frustrating’, with the added remark that “I think I appreciated the time I spent with UNRRA very

52 A.A. Fitzgerald, Director, DWOI to Remington, 29 March 1945, NAA NSW Branch MY96/1 G.C. Remington, Personnel file. Fitzgerald and Coombs were members of the Committee of Review – civil staffing of wartime activities, with J.T. Pinner as chairman. The Pinner Report: Committee of Review – Civil Staff of Eartime Activities: Report on the Department of Post War Reconstruction.[1945?] The Committee was required to bring out ‘any cases in which it considers that it would be desirable to secure the services on a permanent basis of particular persons now employed by the Commonwealth on loan from State Services or Instrumentalities or who have been recruited from Universities or private business sources’. They chose only five such cases [p.19]. NAA B6410, Item 193, Department of Post War Reconstruction. 53 Smith’s Weekly, 23 June 1945, p.13. The tone of this article, as strongly supportive of UNRRA as of Remington, is in contrast to an earlier one entitled ‘Let’s in on UNRRA’s bunrush’ by Ronald McCuaig, Smith’s Weekly, 3 March 1945, p.2.

206 much, at least I do in retrospect’.54 He records some of the ‘exciting moments’.

Procuring railway lines for Yugoslavia brought him face to face with Prime Minister

Chifley, whom he told of that country’s need for about 47,000 tons of railway lines and something over 60,000 tons of steel for bridge work. According to Remington,

Chifley phoned ‘Essie’ and told him ‘A chap here called Remington says he’s in charge of UNRRA, wants 17,000 tons of steel railway lines and something over

60,000 tons of bridge building steel for Yugoslavia. Can you do it?’ Like much of the dialogue reported in the memoir, Essington Lewis’s reply - ‘If you’ve got the ships – I’ll load them straight away’ – seems unlikely, although, as in many of the anecdotes Remington recalls in the taped memoirs, his prowess as a raconteur is indicated. He also claimed that his work for Yugoslavia earned an invitation to him from Tito which he did not accept. He explained that he declined because he had to get on with his job and, in his opinion, that it was not ‘the thing to do, that any individual should be singled out for thanks when the job was done by the whole organisation of UNRRA’.55 This claimed nobility of mind contrasts with his rueful admission that ‘At least the relationship between the Head Office of UNRRA in

Washington and the Commonwealth Government, with myself as the ham in the sandwich as it were, gave me some experience in this international realm’.56

He was clearly frustrated and left under something of a cloud, though just how he came to be sandwich filling is not clear. Two months before he resigned, in an article on UNRRA and Australia published in the Australian Quarterly in June 1946,

54 G.C.Remington interview, Tape 6: Personal memoirs, Remington Tapes, Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6 55 G.C.Remington interview, Tape 6: Personal memoirs, Remington Tapes, Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6 56 G.C.Remington interview, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library , Mitchell MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs.

207 Remington laid the blame for his frustrations in the job on the Commonwealth

Government.57 Departments with which UNRRA had to deal were not adequately informed or instructed as to their particular responsibilities, for example for exemption of UNRRA shipments from export taxes. Remington was filled with the

UNRRA ideal of ‘from each country according to its capacity, to each country according to its need’, which he quotes twice in the article. He outlines the benefits, actual and potential, to be derived by Australia through UNRRA ‘If there is the wit and the willingness to make use of this experience’. His most trenchant criticism is reserved for the lack of assistance provided to the SWPA office for the meeting of

UNRRA’s Committee of the Council for the Far East in February 1945 held at

Lapstone in the Blue Mountains. Although the Commonwealth Government was the host nation, no arrangements whatever had been made for the meeting which had to take place a few weeks after establishment of the SWPA office. Remington pointed out that ‘The Commonwealth Government had had little administrative experience in servicing an international organization’.58 This observation was true but hardly likely to be welcomed among federal ministers and bureaucrats.

At the end of the article, Remington disclosed the nub of his complaint:

One of the healthiest traits of the Australian character may be our tendency to criticise our own domestic administrations. When dealing with an office which represents an international body, it might be desirable if our normal habits were somewhat modified. However, criticisms of the SWPA Office were made by the Australian member at the London meeting of the UNRRA Council, and again in Washington, without any of these criticisms having been taken up with the SWPA Office, or their basis having been

57 G.C. Remington, ‘The commonsense of Australian support for UNRRA’, Australian Quarterly vol.18 no.2 (June 1946): 51-62. 58 G.C. Remington, ‘The commonsense of Australian support for UNRRA’, Australian Quarterly vol.18 no.2 (June 1946), p.60.

208 discussed and examined frankly with the only people who could provide the facts’59

N.O.P. Pyke, who was a Teaching Fellow in Modern History at the University of

Sydney, was commissioned to prepare a history of the SWPA Office and began work in December 1946. Date of completion is uncertain as the Preface is undated but was probably in the second half of 1948.60

Remington implies that Pyke’s report was a consequence of his Australian Quarterly article. He reports that Pyke sought his help to supply other knowledgeable contacts as well as his ideas on ‘the obstacles confronting and the main circumstances assisting the operation of UNRRA in this area’. In asking for Remington’s reply in writing

Pyke used the excuse that the former Director and staff had left only brief reminiscences and were ‘well and truly out of range by now’. 61

In his memoir, Remington stood by the claims made in his Australian Quarterly article and he differed from Pyke’s interpretation of his last days at the SWPA Office.

According to Remington:

[Pyke] went into some detail of the circumstances which led to my resignation from UNRRA, and while he’s kind enough to say that I was conscientious in what I did, nevertheless he cast some doubt as to the wisdom of the steps I took in the final days, or the final times of my employment with that organisation.62

There is no doubt that Remington was conscientious in obtaining newspaper publicity for the work of the SWPA office. Items were placed in the Sydney Morning Herald,

59 G.C. Remington, ‘The commonsense of Australian support for UNRRA’, Australian Quarterly vol.18 no.2 (June 1946), p.61. 60 N.O.P. Pyke UNRRA South-West Pacific Administration History. United Nations Archives, New York S-1021-0075-0008 61 N.O.P. Pyke to Remington, 39 December 1946, 62 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes, Tape 6, Personal memoirs.

209 the Canberra Times, and the Argus (Melbourne), origins of which are sourced to

Remington.63

Pyke used Remington’s Australian Quarterly article in the one he wrote in Australian

Outlook. He repeated Remington’s opinion that the cause of difficulties experienced by UNRRA sprang from lack of agreed procedures in Government Departments and from Australia’s lack of experience in servicing international organisations.64 From this distance in time, Australia’s lack of sophistication in international diplomacy is obvious, since, for example, Australia’s first diplomatic posts, in Tokyo and

Washington were not established until 1939 by the Menzies government. R.G. Casey took up the post of Australian minister to the United States early in 1940.65 Pyke may also have had some of Remington’s difficulties with public servants in mind when he suggested that for the newly-formed South Pacific Commission ‘The appointment of officers not on good terms with Government Departments. . .would still have to be eschewed’.66

Remington believed that in his history of UNRRA’s SWPA, Pyke had missed the point. Remington defended the clarity of his position stated in the Australian

Quarterly article. Totally unrepentant, he went on to record in his memoir:

63 ‘Hostess at UNRRA conference: Mrs. Suttor’s job’ SMH 7 February 1945:p.2; ‘Hostess for UNRRA Conference has big task’ The Argus 7 February 1945:p.8; ‘Mr G.C. Remington, Acting Director, South-west Pacific Area announced’ The Argus 17 May 1946 p.2; ‘UNRRA thanks Australia for assistance’ The Canberra Times, 5 July1946, p.4; ‘Poland’s thanks for food’, The Canberra Times, 19 July 1946, p.3; ‘Livestock for China’, SMH 13 August 1946, p.4; ‘German health better: aid by Britain SMH 13 August 1946, p.4. UNRRA head in S.-W. Pacific: resignation of Mr. G.C. Remington’, SMH 31 August 1946, p.4. 64 N.O.P. Pyke, ‘Has UNRRA lessons for the South Pacific Commission?’ Australian Outlook vol.1 no.1:(March 1947): 29-32. 65 Hudson, W.J. Casey. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1986. 66 N.O.P. Pyke, ‘Has UNRRA lessons for the South Pacific Commission?’ Australian Outlook, vol.1 no.1 p.10.

210 If I had the UNRRA job again, I’d do much the same as I did before. I think Australia’s – or any other Government’s obligations are easily entered into in the international field, and then the question of living up to its undertakings, accepting the responsibilities that go with them, are something of a different nature altogether.67

His career as an international bureaucrat came to an end with his resignation from

UNRRA on 31 August 1946. He preserved the certificate sent to him by the Director

General of UNRRA, Lowell W. Rooks, in May 1947, recording his ‘loyal and valued services’ to the organization. A covering letter includes the assurance to Remington that ‘You were one of those making an outstanding contribution in your capacity as

Chief Administrative Officer, Southwest Pacific Area’.68 Omission of mention of his service as Acting Director was possibly only due to a bureaucratic convention by which only the holding of substantive positions was to be acknowledged. If the

UNRRA history confirms anything it is that the organization was thick and stiff with bureaucracy.

Transition to peace

In November 1946 Remington told Walker that ‘The accumulated work and responsibility of the early days of W.O.I., then the A.W.C. and subsequently UNRRA had taken a toll of me which I was forced to admit’. Despite a fortnight’s holiday he wrote that he ‘could do with another few weeks’.69 He clearly at once admired and envied Walker’s ‘cosmic activities’ although he wrote that ‘I would not seek and would not allow myself to be encouraged to leave my job having given hostages to

67 G.C. Remington, Tape 6, Personal memoirs

68 Lowell W. Rooks, Director General of UNRRA to Remington, [Statement and covering letter] 15 May 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library MLMS 808, Box 17 69 Remington to Walker, 1 November 1946, Remington Papers Mitchell Library MLMS 808 Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence.

211 Fortune and subsequently having a home to keep up.70 I have to keep this law practice going and developing to the best of my ability – and that is a job I cannot leave’.71

Some of the pain of loss of what might have been an international diplomatic career could have been assuaged for Remington by his continuing intimacy with some of the friends made in his wartime service. Walker, with whom Remington pursued a lively correspondence after his resignation from UNRRA in 1946, is outstanding among them. As mentioned above, he and Walker worked for Minister Dedman in the

Department of War Organisation of Industry. Walker was established as an economist before the War began. The first of his books was published in 1933 and throughout the decade his contributions were published and his views quoted in newspapers in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.72 Postwar, Walker had decided to pursue a diplomatic career after the Senate of the University of Sydney refused to ratify his appointment as Professor of Economics. By the second half of 1946, he was a senior diplomat, Counsellor and Chargé-d’Affaires at the Australian Embassy in Paris, a member of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference,

Australian representative on the Executive Board of Unesco and delegate to its first general conference. He was subsequently appointed a member of the Unesco executive and Deputy Director General.73 Walker was liberal in politics and

Keynesian in economic theory, attributes which could have contributed to his

70 Remington had to take court action to regain occupation of his home in the Sydney suburb of Wollstonecraft. In the housing shortage immediately postwar, the rights of sitting tenants were protected by law. Reports of the case appeared in two newspapers, The Sun 6 November 1945 and The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 November 1945. 71 Remington to Walker, 16 May 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence. 72 E. Ronald Walker, Australia in the world depression. London: King, 1933. 73 Details of Walker’s diplomatic career are given in W.J.Hudson and Wendy Way, eds. Documents on Australian foreign policy, 1937-1949.vol,9 (1946) Canberra, AGPS, 1991, p.558.

212 rejection by the University of Sydney by what Remington termed ‘the older brigade’.74 Subsequent scholarship suggests that he was important in bringing to notice of his Australian colleagues Keynes’s publications of the beginning of the

1930s and that he made an important contribution to the Royal Commission on

Money and Banking in the 1930s.75

Their letters reveal how close Remington and Walker were in their political thinking.

They supported Prime Minister Chifley’s Bank Bill about which Remington reported:

‘you really can’t hear yourself think there’s so much uproar in the Press and round street corners and everywhere else’.76 Remington also misjudged the danger to the federal Labor Government when he told Walker that he didn’t expect a change of government though there was foresight in his remark that ‘of course, we must await the event as Labour [sic] can do lots of foolish things between now and then’.77

Walker also took an active interest in Remington’s public library preoccupations. He obtained an encouraging message from Unesco Director General, Julian Huxley which Remington read at the opening of the Riverina Regional Library Conference held in Griffith, New South Wales in 1947. Walker, as leader of the Australian

Delegation also helped in getting John Metcalfe to the Unesco Conference on Public

Libraries held in Mexico City at the end of 1947.78

74 Remington to Walker, 5 December 1946, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence. 75 Cain, Neville, Australian Keynesian: the writings of E. Ronald Walker 1933-36. Canberra: Australian National University, 1983. (Working papers in economic history (ANU) no.13) 76 Remington to Walker, 24 October 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence 77 Remington to Walker, 23 December 1948, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence. 78 Metcalfe impressed delegates and, no doubt with support from Walker, was invited by Director General Huxley to take the post of Head of the Public Library Section of the Unesco Secretariat for 12 months but the New South Wales Government would not grant him leave. John Wallace Metcalfe,

213

The number of letters Remington and Walker exchanged in the period 1946 – 1950 was remarkable; more so, was the complete confidence in which they placed in each other. Remington’s advice was always to the point; in reaction to some of Unesco’s grander pronouncements, he hoped that Walker would avoid “conceiving of culture in planetary terms” and warned him about ‘getting mixed up in a university of the air – hot air I assume’.79 Walker appreciated the opportunity not only to get insights from

Remington into happenings in Australia in politics and in the trade unions but also to write without reserve about the machinations and frustrations involved in his international post, including his frank assessment of the performance of Unesco

Director General Huxley and of some of the member governments.80

Walker also shared Remington’s passion for public administration and he did not demur at Remington’s frequent venting of his disdain for ‘the as-it-was-in-the- beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be boys, in the Commonwealth Departments, particularly those in the upper crust of Canberra’.81 Remington acknowledged that his criticism of the Public Service did not deter the New South Wales Group of the

Institute of Public Administration from electing him chairman and that ‘I feel quite honoured, as I am the only non-public servant who is a member of the I.P.A. here’.82

Remington could claim friendship with at least one of the upper crust in Canberra in

Developing a profession of librarianship in Australia: travel diaries and other papers of John Wallace Metcalfe. Ed. by W. Boyd Rayward. Canberra: ALIA Press, 1996, pages 171 and 187 n.46. 79 Remington to Walker, 6 January 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence 80 Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS 808 81 Remington to Walker, 10 April 1950, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence. The context of this remark is Remington’s comment on the whispered opposition to the appointment of Commander R.C.A.Jackson to head up the Department of National Development under Casey. Remington refers to Jackson as ‘My erstwhile lord and master’ – he had been Deputy Director-General of UNRRA. 82 Remington to Walker, 16 May 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence.

214 the person of W.E. (Bill) Dunk, Chairman of the Commonwealth Public Service

Board. He also told Walker that Fred Wheeler, First Assistant Secretary of the

Treasury, whom he had brought to Sydney to address his IPA Group, was ‘an exceedingly nice chap’.83

Remington’s criticism of Commonwealth Departments in his article in the Australian

Quarterly almost certainly helped him to lose the UNRRA job. He was grateful for his mention in Walker’s The Australian economy in war and reconstruction published in 1947.84 Walker continued with his diplomatic career as Permanent Representative to the United Nations and there is no record of any subsequent contacts he may have had with Remington. There is no doubt his friendship helped Remington to feel in touch with the wider world and to adjust to the necessities of earning his living and pursuing his enthusiasms in Australia.

He had never abandoned his passion for public library development. As a Trustee of the Public Library of New South Wales he was there when the new building was opened in November 1943. Before leaving UNRRA in 1946 he had resumed travels with Metcalfe and sometimes McGreal to many NSW towns to persuade councils to adopt the Library Act which had been proclaimed and the Library Board set up in

1944. The Free Library Movement files reveal visits in 1943 and 1944 to Broken

Hill, Casino, Cessnock, Coffs Harbour, Deniliquin, Grafton, Inverell, Lismore, and

Newcastle in New South Wales and to Cairns in Queensland. Several of the New

83 Remington to Walker, 10 April 1959, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS set 808, Personal correspondence. 84 Remington to Walker, 22 October 1947, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Box 10 Uncat MSS 808, Personal correspondence. ‘I desire especially [among colleagues in DWOI] to thank Mr G.C. Remington who critically reviewed many of the chapters and discussed the plan of the work in a most helpful manner’ in E. R. Walker, The Australian economy in war and reconstruction, Preface, p.viii.

215 South Wales towns were visited several times.85 He also resumed his radio talks.

His sister Doris wrote from the country in August 1947 to tell him how much she had enjoyed hearing his talk, and on the ABC two years later he spoke on ‘Library development in Australia’.86 Remington took pride in having ‘got McColvin’, that is to have taken a crucial part in the negotiations which in 1947 brought out Lionel

McColvin, Librarian of the Westminster Public Library in London, to survey and report on public libraries in Australia.87 McColvin told Remington that he had to embark upon the next stage of the Free Library Movement not only for Australia but for the world.88 In reply, Remington was quick to take up the theme, envisaging

Unesco involvement or an FLM for the then British Commonwealth under the auspices of the British Council.89

Remington was Acting Chair of the Library Board of New South Wales and when he was elected President of the Rotary Club of Sydney in 1948 library services became the focus of his first term project. Libraries and public administration were to be major preoccupations of Remington’s career as he entered the 1950s but were by no means his only areas of concern. In 1946 Education Minister Heffron appointed him

Deputy Chair of the New South Wales Documentary and Educational Films Council.

By the time he had resigned in 1956 he was Chairman of the Executive of what had

85 Premier McKell announced in November 1943 at the official opening of the new Public Library of New South Wales building that the Library Act would be fully proclaimed from 1 January 1944. This naturally proved a great stimulus to public library development in the State. 86 Doris Minter to Remington, 18 August 1947,FLM correspondence files, “M” 1M./Letters etc. She had heard his talk ‘last Monday afternoon’, that is 13 August 1947. Remington, ‘Library development in Australia/Talk, ABC Station 2BL Sydney, 17 July 1949, 10.05 am’. 87 Remington to Walker, 16 May 1947, ] 88 McColvin to Remington, 18 February 1947, SLNSW records, old files box 11, file ‘LR McColvin visit to Australia’. 89 Remington to McColvin, 27 February 1947, SLNSW records, old files box 11, file ‘LR McColvin visit to Australia’.

216 become the New South Wales Film Council.G90 He was appointed to the Board of

Rolls Royce in 1950 and he went on to several other directorships. His income in

1945 was nearly ₤2,000 excluding that derived from his law partnership.91 He and

Babe enjoyed a lively social life, in which they entertained and were invited to more functions than they could attend. They gained some expertise in presenting young ladies, usually to the State Governor, as debutantes. On one occasion, one of them was their daughter Susan.92 Whatever the disappointments of some aspects of his wartime and immediate postwar career, Remington had strengthened existing friendships and made many new ones. At the same time his antipathies to some

Commonwealth public servants had taken root and continued to be nourished by the turf wars in which the Public Library of New South Wales engaged with the National

Library of Australia. In the postwar world the once proud sovereign states had to recognize that, with the permanent loss to the Commonwealth of their power to impose income tax, ‘the balance of power tilted away from the states towards

Canberra’93. Remington, with Metcalfe as a strong ally, was unwilling and maybe unable to adjust to this new reality. And battles on a wider front awaited him in the next decade.

90 Announcement of appointment dated 10 December 1946 and Heffron to Remington 7 September 1956, accepting Remington’s resignation, Remington Papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 19. 91 Remington Papers, ML MS808, Box 17 (including ‘Household accounts’ for 1947). 92 ‘Debutantes at crowded Rotary ball’ SMH, 13 May 1949. There was a crowd of 1600 at the Trocadero and 21 debs who were all daughters and grand-daughters of Rotarians, and who were presented to Governor Northcott and Miss Northcott. They were ‘received by Mr Geoffrey Remington and Mrs Remington who was Matron of Honour and debutantes included their daughter Susan’. (Remington Papers Unsorted material, MS ML808, Box 32). According to Susan, an acquaintance asked her father what could he think to talk about to the young ladies, and he said ‘If all else fails, just kiss ‘em’. Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 11 September 2001. 93 Bolton, Geoffrey, The middle way 1942-1995. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996, p.28 (The Oxford history of Australia, vol.5)

217 Chapter 7

Mt Eliza

The information trail

Remington was able to resume his library interests as well as his law practice when he returned to live in Sydney in 1944. The incessant country train travel of the prewar years paid off in the virtual explosion of local government adoptions of the New

South Wales Library Act after the proclamation of its financial provisions in late

1944. ‘Within eighteen months, 32 New South Wales councils had adopted the Act,

7 were already providing library services and 16 were planning to begin during

1945’.1 The period marked the beginning of the great postwar optimism. Ida

Vincent points out that ‘The public library campaign benefited from the energy and optimism of the mid nineteen forties’.2 The Free Library Movement in New South

Wales put in an appearance in opening of new services or new branches of established services and reports of municipal generosity were gratefully received. One such was the Joint Coal Board’s ₤5,000 to assist the Council of the City of Greater Wollongong

‘in providing library service for people living in the outlying areas and the small mining towns and villages’.3

1 Jones, D. ‘Public libraries “institutions of the highest educational value”’, 2001, p.173 2 Vincent, Ida, ‘The campaign for public libraries in New South Wales, 1929-1950’ Libri v.31 no.4(1981): p.284 3 Simpson, Alderman, Chairman of the Library of the City of Greater Wollongong [Announcement, undated, c.1948] Remington Papers MItchell MLMS808 Box 14 Libraries-General.

218 At the same time, Remington’s proselytizing was not over. In June 1948 he addressed the conference of the Municipal Association of Victoria and sought to stir its members to action on public libraries with an assertion that ‘You are still at least sixty years behind England’. He went on immediately with the crueler jab that ‘Why you are even behind New South Wales in the provision of library services’. The speech was the product of an initial draft, probably by McGreal as Secretary to the

Library Board, to which Remington has added extensive alterations. McGreal did draft the letter sent by Remington to Prime Minister Chifley seeking tax concessions to public libraries established under the State Library Acts, upon the resolution of a meeting of State Library Boards of Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania,

Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Chifley replied that there was no provision possible under existing law and that he was not going to recommend any change. ‘Such concessions could not be confined to public libraries but I feel sure that you will appreciate the difficulties with which I am faced’.4

Remington did not give up pursuit of the Victorians, having described their Free

Library Service Board Act passed in 1946 as ‘little more than an indication of good intentions’.5 He asked Latham to spur on the Victorians and when the Chief Justice sent his regrets that he could not do much about them, Remington let him know that he had written to the Victorian Premier on the need for ‘someone able to kick the

Library Services Board of Victoria along’.6

4 Remington to Chifley, 22 January 1948; Chifley to Remington, 20 February 1948, Remington Papers MItchell MLMS808 Box 14 Libraries-General. 5 Municipal Conference paper, p.5 6 Remington to Latham, 7 June 1948; Latham to Remington, 15 June 1948; Remington to Latham, 21 June 1948, Remington Papers MItchell MLMS808 Box 14 Libraries-General.

219 From the 1950s Remington’s interest in libraries broadened into a concern with information services in general and with the new media by which people might be informed. A previous investment of his in goodwill paid handsomely when the

Australian Institute of Librarians (AIL) became the Library Association of Australia

(LAA) in 1950. After representations made through the Chief Justice, Sir John

Latham, who was President of the Association, the Carnegie Corporation of New

York resolved ‘that, from the balance available for appropriation, the sum of thirty- five thousand dollars ($35,000) be, and it hereby is, appropriated to the Library

Association of Australia, toward administrative expenses.’7 CCNY representative,

Whitney Hart Shepardson, pointed out to the Association’s President, Sir John

Latham, that ‘Our grant works out as slightly in excess of Mr Geoffrey Remington’s proposal of February 9th, but that slight excess, together with interest earned will give you a little looseness around the shoulders’. No doubt was left about who had earned this ‘looseness’ as Shepardson went on ‘It may be helpful for Mr Remington, speaking for the Association, has assumed quite a burden. Knowing him we are confident that he will work out the problem, under your leadership, so that at the end of five years the Association will be found strong, vigorous, and standing on its own feet’.8

This demonstration of his influence with the Carnegie Corporation was no doubt gratifying to Remington, but his attention was never lacking to the lesser challenges at home. Influenced by his time in DWOI and by the aspirations of the Research

Service of the Public Library of New South Wale to serve firms based in that State,

7 Florence Anderson, Assistant Secretary, CCNY to Latham (cc Remington) 19 March 1951, Papers of Sir John Latham, National Library of Australia, 1009/66/115. 8 Shepardson to Latham, 19 March 1951 (cc Remington), Papers of Sir John Latham, National Library of Australia, 1009/66/116-117.

220 Remington also concerned himself with the knowledge base on which Australian industries operated. Witness his article in the Australasian Manufacturer entitled

‘Libraries and the manufacturer’.9 His involvement in libraries was increased through the Library Board, of which he became Deputy Chairman in 1952.

His involvement in library matters was strengthened by his continuing service as a

Trustee of the Public Library of New South Wales. Gordon Richardson was Deputy

Principal Librarian and in the early 1950s, Remington and Richardson were members of a Working Party on Planning of National Bibliographical Services with H.L.

White, who was both Commonwealth National Librarian and Commonwealth

Parliamentary Librarian, Dr Ian Clunies Ross, head of the CSIRO, under the chairmanship of Sir John Morris, President of the Library Association and Chief

Justice of Tasmania.. The Working Party had been set up by resolution of the

Conference of Commonwealth and State Librarians in November 1953 and was to report to their next meeting. Clifford Burmester, from the Commonwealth National

Library staff, was secretary to the Working Party. According to his account,

Remington brought considerable pressure to bear on the Conference to give it permanent existence in order to weaken the Canberra library. He ‘had become so rabid in his hostility to the Commonwealth National Library that he was determined to stop it in its tracks, or, at least, to render it so weak that there could be no rivalry between it and the Public Library of New South Wales’.10

Burmester went on to report his recollection of the Working Party’s meeting in

Melbourne in January 1954 where ‘Remington launched himself into his most

9 G.C. Remington, ‘Libraries and the manufacturer’, The Australasian Manufacturer, 15 June 1950, p.91. 10 Burmester, C. Papers, National Library of Australia, MS2321, Series 1, Box 1, p.119

221 vitriolic attack on the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth National Library, its head and all its works’.11 The verbatim record of the meeting, on which the New South

Wales party had insisted, is not clear on the details of what seems to have been a tirade by Remington with which the reporter could not keep up. It is clear from the transcript that Remington had a great deal to say in trying to make the Commonwealth pay for the Working Party members’ expenses in attending meetings. Harold White remained cool throughout and the meeting recommended that a national planning body be set up.12 The Australian Advisory Committee on Bibliographical Services

(AACOBS) was the body set up. Burmester dismissed Metcalfe’s subsequent claim that he and Remington were ‘instrumental in establishing AACOBS to control the

Commonwealth National Library’.13

Remington pretended no great joy in his professional practice which subsisted almost entirely in commercial law. He referred in 1955 to his ‘law job’ as ‘often tedious but a necessity’.14 He seems also to have felt pressed financially. Robert Garran, first

Solicitor General of the Commonwealth long since retired but continuing as a dedicated Rotarian, asked Remington for a donation for the All Nations Club. In refusing, Remington cried poverty with the excuse that ‘Largely this is due to the depredations of your colleague and neighbour and fellow Rotarian, P.S, McGovern,

[Commissioner for Taxation] whereby, these days, Solicitors, and I particularly, hardly have a penny to bless themselves with’.15

11 Burmester, p.120 12 Record of proceedings, Working Party on Planning of National Bibliographical Services, Melbourne, 28 January 1954. National Library of Australia, Manuscripts, 603/02/00016 13 Burmester, p.120. In reality, on my observations as a member of the National Library of Australia staff from 1960 to 1969, Sir Harold White used AACOBS as his court to which the barons were summoned from the States and they came. 14 Remington to Hall, 19 October 1955, Remington Papers, State Library of New South Wales, Box 28, Mitchell Ms 808. 15 Remington to Garran, 25 November 1952, Remington Papers, Correspondence 1948 ML set 808

222

The tone was facetious, probably in accordance with the ethos of Rotary among members, but the sentiment seems real. Demands for provisional tax seem to have caused him stress but the many directorships obtained through his practice in the

1950s must have been useful. The most prestigious was Rolls Royce Motors of which he was Chairman. From then on he had a Roller to drive.16 Whatever his financial exigencies in the early 1950s, they did not preclude his acquiring land and building a house on the coast north of Sydney.

Terrigal and lifestyle

Henry Dangar, an artist and a great friend of Remington’s since their school days together at TAS (The Armidale School) and companion on his first overseas trip, lived in Terrigal. The Remingtons rented a cottage owned by Dangar on several visits and his daughter Sue recalled driving around in the rain when her father decided to buy a block above Scenic Drive. By December 1950 he had obtained permission of the Gosford Shire Council to build a house 1530 square feet in area at a cost of

₤2750.17 Remington was listed as the owner/builder of the house which was erected at 59 Bellevue Road, Terrigal. His daughter also recalled that Remington engaged his architect godson (John Allen) to design the house but rejected the design as

‘suburban’ and so designed it himself with the front as living rooms and kitchen to take advantage of the great views. One of Sue’s friends rated the design ‘elegant in

16 Susan Remington referred to a story her father often told, with constant embellishment, on one of his missionary journeys into the country with Metcalfe that they stocked the boot with laundry detergent of which there was a shortage in Sydney at the time. There was heavy rain and when they were greeted with a sea of bubbles as a leak in the boot had let lots of water in to mix with the detergent. Susan Remington, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 7 January 2003. 17 Gosford Shire Council minutes 7/12/50, Under H.I. building applications: 1213 from G.C. Remington owner/builder, dwelling, Lot 7 Bellevue Road, Terrigal.

223 its simplicity’.18 Sue gathered that some of the companies for which Remington worked as solicitor or director helped to build the house. She reported that her mother was distinctly unimpressed when Remington decided to do some painting with disastrous results after which a painter was employed. Sue also recalled a wall which her father built but ‘someone had to come in and tidy it up’.19

Sue’s memories of the great parties were confirmed by two of her friends who were her contemporaries.20 Especially notable were the Remingtons’ New Year’s Eve parties which became traditional and which attracted many friends, some of whom were owners of Hunter Valley properties. Among them were the Whites from

‘Belltrees’ who represented the best known of the great pastoral families of New

South Wales.21 Guests stayed to watch the sun rise and to breakfast on bacon and eggs. As well as the parties and the generous hospitality of their weekends, Sue’s friends remembered the interest which Remington took in their opinions. One of them described the Remington home as ‘a mecca for young people’ and referred to

‘Geoff’s ability to bridge the generation gap’ and his challenges to their ideas with argument pursued into the night.22

18 Elizabeth Bowman, interview with Carmel Maguire, 15 October 2006. She came from the land at Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley. Sydney: Seven Press, 1981. 19 Susan Mary Remington, interviews with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000, 11 September 2001, 7 Jan 2003. She died on 20 September 2003. 20 Brian France, interview with Carmel Maguire 27 October 2006 and Elizabeth Bowman, interview with Carmel Maguire, 15 October 2006. 21 Judy White in her White family history points out that the family was not given to extravagant demonstrations of wealth. Some of the men of the family were educated abroad, Patrick White for example, but choice of the New South Wales Central Coast for holidays betokens a simplicity and a far cry from the Riviera.(Judy White, The White family of Belltrees: 150 years in the Hunter Valley. Sydney: Seven Press, 1981.) 22 Brian France, interview with Carmel Maguire, 27 October 2006. He went on to become a Sydney stock broker.

224 Sue reported that her father did not go to the beach and that his gardening was usually confined to the ‘torture’ of bougainvilleas. The ‘torture’ was confirmed by one of

Sue’s friends who reported that ‘Father Remington loved the lawn in front and a grove of hibiscus all tortured into the same shape’.23 On his daughter’s report, he

‘listened to a lot of music so long as it was Beethoven’. In what may have been a piece of creative problem-solving, he gave one of the neighbours a Hill’s hoist to replace a clothes line which was obstructing the view. No wonder Remington pitied

Commander Jackson, once his boss as Deputy Director of UNRRA. When Jackson returned to take up the top position in a federal Government Department, Remington wrote to his friend, Public Service Board Chairman Dunk regretting that Jackson was likely to wear himself out in the service of the Commonwealth. In Remington’s opinion: ‘he is a lonely bloke with little to do but work and more work to fill up the 24 hours 365 days a year’ which was a pity since he was ‘such a charming and really human person’.24 Remington was neither lonely nor lacking in interesting work to pursue and an important undertaking was about to begin.

The road to Mt Eliza

Remington’s interest in public administration and his passion for ‘better men in government’ seem to have been increased by his wartime experiences.25 In 1947 he was elected chairman of the New South Wales Group of the IPA, and he became active in the Rotary Club of Sydney. He was Vice President for the year 1947/1948 and President for 1948/1949. As President he persuaded the Club’s Board that the establishment and development of library services in Sydney should be the aim for his

23 Elizabeth Bowman, interview with Carmel Maguire, 15 October 2006. 24 Remington to Dunk, 10 July 1950, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box35. 25 Remington, ‘The cry for better men in government’, Australian Quarterly v.12 (September 1940:36- 41. Reprinted Australian Quarterly v.72 nos. 5-6 (October-December 2000):54-57.

225 year in office.26 His interest in libraries did not cease with this Rotary project nor in his duties as Deputy Chairman of the Library Board and Public Library trustee. In

November 1953 he volunteered to draft the constitution of the newly constituted

Library Association of Australia. By then he had also taken the plunge into a new and important initiative.

In November 1952, he addressed the Rotary Club of Sydney’s Weekend Conference held in Kiama on the topic, ‘Fellowship and service: what else can the Rotary Club of

Sydney do in its Area?’. Remington began with self-mockery when he represented himself as ‘an aged and decrepit Past President’ and ‘of a very timid nature’, before plunging into a thoughtful and well-informed address. His argument for the need for better management in business and industry was practical and well-crafted for his audience. Continuing his refusal to recognize the divide between capital and labour, he singled out for mention the Trades and Labour Council as one of the other organizations which Rotary Club members should be asked for support. He presented the Rotarians with the model of the Harvard Graduate School of Business

Administration and quickly made obvious the much lesser scale of operation he envisaged. With a capital fund of ₤250,000 and an annual recurrent fund of ₤25,000, he claimed that the enterprise could be put under way. His final suggestion was that:

‘Our Club take the lead in establishing a graduate School of Business Administration in the University of Technology’.27

26 Susan Remington to Carmel Maguire, Communication, August 1999 27G.C Remington, ‘Fellowship and service: what else can the Rotary Club of Sydney do in its Area?’ Address to Rotary Club of Sydney’s Weekend Conference at Kiama, Sunday 28 November 1952. Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 30. The University of Technology, which grew out of the Sydney Technical College, was established on 27 July 1948 ‘to the rage and fierce objection of elements of the University of Sydney’ (Patrick O’Farrell, University of New South Wales, 1949-1999: a portrait. Kensington: UNSW Press, 1999, p.25). In 1958 the University of Technology became the University of New South Wales.

226

No doubt at Remington’s urging, the Club set up a Proposed School Committee which first met in December 1952. The University of Technology suggestion seems to have faded as Remington worked to widen interest in the project. He made an approach to

Professor S.J. Butlin, head of Economics, at the University of Sydney, suggesting how that University could be involved with Sydney Rotary. Butlin’s response was polite but not encouraging.28 By midyear 1953 the Rotary Committee had become the

Proposed School of Administration and Management Project Committee which resolved to write to Noel Hall, the Principal of the Administrative Staff College at

Henley in England, ‘seeking his opinion on possible establishment and running costs of a college or institute as the Committee proposes’.29 The Committee also submitted their report to the Board of Directors of the Rotary Club of Sydney, and the name of the Committee was changed to Committee on Training in Administration and

Management (CTAM), which first met in September and frequently thereafter.

From the outset Remington showed his sensitivity to Melbourne interests. The head offices of Australia’s largest and wealthiest companies were located there.

Remington was firmly convinced that most of the funding required for the college could and should be raised from Australian business and industry. Thus, as the minutes of the CTAM meeting held in December 1953 recognized: ‘Melbourne must be brought on board before setting too many things firmly’.30 A few weeks later,

Remington went to address the Vocational Services meeting of the Rotary Club of

28 Butlin to Remington, 15 July 1953, Remington Papers, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30 Butlin had been employed in DWOI as an economist of a salary ₤100 per annum less than Remington’s. See Chapter 6. 29 Rotary Club of Sydney, Proposed School of Administration and Management Project Committee, Minutes of meeting, 21 July 1953, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 30 CTAM meeting minutes 14 December 1953 Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30

227 Melbourne on ‘Business and its management’,31 The title is the same as the talk he had given to the Rotary Club of Sydney in Kiama the previous year, but the text was re-jigged and included a stirring call for support.

CTAM meetings were held monthly and Remington brooked no suggestion that the rest of the Rotary Club of Sydney was not ecstatic about the idea of formal management education. At the CTAM meeting in November 1953, Daniel McVey pointed out the difficulty which the Committee had met in getting the Sydney Club’s ordinary members interested in the idea and suggested that education about the project should take precedence over a legal framework for it. Remington obviously did not agree since he pressed on and moved that he be requested to draft a constitution by way of memorandum and articles for a company limited by guarantee. He proposed bringing out someone from the Graduate School of Business Administration at

Harvard at the same time. His motion on drafting of a constitution was approved but the minutes record that after discussion Remington moved that ‘no invitation be sent to anyone in America pending full consideration by the Committee following Mr Noel

Hall’s visit to Australia’.32

Hall was brought to Australia with British Council assistance, in 1954. Remington lobbied hard for the visit. He gave Hall a glowing recommendation to the CTAM meeting in March 1954 and clearly expressed the reason for the visit as ‘to help us to try and sell the idea of an Administrative Staff College here’.33 From their earliest correspondence, Remington seemed to have established rapport with Hall and sympathy with the Henley philosophy of management education. In selecting

31 CTAM meeting minutes 27 January 1954 Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30 32 CTAM meeting minutes 16 November 1953.- Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30 33 Rotary Club of Sydney, CTAM meeting 23 March 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30.

228 students, for example, Hall declared himself ‘not the least concerned when admitting to the college as to what their educational backgrounds may be’.34 This lack of emphasis on formal educational qualifications would have appealed to Remington.

Hall spent five weeks in Australia in September and October 1954, a time in which it has been reported that his ‘Australian sponsors made extensive use of him’35 In fact, his itinerary might have killed a lesser man. On the day after his arrival he went to

Canberra to call upon the Prime Minister, the Governor General, and the U.K. High

Commissioner. He gave addresses and met the leading figures in industry and commerce in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. In September 1954 he addressed a

Rotary Club lunch in Sydney attended by ‘425 representatives of the business and public life’.36 The pace seems only to have slackened with two weekends with the

Remingtons at Terrigal, which Hall in later correspondence referred to as ‘those very agreeable weekends’.37

Hall proved an agreeable personality, perceptive of the Australian situation at the time, and respectful of Remington’s efforts. With hyperbole worthy of Remington himself, Hall told members at the CTAM meeting in October 1954 that ‘I cannot put into words what the name of Geoffrey Remington now means’. He went on to explain that ‘All enterprises need a personal spark. Whenever I am associated with an enterprise I feel that if that spark is lacking the future is doomed. I cannot say that

34 Noel F. Hall, Address to CTAM meeting 22 September 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 35 A.T. Cornwall-Jones, Education for leadership: the international Administrative Staff Colleges 1948-1984. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, p.23. 36 The lunch took place on 7 September 1954 and is recorded in Rotary Club of Sydney Minutes of meeting 22 September 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 37 Hall to Remington, 24 April 1956, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 28.

229 about your enterprise.38. Only a month later the Committee carried Remington’s motion that a company limited by guarantee should be set up in the Australian Capital

Territory to be known as the Australian Administrative Staff College.39

Remington had no difficulty in preferring the Henley Administrative College model to the options he posed at the October CTAM meeting. Options for affiliation to the

Australian National University, or to the CSIRO or to one of the government- supported universities in the States were quickly put aside. As he pointed out,

Henley’s Memorandum and Articles ‘fit precisely into the provisions of our Company

Act and businessmen are used to handling an organisation of this nature’. He went on to reassure Hall that ‘You have resolved all our doubts and laid to rest our misgivings’.40 Not all Hall’s public addresses were as well attended as that in

Sydney in September, but the purpose of his visit was achieved in the excellent impression he created in the varied circles into which he was introduced. Remington was to use him, even over-use him, in seeking subsequent advice about all aspects of the Australian Administrative Staff College.

In accordance with the articles of association, the Staff College was to be governed by a Council to whom an Executive Committee was to report. Again Remington had left nothing to chance. At the last meeting of CTAM, he promised to ‘endeavour to prepare at least headings for the Minutes of the first meeting beforehand’.41 Before that meeting, Remington had lobbied relentlessly for support from business and

38 Minutes of CTAM meeting 22 September 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 39Minutes of CTAM meeting 7 October 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 40 Minutes of CTAM meeting 7 October 1954, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 30.

41 Rotary Club of Sydney CTAM, Minutes of meeting 14 November 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30.

230 industry. He pursued and won the head of Australia’s largest company, Sir Essington

Lewis, a man of mythical stature and integrity in the Australian community, to be the

Company Chairman. There was also nothing haphazard in the way in which he pursued other leading figures to make themselves available for the 20 positions on the

Council. The first meeting of the Council on 20 April 1955 was presented with the report of its Executive Committee which had appointed Remington as its Organiser,

Convenor and Chairman.42 In the Council meeting on the same day, Company

Chairman Lewis acknowledged that ‘the inspiring force and the organiser has been

Mr Remington and if it had not been for Mr Remington this meeting would not have taken place nor would the Company been formed’. He went on to suggest that ‘we appoint Mr Remington as the Organiser and Convenor not only of the Executive

Committee of which he is a member but also of the Council’.43

At that first meeting a deputation was appointed to approach the Prime Minister to seek exemption from taxation on donations to the College. No doubt Lewis’s status was a useful addition to Remington’s persistence and the exemption was granted in

July 1956.44 He continued with his efforts to recruit companies as members of the

Company and the very detailed minutes of the Council and Executive meetings reveal the energy with which Remington propelled the project. For example, the minutes of the second meeting of the Council in May 1955 disclose how quickly attention was focussed on decisions about the size and scope of the College’s future operation.45

42 Australian Administrative Staff College, Executive Committee, Report to Council, 20 April 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 43 Australian Administrative Staff College, Council, Minutes of first meeting, 20 April 1955, p.8, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 44 Australian Administrative Staff College, Council, Minutes of meeting, 20 July 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 45 AASC Council, Minutes of Council meeting 29 May, 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30.

231 Hall reported himself speechless with admiration with the progress made.46 The

Company’s committees contained the leaders of private business and industry. There was also one public servant among the Council members. This was Dr H.C. Coombs who was at that time Governor of the Commonwealth Bank and both his attendance record and his advice were sound.

The search for a Principal for the College was quickly addressed. The first advertisement for the position was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 22

August 1955, and Hall acknowledged seeing it in The Times in September.47

Remington had complained of neuritis during July and August,48 but this apparently did not lessen his activities since, at the same time, he went to Brisbane and spoke at the Biennial Conference of the Library Association of Australia, as a member of its

Executive. By the middle of September, approximately sixty replies had been received to the advertisement for College President.49 A month later, only twentyfour had been translated into applications, four from overseas and twenty from Australia.50

Remington presented a shorter list of twelve applicants to the AASC Council

Executive meeting in November. Then Remington offered the position to someone else who had not applied. In December he wrote to Hall:

I have had a turn of mind and, rightly or wrongly, have written direct to Eric

Avery asking him point blank, but entirely on behalf of myself alone, whether

he would be interested in becoming Principal of The Australian Administrative

Staff College.51

46 Hall to Remington, 9 July 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28. 47 Hall to Remington, 8 September 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28. 48 Remington to Hall, 27 July and 22 August 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28. 49 Remington to Hall, 17 September 1955, Remington papers ML MS 808 Box 28. 50 Remington to Hall, 19 October 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28. 51 Remington to Hall, 9 December 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28.

232

Avery had been Hall’s deputy at Henley. Such an approach would hardly have fallen within Remington’s warrant but could be regarded as evidence of his determination to get a Principal without delay and also one with thinking akin to his own. Happily,

Avery was not interested in the job since Remington was shortly obliged to cable Hall to ‘Hold everything’.52 The abrupt cessation of negotiations with Hall was caused by a letter from Canada addressed to Remington as Secretary of the Executive

Committee of the Australian Administrative Staff College, in which Sir Douglas

Copland expressed interest in the job.53

Copland was at the time Australia’s High Commissioner in Canada, highly regarded in academic and economic circles. He had been the first Vice Chancellor of the

Australian National University and had previously excelled in his wartime role as

Prices Commissioner and in ‘providing a link between the Prime Minister and senior administrative people’.54

As soon as Remington and Hall shared awareness of Copland’s interest in the

Principal’s position, they exchanged frank opinions on him. Remington seems to have had only the briefest previous contact with Copland whose cooperation with

Tate and Cunningham of the ACER he had sought in creating a Free Library

Movement in Victoria. Copland’s only reply was a two-line formal

52 Remington to Hall, 5 January 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28. 53 Copland to Secretary, Executive Committee, Australian Administrative College, 30 November 1955, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 30. 54 Butlin, S.J. War economy 1939-1942, Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1985, p.494. (Australia in the war of 1939-1945, series 4: Civil, vol.3)

233 acknowledgement.55 Hall on the other hand pronounced Copland ‘a friend of mine for a great many years’ and thought that ‘the great concentration on detail over the first three years which the development of the College will require would bore

Copland and that he would not do much more than use it as a sounding board for interventions in public life’.56 While Remington still regretted Avery’s lack of interest, he reported that: ‘I would expect – but I could be wrong – that if and when

Sir Douglas’s hat is in the ring his supporters will be prepared to jump in after it and do battle with those who may hold a different point of view’.57 Hall warned that if

Copland was appointed, ‘you had better quickly look for somebody who knows what diversity there is between an administrative staff college and a university, to be his

Director of Studies and to do the work’.58 Hall’s wariness did not prevent Remington coming to the conclusion that: ‘Speaking quite personally, we believe there is a lot to be said for Sir Douglas Copland. . .We should have a lot to get from him during the first five years or so’.59

As soon as the College Committees were made aware of Copland’s interest they put

Remington, as Chairman of the Executive Committee, in charge of communications with him. After the Executive meeting in February 1956, Remington told Copland that the Executive would unanimously recommend his appointment to Council and that a place for the College would be rented near Melbourne. He also sent the

Company’s Articles and List of members, along with the names of Council members

55 Remington to Copland, 14 January 1937; Copland to Remington, 18 January 1937, FLM Correspondence files 1936-1938, no.3 file: Letters fromO.1 to U.1, Remington papers, ML MS 808 56 Hall to Remington, 19 January 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 57 Remington to Hall, 25 January 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808 Box 28.

58 Hall to Remington, 2 February, 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 59 Remington to Hall, 20 February 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

234 and a statement setting out the aims of the College.60 Copland cabled that he was interested in the position and was consulting the Australian Government to negotiate a release date.61 He professed himself ‘honoured’ to receive Remington’s letter concerning the offer of the position and regarded the Articles of Association as seeming ‘to offer a sound basis for future development’.62 The College Council in

April 1956 unanimously endorsed Copland for the position with a salary of ₤6,000 per year63, and he was sent an offer by cable on 5 April.64 From then on, he and

Remington were in constant correspondence. Unfortunately, the cordiality of their initial correspondence was to be short lived. The seeds of conflict between ‘Dear

Geoff’ and ‘Dear Douglas’ had been sown well before the Coplands’ ship left

England, and well before Remington joined them in Fremantle to share the voyage to

Melbourne.

Remington v. Copland

Conflict between the two men was inevitable. There was a clash of cultures as well as personalities. Douglas Copland was four years older than Remington and was a distinguished academic and experienced diplomat as well as a noted economist. He had been knighted in 1950 and in 1955 he was serving in a senior diplomatic post as

Australia’s High Commissioner in Canada. Remington was a lawyer specializing in commercial cases who had been effective in obtaining free public library legislation in

New South Wales and who was an active seeker of improvements in public administration and in society generally. Neither his wartime career nor his time in a

60 Remington to Copland, 24 February 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 61 Copland to Remington, cable, 29 February 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 62 Copland to Remington, 29 February 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 63 Australian Administrative College Council, Minutes of meeting 5 April 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 64 Remington to Copland, cable 5 April 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

235 United Nations agency could be rated a diplomatic success.65 Despite the impressive network of contacts Remington had achieved among politicians, businessmen and public servants, and a panoply of overseas contacts, except for his wartime stint in

Melbourne, he had never worked in any other city than Sydney, let alone in any other country. From the outset the likelihood must have been remote that Copland would be happy to work under Remington’s direction as the Chairman of the Executive

Committee of the Council of the Australian Administrative Staff College.

Copland’s tenure of his position began on 1st September 1956 and he was to reach

Melbourne on 24 October. The College Executive Committee, mainly in the person of Remington, busied itself with seeking suitable accommodation for the College.

Sites in Sydney and Melbourne had been considered over the life of the project and

Remington spoke to architects and real estate agents.66 Sir Norman Myer’s offer of his firm’s holiday house, Norman Lodge, at Mt Eliza was carefully explored. The

Council agreed that it could be used but only on a temporary basis and that permanent premises had to be obtained as soon as possible.67

Rumblings in Remington’s relationship with Copland had begun well before this. By

May 1956 Remington was calling upon Hall for advice on how to cope with Copland, specifically on his wish to employ Maurice Brown, Registrar of the University of

65 Evidence of Remington’s lack of knowledge of the tall poppies in Australian diplomacy is provided by his reaction to Copland’s suggestion that, since Minister Casey would want to make a statement about his resignation as Canadian High Commissioner, Remington should ‘contact Tange’. Tange, later Sir Arthur Tange, was secretary to the Department of External Affairs, that is the head of the Department and one of the most influential members of the Commonwealth Public Service.. Remington’s response is to report to Copland that he has been in touch with ‘Tange, Mr Casey’s secretary in Canberra’. Copland to Remington, 29 February 1956: Remington to Copland, 28 March 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 66 Remington to Hall, 15 October 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 67 Australian Administrative Staff College Council, Minutes of meeting , 18 October 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

236 Malaya, as Registrar for the new College. Remington had also been advised by

Essington Lewis that he should ensure that Copland ‘was quite clear on the Council’s points of view, and, more particularly, that the Council would only act on the recommendation of the Executive Committee’. Remington was also nervous about

Copland’s likely public statements. He explained to Hall that: ‘I have only won and will retain the confidence of the members of the College and the companies and incorporations which they represent while I do the job and shut up about it’.68 Hall readily agreed that Brown, Copland’s choice for College Registrar was not only too young for the job but that it was ‘important for the Empire’ that he should remain in his post at the University of Malaya. Hall offered sympathy but no solutions:

I sympathise with the possible difficulties about Copland using the Australian Administrative Staff College as a sounding board to make Copland-like pronouncements on any matter of public import…How far you will be able to go with a man of Copland’s age and status I do not know.69

Remington went to Perth after the October College Executive meeting in Melbourne to join the Coplands on the ‘Iberia’ for the four days’ sailing to Melbourne.

Remington had sent Copland 3-1/2 pages of typescript telling him what he should say to the press on his arrival.70 This letter crossed with one from Copland which

Remington acknowledged as ‘setting down in good robust commonsense terms all that he thought the College should be and how it should be developed’. He added that ‘I personally, would support everything he says but he will have to go carefully in translating his proposals into pounds, shillings and pence’.71

68 Remington to Hall, 24 May 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 15. 69 Hall to Remington, 30 May 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 15. 70 Remington to Copland, September 1956, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 28.

71 Remington to Hall, 25 September 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 15.

237 On the eve of his departure from London, Copland told Remington that he was

‘delighted that you will be coming to the ship at Fremantle and that we shall have the opportunity of long talks on the way across the Bight’.72 On arrival in Melbourne,

Copland acknowledged to the College Council that the ‘long talks’ had been ‘very profitable’ and in them ‘we were able to clarify a whole lot of points relating to the establishment of the College’.73 Copland’s generosity smacked of heroism beside

Remington’s report in his correspondence with Hall that he had discharged his responsibility to tell Copland that from then on ‘he was an employed person who had to conform to the standards of the business world and work with and under the general direction of an Executive Committee’. The distinguished scholar and diplomat was also told that ‘the days of academic freedom were over and he was not to speak on any economic or other subjects except if he was fully prepared to take the consequences whatever they might be.’ Moreover, Remington reported that ‘After a little while, the distinguished gentleman was most awfully nice about it’. Despite his mocking tone, Remington seems to have been on the brink of conversion as he confessed that ‘I did not know him well if at all, before meeting him at Fremantle but

I now agree that, taking all in all, we have been most fortunate in the choice of our first Principal’.74

However benign the effects of the sea voyage may have been on Remington, his determination to keep a tight rein on Copland’s spending did not lessen, as the widening gulf between their expectations of the scale, scope and style of the College’s operations became more obvious. Soon after Copland’s arrival in Melbourne, he

72 Copland to Remington, 25 September 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 73 Copland, Address to AASC Council meeting, 20 July 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 74 Remington to Hall, 9 November 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

238 addressed the AASC Council and told them that he recognized his new position as different from anything with which he had been associated. He also gave a nod towards the limitation of his freedom of speech, as he acknowledged: ‘I suppose I have a reputation for forthright talking and that has never done me any harm or done anybody else any harm, but I can see we do not want to be on the front line of any sort of controversies.’75 A week later, in his address to the Rotary Club of Sydney,

Copland paid generous tribute to Remington as ‘an intrepid spirit’ who had done ‘so much towards advancing this cause’ for which he had assembled ‘a galaxy of talent representing all sections of industry, commerce and finance in Australia’.76 So far so good. But peace was shortlived.

A week later, Remington was complaining to Hall in a ‘very confidential and urgent’ letter that he found Copland ‘an adolescent who may become tedious as time goes on’. The immediate cause of conflict was Copland’s staff requirements, which included ‘a man secretary/assistant, a senior secretary/stenographer. and two stenographer/typists’. In answer to Remington’s demur, Copland let him know forcefully that ‘this was only a nucleus to get him started’. Remington huffily reported to Hall: ‘I am informed by one who has known him well that the Noble

Knight must have his Court’. How little intention Remington had of stepping aside from the management of the College is revealed by his request to Hall in the same letter to prepare a brief, ‘as if for an architect’, for College premises. 77

75 Copland, Address to AASC Council meeting, 20 July 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 76 Copland, Address to Rotary Club of Sydney, 6 November 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30.

77 Remington to Hall, 16 November 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30.

239 The Executive Committee recommended that Copland’s accommodation at the Hotel

Windsor be covered, along with his actual fares and ₤7 per day when he was travelling. Appropriate Melbourne offices were to be rented for the Principal with employment of one secretary/stenographer. Employment of Brown as Registrar and of

Slater as Accountant was also recommended. Moreover, Brigadier A.T. Cornwall

Jones the then Director of Studies at Henley was to be appointed to a similar position at AASC. ₤200 more each was to be obtained from the member firms. A working account of ₤250 was to be opened at a Melbourne branch of the Bank of New South

Wales to be operated by the Principal, but ‘cheque books could be under the control of the Melbourne office of Cooper Brothers Way & Hardie’. Three Council members baulked at this recommendation and Chairman Lewis pointed out:

If he is the Principal and he is going to be responsible for that money, he must draw his own cheques for whatever the purpose is and if there is any question it would come from the Executive Committee. We could not say to him “You can only draw cheques for this and for that”.78

Later events suggest that Remington ignored this expression of the Chairman’s will.

Before the end of November, Copland had acquired a Melbourne office for the

College at 259 Collins Street and from there he sent his ‘Memorandum for the

Executive from the Principal’. In six pages he set out his views of staff and site problems and the next day he sent a curriculum vitae for each of the staff he wanted appointed. Copland also wanted the first session of the College to begin in July 1957 and wanted the site settled. Under the heading, ‘AASC/Problems of basic policy,

Copland asked for ‘a lengthy meeting with the Executive.79 In December the

78 Australian Administrative Staff College, Council, Minutes of meeting 29 October 1956. Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 79 Copland, Memorandum for the Executive from the Principal, 26 November 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30.

240 Executive raised the Principal’s ‘Imprest Account’ to ₤500.80 Remington’s attempts to keep a tight rein on College expenditure were soon to be threatened by events in the

New Year. Clearly Copland was just as unlikely as Remington to take a backward step in control of the College.

From his first sighting of Norman Lodge Copland was unimpressed, and he decided on another property in the Mount Eliza neighbourhood, which he deemed far more suitable. This was Manyung, a property belonging to the bus, airline and travel entrepreneur, Reginald Ansett. Copland found Manyung ‘broadly speaking’ capable of meeting the College’s minimum needs ‘subject to some alterations’. He also discussed its purchase with Ansett who offered to sell for ₤250,000. Copland strongly recommended its purchase.81 Presumably Copland’s venture into property negotiations seriously upset Remington’s cost conscious calculations as well as his proprietary attitude to the College. Again the conflict is reflected in his letters to

Hall. In mid January, he reported that when he accused Copland of trying to take matters of policy from Executive Committee hands ‘the noble knight addressed himself in gutter abuse to me, of which by the way he seems to be quite a master and very fluent’. Copland had, moreover, approached College sponsors direct.82 It took

Remington five weeks to pass on the draft letter to sponsors asking for funds to purchase ‘Manyung’ prepared by Copland for Lewis’s signature.83 Copland was not willing to wait. He told Remington:

While I have had no information from you as to how the appeal for funds for the purchase of “Manyung” has been proceeding, I

80 AASC Executive Committee Minutes of meeting, 13 December 1956, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 81 Copland to Remington, 2 January 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30. 82 Remington to Hall, 17 January 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 19. 83 Copland to Remington, 5 February 1957; Remington to Lewis, 13 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

241 wish to report that I have arranged with Mr Norman Jones and Mr Geoffrey Grimwade [the two Melbourne members of the AASC Executive] that we would approach certain companies.

General Motors and Ford had responded with ₤10,000 each while Consolidated Zinc and North Broken Hill both sent ₤5,000. Copland also told Remington that they were sounding out others.84 Remington had heretofore been punctilious in his control of communication with donor companies. Even though Remington seemed to have regarded it as lèse majesté, Copland’s impatience provided the spur to ensure that the

Chairman’s letter asking for funds to buy ‘Manyung’ was quickly finalized and sent to all 37 sponsors between 16 and 20 March.85

Lack of respect between Remington and Copland went two ways. Copland resented that Remington did not ‘even think it necessary to pay me the courtesy of telling me that you were convening a meeting of Council, let alone consulting me’.86 At the meeting, Copland reported his ‘grave difficulties’ regarding College accounting and office procedures while Remington reported that the Executive had not been able to agree on ‘the desirability of a specific definition of the Principal’s functions’.87

Grimwade gave an absent Executive member an account of the proceedings as ‘a little uncomfortable, as before, on the executive authority angle which I know has reduced

Copland almost to breaking point’. At lunch after the meeting with Grimwade,

Coombs, Copland and Brown, ‘Coombs gave it as his opinion that the only solution was to appoint the Chief Executive Chairman of the Executive Committee’.

Grimwade agreed. ‘Add to that [i.e. Copland’s dissatisfaction] the incompatibility of the two personalities involved and we are quite obviously heading for a bust-up’.

84 Copland to Remington, 12 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 85 Letter to sponsors, 20 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 86 Copland to Remington, 15 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28. 87 AASC Council, Minutes of meeting, 21 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30..

242 While he did not want to do Geoff Remington out of a job and acknowledged that he had done a good one, ‘the need to call on his services has passed’ He asked Harman to discuss these suggestions with Sydney Executive Committee members.88

On March 23, three days short of Remington’s departure for England at the invitation of the Rolls Royce Company, Coombs sent his views to Remington on the future management of the AASC and asked they be put before the Executive Committee. ‘I feel that it is essential to place upon the Principal as early as practicable the full responsibilities of the Chief Executive of the College. . .it should be clearly stated that the Principal is the Chief Executive of the College and all action taken with the authority of the Council should be taken by or through him.’ An Executive

Committee should continue on behalf of the Council between its meetings and to provide guidance and support to the Principal, but appointment of the Principal as the

Chairman of the Executive Committee would simplify procedures, ‘clarify present uncertainties’ and ‘facilitate the effective establishment of the College’.89

Copland had indeed reached the end of his tether as he complained to Hall, whom

Remington was about to visit at Henley, that ‘in a varied career I have had many crosses to bear, but none equal to him’ and ‘I suggest, therefore that you make a cautious interpretation of Remington’s story, whatever it may be, and particularly of his ideas of what functions a Principal should exercise’. He went on to remind Hall that ‘Actually you once dropped a hint to me which suggested you might have had some misgivings about Remington. He also told me you had said to him that when they had a Principal he should disappear from the scene. How right you were’.

88 Grimwade to Harman, 22 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 30..

89 Coombs to Remington, 23 March 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

243 Copland claimed to be able to see a humorous side since ‘We are establishing a

College to study administration at the highest level. The present state of the actual administration in the College itself is just about the most confused and inept that I have ever known’.90

The likelihood of Remington’s disappearance from the AASC scene was remote. No doubt in response to reports reaching England, Harman sent Remington a cable at

Rolls Royce works at Derby to assure him ‘Everybody desirous you continue chairman’.91 On his return to Australia, Remington asked Rolls Royce management for a contribution to the College from the Australian branches with the assurance that he was to continue as a member of the Council even though the Executive Committee was to be disbanded..92 Remington worked with his Executive Committee members on the recommendation to Council that ‘the Principal, being the Chief Executive

Officer of the College, should now and henceforth be responsible for both internal control and external relations, subject only to the policy laid down and any directions given by the Council’ and that the resignation of the members of the Committee be accepted.93

The AASC Council at its May meeting disbanded the Executive Committee and put in its place a Standing Committee and elected Remington as a member.94 Remington refused to believe that the Council’s declaration that Copland was CEO meant that he

90 Copland to Hall, 26 March 1957, Mt Eliza Archives. 91 Harman to Remington, 11 April 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 92 Remington to Hinkly, 8 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 93 Remington to members of the Executive Committee, 14 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 94 The Council of the College resolved at its meeting on 16 May 1957 on the advice of the Executive Committee that ‘the executive purposes for which it was appointed having been fulfilled that the resignation of the members of the committee be accepted and the Executive Committee disbanded’.

244 could take over control of the funds. Remington refused to hand over a cheque to

Ansett’s solicitors to cover the deposit for Manyung.95 When Copland wrote asking him to recall the Council decisions regarding his control of money, Remington replied stiffly that: ‘I have received a letter from you undated’ and that he could ‘only deal with ‘Resolutions of the Council. . .found in Minutes of the Council meetings which have been approved and signed by the Chairman’. He was also writing to the

Chairman and would send a copy of the letter to him.96

Remington told Chairman Lewis that ‘I do not want to appear to be in the slightest degree pedantic on this matter’ and pointed out that ‘in one sense this “College” as we call it is a Company’ and ‘we must, particularly as regards the disposal of moneys, scrupulously carry out the provisions of the articles of association’. Whether Lewis appreciated this lack of pedantry is not recorded but Remington’s lengthy letter ended with a reminder to Lewis that ‘the Council as a company has direct and implied obligations set out in the articles of association of the College as a company. It is these articles which provide the machinery by which the members of the company come together and it is in these articles and the memorandum that donations were made allowable deductions from the income of the donor’ He attempted a final jab at

Copland with the remark that some ‘men of good will have considered the purchase

[of Manyung] extravagant’.97

95 Remington to Hedderwick, Fookes & Alston, solicitors, 21 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 96 Copland to Remington, undated; Remington to Copland, 22 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28.

97 Remington to Lewis, 22 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28.

245 While Remington seemed impregnable in his unyielding defence of the Company’s articles, he had felt pressure of disapproval. Thus he greeted opportunity to talk to a fellow solicitor on the matter as ‘a breath of fresh air’, especially as one of his ‘more practical business colleagues’ had called him ‘a pettifogging lawyer’ because of his insistence on the articles and the ‘machinery’ by which the company had come together. Remington’s failure to see any particular difficulty for the College administration in getting cheques signed by Council members either in Melbourne or in Sydney might have been just disingenuous. 98 In the context of the battle for control of the College, the clumsy cheque-signing protocols were also useful in delaying the handover of financial control to Copland. Remington had made a show of reluctance when he told the other members of the Executive that he would only be prepared to be chairman of the newly formed Standing Committee ‘if it was the wish of all members of the Committee that I occupy this position’.99 Clearly that was not the wish of the majority.

Remington took two months to pass on to the College auditors, Price Waterhouse, confirmation of the Council resolution that ‘all correspondence past and current relating to membership of or contributions to the College and all books of account and other financial records of the College be delivered to the Principal and that correspondence concerning the membership and contributions, in common with other correspondence of the College be conducted henceforward by the Principal’.100 At the same time Remington seems never to have neglected opportunity to needle

98 Remington to I.A.Forest, Hedderwick, Fookes & Alston, solicitors, 24 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 99 Remington to Norman Jones [M/D BHP], 21 May 1957, Remington papers, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 28. 100 Remington to Price Waterhouse, 15 August 1957, Remington papers, ML MS 808, Box 28.

246 Copland. One instance was his complaint in September that the proposed Annual

Report for the College was not in appropriate form.101

The fallout from the incompatibility of the two protagonists inevitably affected the other players in the drama. Roy Harman, head of the Colonial Sugar Refining

Company Limited in Sydney, a great supporter of the College from the beginning, shared his distress at Remington’s treatment with Hall. He wrote of the ‘sorry affair whereby Geoff Remington was ousted from a leading part in the College. This was something which upset me very much, something which I could not stop, something which at root was brought about by the diametrically opposed ways of working of

Douglas and Geoff’. In spite of this, Harman reported ‘a very satisfactory meeting at the Staff College about mid-way through the session’ Harman warned that if Hall was to visit in a year or so ‘You will have to beware of the “dragon” – Sir Douglas- who is a very good principal and has taken this thing to heart. He has undoubtedly done much to make it successful, but, by Jove, he is a steam-roller’.102

Hall’s reply admitted hitherto unexpressed misgivings about Remington and revealed the rather awkward position into which the two protagonists had put him. ‘I have been aware that relations between Copland and Remington had become impossible and that Remington’s association with the Australian College had been terminated’.

Hall was misinformed on this score perhaps by wishful thinking on the part of his informant. But the evidence supports his claim that ‘the moment that Douglas

Copland’s hat was thrown into the ring I knew that there would be trouble’. The horns of his dilemma between the two personalities was obvious in his strategy of

101 Remington to Copland, 8 September 1957, Remington papers, , Mitchell Library MS 808, Box 19. 102 Harman to Hall, 18 December 1947, Mt Eliza Archives.

247 keeping on friendly terms with Remington while hoping that no one tells Copland about the congratulatory telegram sent to Remington at the beginning of the first

College course on his having done ‘really the most remarkable job’. Hall added the riders that ‘I also think he is most difficult to get on with. I am hoping to see him before long.’103 Hall’s correspondence with Remington suggests that they were the best of friends, but Hall can hardly be blamed for his attempts to extricate himself from the Mt Eliza dilemma.

Copland informed the College Council at the end of 1958 that he wished to resign from 1 June 1959 Remington wrote ‘in confidence’ to Hall immediately after

Chairman Lewis had read out Copland’s letter of resignation. Remington’s hope was that Copland would be succeeded by Cornwall Jones who was already on the staff as

Director of Studies. Cornwall Jones who had been recruited from Henley fitted very much better Remington’s concept of the job. Despite their battles, and because they were over, Remington was generous in his valedictory when he wrote: ‘As first

Principal of the College Sir Douglas has done a first-class job of making the College a going concern and as Principal has been invaluable in keeping in touch with its supporters’.104

There appears no similar final word on Remington from Copland. Remington’s intransigence in insisting upon the narrow rules on which the College company had been set up was understandably galling to Copland. On the other hand, the rules suited their creator very well. Remington was punctilious in fulfilling what he saw as his statutory duties to the companies which had donated funds. These duties also

103 Hall to Harman 27 December 1957, Mt Eliza Archives. 104 Remington to Hall, Remington to Hall, 9 October 1958, Mt Eliza Archives.

248 provided the excuse for his tenacious control over the College funds and by this means retaining control of the enterprise once Copland had not only found his feet but also enlisted powerful allies such as Coombs. On the other hand, without

Remington’s initiative there would have been no Australian Administrative Staff

College and no Copland.

The clash of values between founder and principal was inevitable. Copland was already a citizen of the new postwar world. Beside him, Remington, cultivated, benign, liberal in his politics, motivated to improve the world as he knew it, was of another age. His previous experience with great men had not lessened his horror at the thought of extravagance with other people’s money. His wartime experience, with E.G. Theodore for example, had not helped him cope with Copland.105

Apparently unaware of changes in postwar society that led to Australia’s dawning affluence, Remington was surprised if not shocked when, early in their acquaintance,

Copland made it clear that he expected his wife to be part of official entertaining.

The age of equality of the sexes was dawning in the place of the old-fashioned courtesy of ‘the ladies God bless’em’ variety. Copland had come to Melbourne with a long line of successful posts behind him and was at least a minor figure on the world stage. His record was not without personal conflicts which had caused resentment.

One such was that with Keith Hancock which is recounted in Jim Davidson’s biography.106 But Copland was used to working on a large canvas and certainly not being subject to stringent curbs on his access to the funds he deemed necessary to do the job. While neither of the protagonists come out of the Mt Eliza conflict

105 See G.C.Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6, Tape 6: Personal memoirs. 106 Jim Davidson, A three-cornered life: the historian W.K. Hancock. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010, p.247

249 particularly well, some of Remington’s behaviour smacks of meanness of spirit, only elsewhere displayed in his tilts at the windmills of Commonwealth Government power and influence as represented by the Commonwealth National Library.

Remington seems to have given no expression of his disappointment in the lessening of his influence over the AASC and there were many other matters which continued to elicit his energetic interventions which he managed from his expanded premises at

125 York Street. He had moved there in mid 1956 after more than 25 years in

O’Connell Street.107 In the next decade he assumed more of the role of elder statesman and trusted company director.

107 Remington to Hall, 1 August 1956, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 28.

250 Chapter 8

The end of a full life

Elder statesman

At the graduation ceremony for Engineering and Commerce students at the University of New South Wales in April 1960, the University Chancellor and New South Wales

Public Service Board Chairman, Wallace Wurth, introduced Geoffrey Remington as

‘one of the most distinguished citizens of this State’.1 Remington’s claims to fame were enumerated in Wurth’s introduction which gave the flavour of a varied career, concerned not only with business interests based in commercial law, but with the creation of social capital in his active championship of public administration, management education and libraries for the people. Remington’s address served up the mixture of congratulation on the graduates’ achievement and exhortation for their future which was usual at the time. While some of the exhortation was salutary, it was never lugubrious. Remington told them that in their careers the ‘middle twenty- five years are the significant years, the useful years, and about half of this time we are sleeping, eating or otherwise relaxing’. He then warned:

That leaves us little more than twelve years, in actual time, in which we may, if we wish, add our morsel to the useful work of the world. It leaves us twelve years in which to work out our way of life and make our contribution to the sometimes divine, and always fascinating human comedy!

His remarks no doubt seemed apt at that time but some of his advice to the graduates might seem subversive in Australian universities now. Remington abjured them:

1 Remington, G.C. The useful years: occasional address at the conferring of degrees of the University of New South Wales on April 27, 1960. . .Sydney: 1960, 10p.

251 ‘Don’t de-humanise yourself in your quest of either work or money. Life is too full of other interesting things. . .’ Along with graceful tributes to Frank Tate, John

Metcalfe and Wallace Wurth, Remington’s final advice to the graduates for ‘a new life opening ahead’ was to: ‘Live it with tenacity and courage, but, above all, live the full life, and enjoy yourself doing it’.2

In his own life, by 1960 Remington was well placed to enjoy the honours and privileges which came to him and he proceeded to do so.3 He was awarded a CMG, on the initiative of S.F. Kellock and J.G. Thornton, on behalf of the Australian Groups of the Royal Institute of Public Administration. A senior bureaucrat, a Member of

Parliament, a well-known academic economist, a distinguished librarian, and the nation’s foremost industrialist wrote letters of recommendation. Refusal would have been very unlikely for an honour recommended by Sir William Dunk CBE, head of the Commonwealth Public Service Board, Mr Hubert Opperman OBE MP, Sir John

Crawford, head of the Research School of the Pacific Studies of the Australian

National University, Mr John Metcalfe, Principal Librarian of the Public Library of

New South Wales, and Mr Essington Lewis, Chairman, Broken Hill Proprietary

Company Limited.4

Spanning the library world

2 ibid 3 He obviously found continuing relevance in The useful years, the record of his graduation address, since he ordered 500 copies of it from the printers, John Fairfax & Sons Limited, five years after its delivery. 4 S.F. Kellock and J.G. Thornton, Statement in support of application for award of an honour by the Royal Institute of Public Administration, Australian Groups, August 1959. National Archives of Australia, Canberra Office, Prime Minister’s Department, file no.58/2183, ‘G.C. Remington/Civil honour’.

252 The Library Board of New South Wales had been fully constituted in 1944 with the implementation of the Library Act 1939. Remington was Deputy Chairman from

1952. The public libraries in New South Wales continued to spread. An early 1949 report referred to the 58 public libraries opened in country towns and Sydney suburbs since the end of the war’.5 But the dizzying pace of their creation in the late 1940s and early 1950s was over. So were the conflicts engendered – the most notable of which with the Mayor of Newcastle and the group supporting the School of Arts there is described above in Chapter 4. In April 1961, as mentioned in Chapter 7,

Remington’s work on the Library Board in promoting information services to industry earned him a State Government grant to study problems associated with provision of information services to industry in Great Britain, the United States and Canada.6 His interest in the part libraries might play in such services was of long standing, witness his 1950 article in The Australasian Manufacturer.7 Always adept at managing the public administration and business strands of his career, between 12 April and 1 July

1961 he combined his overseas library study tour with visits to Rolls Royce executives and works in the United Kingdom and the Americas made at the

Company’s invitation. He was Chairman of the Board of Rolls-Royce of Australia

Pty Ltd and his standing with the overseas principals may be discerned from the

Company’s willingness to provide ₤1440 sterling to cover the cost of the round trip for Mrs Remington and himself.8 The extent of the itinerary should have satisfied

5 ‘200,000 new readers seek solid books…’ Sunday Herald, 6 March 1949. 6 Remington Papers, ML MS808, Box 17A Library Board. 7 G.C. Remington, ‘Libraries and the manufacturer’, The Australasian Manufacturer, 15 June 1950, p.91. 8 Itinerary, 12 April 1961: W. Clark, Rolls Royce, Derby to Remington, 1 March 1961, Remington Papers, ML MS808, Box 34C. Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’

253 both sponsors, since it covered 19 cities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, India,

Turkey, Greece, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.9

Remington left no stone unturned in his preparations for the trip and no notable person in Rolls Royce or in the international library world was neglected. Nor was any potentially useful member of the Australian diplomatic service left unaware of his intending presence in their area. The Commercial Counsellor at the Embassy in

Bangkok invited the Remingtons to dinner, at the behest of Sir John Crawford.10 The

Chief Migration Officer in Vienna wrote to explain to Crawford that the Remingtons had not been there when he went to meet them.11 Soon after Remington’s return, the

Minister for Trade, John McEwen, thanked him for his thanks for the ‘courtesy and assistance’ received from the Deputy Trade Commissioner Service.12

In the part of the trip dedicated to library pursuits, Remington as always sought his contacts at the top. He met with Sir Frank Francis, the Director and Principal

Librarian of the British Museum Library (which was to become the British Library in

1973).13 Rutherford Rogers, Acting Librarian of Congress advised him that the

Cleveland Public, Detroit Public and Newark Public Libraries could more profitably

9 Itinerary – 12 April to 1 July – Sydney – Singapore – Hong Kong – Bangkok - Calcutta - New Delhi - Agra - New Delhi - Istanbul - Athens - Rome - Salzburg – Vienna - Paris - London – New York - Montreal – New York - Washington - Chicago - SanFrancisco - Honolulu – Sydney. Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’ 10 R.J. Schneemann to Remington, 6 April 1961, Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’ 11 H.V.Carey, Chief Migration Officer, Vienna to Sir John Crawford, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, [no date ?April/May 1961] Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’ 12 J. McEwen, Minister for Trade to Remington, 14 June 1961 Remington Family Papers, Mitchell Library MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’ 13 Remington to J.W. Metcalfe, 2 June 1961, sending notes of his conversation with Sir Frank Francis on 15 May 1961. Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’

254 be visited to talk about ‘public library services to business’.14 Remington, however, lists Dr Quincey Mumford, Librarian of Congress, among his contacts in Washington

DC. Most of Remington’s contacts in the United States were on the advice of

Maurice Tauber, who had been brought to Australia by AACOBS on a Fulbright assignment between February and August 1961 to survey library resources here15,16.

Tauber smoothed the way for almost all of Remington’s library-related visits which included ‘the top people’ in the Stanford University Libraries, the Chicago Public

Library, the US Department of Agriculture Library, the Library of the US Office of

Education, the Library of the Engineering Societies in New York, the John Crerar

Library in Chicago, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Jack Dalton, Dean of the

Columbia University School of Library Services, and Ralph Shaw Dean of the Library

School at Rutgers University were also contacted. Verner Clapp, President of the

Council of Library Resources in Washington was also on the list.17

In July 1961 Remington submitted, to Gordon Richardson the Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales, ‘the first few pages of the first draft of what eventually will be my report to the Premier of N.S.W., on my recent visit overseas to enquire into methods in use for the dissemination of scientific and technical information to those engaged in industry’. The draft occupies 15 pages of foolscap

14 Rutherford Rogers, Acting Librarian of Congress, to Remington, 19 April 1961. Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’ 15 M.F.Tauber, Resource of Australian libraries: preliminary undated draft. Canberra: AACOBS, 1961 16 M.F.Tauber, Resources in Australian libraries: summary report of a survey conducted in 1961for the Australian Advisory Committee on Bibliographical Services. Canberra: AACOBS, 1963. 17 Acting Director, Stanford U Libraries; G.E. Gesheede, Chicago Public Librarian;14 April 1961; Ralph Shaw Rutgers University, 17 April 1961; Verner Clapp, Council on Library Resources; F. Mohrhardt, Director USDA Library, 17 April 1961; S. Phelphs, Engineering Societies New York; Rutherford Rogers, Acting Librarian of Congress, 19 April 1961; Herman H Henkle, John Crerar Library Chicago, April 24 1961; Francis St John, Brooklyn Public Library, 1 May 1961; John G Lorenz, Director of Library Services Branch, US Office of Education, 5 May 1961; Jack Dalton, Dean Columbia School of Library Science, 12 May 1961, to Remington, Remington Papers, ML MS808, Box 34C Folder: ‘Overseas Trip GCR’

255 typescript with 1-1/2 line spacing, in which Remington summarizes each of his visits, with the final four pages occupied with quotation from a United States Senate document on the communication of scientific and technical information in the Soviet

Union. If Remington ever submitted a final report there is no trace of it. Doubt about its existence is strengthened by the report in the Library Board’s annual report for the year ending 30 June 1962 that ‘Mr Remington is preparing a report on this matter to the Honourable the Premier, through the Minister’.18 As the records stand, there is no trace of Remington’s recommendations for future strategies for New South

Wales in ‘the development of ways and means of disseminating scientific and technical information’.19

In his continuing role on the Board of Trustees of the Public Library of New South

Wales, Remington was very much in evidence at the opening of the new wing of the

Library on 20 March 1964.20 As the Senior Member of the Standing Committee of the Trustees, he proposed a vote of thanks to the notables present in which he reserved his highest praise for Sir William McKell.21 Remington recalled the criticism

McKell had attracted as Premier of the State ‘for expending money at that time on things called libraries’ and his earlier having had ‘something to say to the Premier of the day, as to what and should be done’ when in 1939,as Leader of the Opposition, he had championed the passing of the Library Act. Remington always took every

18 Library Board of New South Wales, 19th Annual report for year ending 30/6/62. 19 Remington to G.D. Richardson, 17 July 1961 [covering letter] [Report on Mr G.C. Remington’s visit overseas, First draft “B”, Typed 17.7.61. State Library of New South Wales Records, Board Management – Reporting – G.C. Remington Overseas Tour – 1960 to 1961, Box7806 (Government Records Repository) 20 Proceedings at the opening of the south-east wing by His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales, 20th March, 1964. Sydney: The Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1964: 21 McKell, former Premier of New South Wales whom Prime Minister Chifley appointed Governor General, was in 1964 living in retirement on his property near Goulburn. See Christopher Cunneen, William John McKell: boilermaker, premier, governor-general. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000.

256 possible opportunity to reward with public praise anyone who had assisted in any of his many enterprises.

Company director at large

By the 1950s Remington was an experienced company director, used to handling large transactions. In 1955 he went to Fiji on behalf of W.R.Carpenter to ‘tee up the purchase of all the ordinary shares in Morris Heddstrom Limited for a total consideration of ₤2-1/4 million’.22 In the mid 1960s, Remington held several directorships. He was the chairman of Rolls-Royce of Australia Pty Ltd and of

Standard Telephones and Cables Pty. Limited. He was also chairman of Crane

(Australia) Pty Ltd, the local subsidiary of the Crane Corporation of America. As well as a director of W R Carpenter Holdings Ltd., he was on the boards of Dalton

Bros. Holdings Inc., and of Herbert Field and Scottish Australian Co. Ltd., two pastoral companies.23 Remington was also connected with legal aspects of the pastoral leases granted to the British company Vesteys.24 Through his connection with work on pastoral leases, he met Charles Court, then Treasurer in the State

Government of Western Australia. Their corroboration was associated with creation of the road trains, powered by Rolls Royce engines, which continue to transport livestock from remote parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

Like the Rolls Royce Company four years earlier, Standard Telephones and Cables

(STC) in 1965 sponsored an extensive visit by Remington and his wife to the United

22 Remington to McLachlan, 30 January 1955, Remington Family Papers, 1943-88, MLMS 1350/63. 23 Mr G.C. Remington, Personal data [no date] 1p. typescript, Remington Family Papers, 1943-88, ML MS 1350/63. 24 Remington’s late daughter, Susan, once showed me proudly a 1968 photograph of her father with Lord and Lady Kindersley from Vesteys at some sort of garden party in England

257 Kingdom and to their principals, the International Telegraph and Telephones

Corporation (ITTC) in the United States. As usual Remington was well prepared with a list of STC personalities all over the world whom he assiduously contacted.25

He also took the opportunity to alert his Saville Row tailor of his needs so that, having chosen the fabrics from samples sent by mail and sent his measurements (chest 46 inches and waist 41 inches) two suits would be waiting for him when he reached

London.26

Other arrangements for his trip were similarly meticulous. He sought a letter of introduction from Prime Minister Menzies.27 He wrote to David Rockefeller,

President of the Chase Manhatten Bank in New York, praising the Bank’s publication

Australia – new frontiers, which was associated with the Bank’s Seminar in

Australia.28 Remington was quick to follow up a reply from James Jacobson, a

Senior Vice President of the Bank, sending him The Australian Economy 1965 and

‘two copies of an address which I gave at the University of New South Wales some few years ago’ which he explained ‘is by way of a more personal introduction for myself’.29 An appointment with David Rockefeller proved elusive but Jacobson invited Remington to ‘our guest table when Mr Holt [Prime Minister of Australia]

25 Bruce Wight, STC, Sydney to Remington, 11August 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 26 Remington to Strickland Sons & George Ltd., 4 August and 23 August; 1965; Strickland Sons & George Ltd. to Remington, 18 August and 1 September 1965. Remington Papers ML Ms 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 27 Remington to Hazel Craig, secretary to R.G. Menzies, 1 September 1965, enclosing a formal letter to Menzies asking for an official letter of introduction from him. Remington Papers ML MS 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’. 28 Australia: new frontiers: a seminar held at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, April 26 and 27, 1965. New York: Chase Manhatten Bank, 1965. Harold Holt as Treasurer and Rockefeller as Bank President led the speakers who included luminaries of both Australia and the United States, including Sir Roland Wilson, Secretary of the Treasury and Charles Court as Western Australia Minister for Industrial Development, for Railways and for the North-West. 29 James Jacobson, Chase Manhatten Bank to Remington, 11 August 1965; Remington to Jacobson, 26 August 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’

258 addresses the Annual Conference of the Far East America Council on October 4’.30

Remington was swift to accept and to forward to Jacobson a note given him in Perth the previous week by Charles Court who was one of the guests at the ‘small luncheon’

Remington had hosted.31 In the light of later events, it is unlikely that Remington was able to attend the luncheon addressed by Holt.

Again the resources of the federal Department of Trade were called upon to facilitate overseas contacts.32 The Managing Director of Standard Telephones and Cables in

Australia, Sam Jones, supplied Remington with a whole sheaf of letters of introduction for many contacts in the United States and in the United Kingdom as well as in Spain and Mexico33

Remington’s progress through the Americas was interrupted at the beginning of

October. He went swiftly from being a feted guest of a large corporation to a patient in the Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City. Heart disease was the most likely cause since he arranged an appointment through STC’s Sydney Office with a cardiologist on his arrival in London.34 His American hosts did not neglect him since a stream of letters, cards, and flowers reached him in hospital along with personal visits. Among the visitors was Harold S Geneen, Chairman of the ITTC Board. The

30 Jacobson to Remington, 31 August 1965. Remington Papers, ML MS 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 31 Remington to Jacobson, 15 September 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 32 Remington to Frank Anderson, Assistant Secretary, Department of Trade, National Trade Relations Division, 1 September 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 33 Sam Jones, STC M/D to Brittenden. Senior V/P & General Counsel, ITTC, New York, 6 September 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’. The same source contains many more letters, on dates in September 1965, of introduction for Remington to contacts in the U.S. and other countries 34 Rodney Maif, STC Health, Sydney to Remington, 15October 1965. Appointment with Dr J.R. Bignall, Brompton Hospital, London on 19 October 1965. Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’

259 firm’s medical director was also called in. Meticulous as ever in his acknowledgements, Remington was fortunate that IITC also provided secretarial assistance for the typing and dispatch of his many thank-you letters.35 Among them was one to ITTC Vice President Scudder expressing Remington’s gratitude for accompanying his wife Joan and sister-in-law to dinner and the theatre. This may have been a substitute for the dinner at the Waldorf on October 1, the invitation for which Remington had already accepted. Remington left the hospital in mid October and proceeded directly to the airport for the flight to London.36

Remington acknowledged to his Sydney doctor and personal friend, Charles

McDonald, who was also Chancellor of the University of Sydney, that he had gone against McDonald’s advice in embarking on the trip.37 Perhaps Remington’s urgent cable to his Sydney Office for McDonald’s hat size meant that such a present from

London was to make amends for his earlier disobedience.38 One hopes then that

McDonald remained ignorant of the pace and extent of Remington’s itinerary in the

United Kingdom.39

In his time abroad Remington continued to involve himself in events in Australia, and on his return to Sydney he was quick to resume his visits to other Australian cities.

He made 8 visits to Canberra, 5 to Melbourne, and 2 to Perth between February 1965

35 Elizabeth Liptak to Remington, 11 October 1965, sending transcribed letters & offering to call to get & post them. Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 36 Remington to H.H. Scudder, Vice President, ITT, 11 October 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 37 Remington to Charles McDonald, 18 October 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 38 Remington to Sydney Office, cable, 15 October 1965, Remington Papers ML MS 808.Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 39 A note on file lists Remington’s chauffeurs and visits to works in Basildon 22 October, Footscray 25 October, Southgate 26th and South Harlow 27th. Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’

260 and August 1966. His lobbying was intense, as Ministers of the Crown and senior public servants were assiduously cultivated. He rejoiced with STC colleagues at his apparent success in king-making when Trevor Housley was appointed Director

General of Posts and Telegraphs. One senior STC executive wrote to Remington:

‘Our colt has had a good day at the races as you have no doubt already learned. Hope your trip is as equally successful as has been your training of our colt’.40

Remington’s efforts for the companies he represented entailed interviews with the top echelon in the Tariff Board and the Customs Department as well as the heads of the federal departments of Supply, Defence, Army, Navy and Trade. Knights of the realm, mining magnates, captains of industry as well as the uniformed and civilian staff of the service departments were among his contacts.41 His schedule shows no slackening of the pace of his life and his efforts apparently pleased the companies which had retained him.

When he returned from overseas in October 1965, one of his last expressions of gratitude for the trip was a letter to Sir Hudson Fysh, Qantas supremo, in praise of his airline in general and of his staff in Mexico in particular.42 Remington’s care and flair for public relations had long been obvious.

40 Reeder Nicholls to Remington, 1 October 1965, Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 41 ‘Current trips’ [folder containing itineraries and airline tickets February 1965-August 1966] Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 34C. 42 Remington to Hudson Fysh, 29 October 1965, Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’

261 Public relations

Remington had made himself expert in the practice of public relations well before the term came into common parlance. In an address at the 1st National Public Relations

Convention in Sydney in 1964, he was able to quote an address he had given to the

Australian Institute of Librarians more than twenty years before.43 His audience which included the State Governor and the Premier, was regaled with many examples of sources of excellent advice on public relations. They included Jesus Christ, the

Bible, Essington Lewis and Ben Chifley. Top billing, however, was given to the

Rolls Royce Company. After criticism of the attitude of British industrialists to colonial clients, Remington remarked ‘Now being a snob, I like the British, and being a snob, I wish they’d like me’. He also praised the ‘flamboyant go-getting methods’ employed by Alfred Charles Davidson, General Manager of the Bank of New South

Wales from 1929 to 1945, with the further admission that ‘As I told you, I’m a snob and the good and great, especially the great, have always attracted me’. He went on to describe these ‘big men’ who ‘serve a useful role in any community’, as ‘unbridled forces…high winds to fill every sail…boisterous torrents rushing down mountainsides…electrical forces flashing in a darkened sky’.44 Remington was not carried away by his oratory. Having never lost appreciation of the interests of the public relations specialists in the audience, he proceeded to give them practical advice. Some of it still has some resonance nearly half a century later, when he called upon more than thirty years’ experience with ‘all manner of government people and government bodies and authorities’ who generally ‘don’t bother to prepare the public mind for the new methods, activities and services they are about to introduce’.

43 G.C. Remington, ‘Librarians and the public’. Proceeding: first annual meeting and conference of the Australian Institute of Librarians, Sydney, June 11th-13th 1938: 57-64 44 Ellipses in original

262 Neither did he lose the opportunity to aim a dart at the former territory of an old enemy. He regretted that the Australian Administrative Staff College did not include a course in public relations among its subjects. He finished his address with a dramatic flourish in which public relations specialists were assured and exhorted that

‘the future is yours: you must create and sustain human understanding at the local, national and international levels. If you fail, you can turn out the lights and fight it out in the dark, for when the voice of reason is silenced the rattle of machine guns begins.’45 It is impossible to discern how informative his audience found the address but it was flavoured with relevant anecdote based on long experience and could hardly have been rated boring.

Remington’s belief in the future of public relations is demonstrated by his founding a public relations consultancy with Frank Small of Aldwych Advertising, one of his

Rotary friends. According to Remington’s daughter, he took this initiative to provide an income for her mother and herself after his death. In 1950 there were only three

PR consultancies in Sydney but by 1957, the number had reached around 30.46

Apparently Remington and Small’s venture coped with the competition and when

Small died, his son took over the business and bought the Remingtons out. 47

Remington had turned expressions of congratulation and gratitude into art forms, which seemed to work well with most of the great names whom, on his own admission, he shamelessly cultivated. He called within a week on a new Director,

45 Remington, ‘Public relations: an internal part of policy making: building of public confidence and public interest: a paper delivered at the 1st National Public Relations Convention, Menzies Hotel Sydney, 9/10/64’, by Mr G.C. Remington, CMG. 22p. (typescript) Remington Papers, ML MS808 Box 35 ‘Further papers: government, admin (general) economics & trade, public relations’ 46. Clara Zawawi in Jane Johnston and Clara Zawawi, Public relations: theory and practice, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2009, p.33. 47 Remington, Susan M. Interview, Interview with Carmel Maguire 12 February 2000. Sue estimated that she received $10k and her Mother probably $15k. The sale probably took place in 1968 or thereabouts. Frank Small & Associates (Aust) Pty Ltd went on to prosper and later became Taylor Nelson Sofres (Aust) P/L.

263 Posts and Telegraphs in New South Wales, S.F. Kellock who, in an obituary, remarked on Remington’s acidulous cultivation of top public servants and his ‘always flowery and flamboyant’ votes to thanks to speakers. Kellock also described

Remington’s determination always to have ‘a really tall poppy’ as the president of the

Institute of Public Administration and how his tactics paid off in getting State

Government financial assistance for the Institute.48

Private friendships

Remington friends were drawn from a wide spectrum of his contacts. Some were already distinguished when the friendship began but for others his support was a factor in their gaining or preserving distinction. Comparison and contrast of his relationships with HerbertVere Evatt and Hartley Grattan illustrate this.

Evatt had been recognized as a brilliant legal mind from his graduation from the

University of Sydney in 1918. In 1930 at age 36 he was appointed a justice in the

High Court, the youngest judge to have been appointed to it.49 Evatt was associated with the Free Library Movement from its beginnings,50 and he was elected a Vice

President in September 1936.51 What earlier contacts Remington may have had with

Evatt have not emerged but his admiration for the Judge is obvious in all future records of their relationship. When they were both appointed Trustees of the Public

Library in May 1937, Remington wasted no time before campaigning for Evatt’s

48Kellock in ‘Geoffrey Remington, an appreciation’, Public Administration vol.27 no.3 (September 1968): 200-203. 49 Bolton, G.C. ‘Evatt, Herbert Vere (Bert) (1894-1965) ADB v.14 (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996): pp.108-114. 50 Evatt proposed the vote of thanks to W.H. Ifould for his address at the FLM General Meeting on 25 November 1935. FLM Archives [Blue box – ‘F L M’ on spine label with pencil ‘1’ beneath. Minutes – General Meeting’ pasted on front cover] 51 Hon Sec to Evatt, 6 Sept 1936,FLM Archives 2E/Letters to individuals

264 election as Chairman of the Trustees. Remington lobbied some of the other Trustees and in June 1937 told Evatt that he had the numbers, and arranged for two others to propose and second his nomination.52. Evatt’s election as Chairman of Trustees was achieved in July 1937 even though voting did not go according to Remington’s plan.

He wrote to Frank Bell, Deputy Sydney Municipal Librarian, then in the United States on a Carnegie grant that ‘I managed to get myself into trouble immediately on my appointment’. J. H. Smith, former Director of Education nominated T.D. Mutch, former Minister for Education, even though Smith himself was the next senior trustee for the position of President. Remington reported that ‘although other trustees intimated they could support and might nominate Mr Justice Evatt an extraordinary paralysis set in when nominations were called for and I was left to nominate the

Judge, who as you may have seen was duly elected as President’. He added that ‘I think he will do everything you would want him do’ Evatt’s support for public libraries was clearly one of the ‘number of reasons’ for which Remington offered to

Bell as reason for his belief that ‘the Hon. Mr. Justice Evatt should stand and prevailed on him to do so’53. Remington obviously enjoyed the success of this mild conspiracy and the perturbation of the dust which seemed to have settled over the

Trustees.54

52 Remington to Evatt, 17 June 1937 FLM archives, No.2 file / Letters from F1 to N4 2B/ Miscellaneous Correspondence V/P E. 1E /Miscellaneous Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council. 53 Remington to Bell, 6 July 1937, FLM archives, 2B/Miscellaneous correspondence 54 Remington obviously regarded Evatt’s election as Chairman of the Trustees as an achievement but it was one for which Gordon Richardson, Principal Librarian 1959 to 1973, found difficult to forgive Remington because Bert was such a nuisance. When I interviewed him in Scotland in 2001, Richardson expressed his particular displeasure at being woken at 1.30 one morning by Evatt who expected him to respond on a matter of Library business as if the hour was one of normal business. Richardson, G.D. Interview with Carmel Maguire, Inverness, 15 June 2001.

265 In 1938 Evatt was one of many Australian visitors recommended to the Carnegie

Corporation.55 Apparently Evatt made a good impression since Corporation

President Keppel later wrote that ‘I saw enough of him to want to see more when he returns in October for a somewhat longer stay’.56 In the same period, Remington was lavish in his praise for Rum Rebellion57, a copy of which Evatt had sent him. He wrote: ‘With respect, your Honor, I venture the opinion that you have not only written a most valuable judgment, text book and historical document, but also a very excellent and readable story’.58 There is a hint in other correspondence that Remington’s regard for Evatt may later well have been sorely tried. In 1961 Evatt was Chief

Justice of New South Wales, after having been Australia’s Foreign Minister and the third President of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Angus McLachlan, with whom Remington shared total confidence, viewed Evatt as ‘rather tragic’, as he explained, ‘Because Brother Bert, for all the twistiness and deception in him, had bigness in him too, though I’m inclined to think it was the bigness that ultimately derives from Big Evil (cf Hitler, Laval, Huey Long). But there’s a play or a novel in him – cf Iago to the Labour [sic] Party’s Othello.59 In the 1950s Evatt may or may not have had evidence fabricated against him in the Petrov affair and the subsequent

Royal Commission on Espionage, which was cleverly managed by Prime Minister

Menzies, ‘a skilful politician who shrewdly applied a knowledge of Evatt acquired over more than thirty years’.60 Remington shared with his great friend, Angus

McLachlan, his experience of Evatt’s behaviour in 1962 as Chairman of the Public

55 Remington to Dr F.P. Keppel, President of the CCNY, 20 April 1938.FLM archives 5C/Carnegie Corporation of NY 56 Keppel to Remington, 20 July 1938.FLM archives 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York 57 Evatt, H.V. Rum rebellion: a study of the overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1938. 58 Remington to Evatt, 24 June 1938, FLM archives no.2 file, Letters from F1 to N4Folder “F” 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc.] 59 McLachlan to Remington, 11 May 1961, Remington Papers 1943-1988, Mitchell Library MS. 13560/63. 60 Crockett, Peter, Evatt: a life. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1993, p.278.

266 Library Trustees. In delivering the speech prepared for him, ‘He managed to read bits of it twice, but that is forgivable, and very few noticed it’. Remington was less understanding that Evatt later ‘became somewhat detached when he was showing His

Excellency around the library after the function’, though he also reported that the

Governor had coped ‘with great tact’.61

Remington’s friendship with Evatt bore not much sign of affection. In contrast some friendships yielded him not only very useful allies in his campaigns for social betterment and but also lasted him a lifetime. One such was his relationship begun in

1936 with a young Carnegie scholar from the United States, C.Hartley Grattan, who had been recommended to his notice by Beatrice Webb.62 Grattan wrote a very useful pamphlet to support the Free Library Movement campaign and Remington arranged several introductions for him, including an interview with Evatt.63 While their subsequent relationship was not without some conflict, there was respect on both sides since Grattan wrote the foreword for Evatt’s Rum Rebellion. Sir Herbert Gepp was another of the productive contacts provided to Grattan by Remington. By the end of Grattan’s two years here, there were ripples in the old industrialist knight’s relationship with the young journalist/scholar, whose ideas he may have suspected of dangerous liberalism. In August 1938 he wrote of Gepp to Remington, ‘What the hell is the matter with him? Or is he just being British and hence absurd’.64

Grattan’s views were more liberal that those prevailing in either the top tier of

61 Remington to McLachlan, 20 February 1962, Remington Family Papers, 1943-1948, ML MS 1350/63. 62 Remington to Mrs Sidney Webb, 12 January 1937, Remington Papers ML MSS 808/9 Box 9. His letter refers to one or two talks with Grattan and continues: ‘I am very proud to know you had remembered me among your Australian friends’ 63 Remington to Grattan, 12 January 1937. Remington Papers ML MS 808 Box 9 64 Grattan to Remington, 15 August 1938, Remington Papers ML MS 808 Box 9. Remington later told Gepp that ‘Matrimony has tamed him to some extent’ after Grattan had given a dinner party for Mr R.G.Casey and included Keppel to meet him. Remington to Gepp, 13 June 1940, Remington Papers, Personal correspondence, Uncat MSS set 808 item 9.

267 Australian business and industry or the Corporation. All Remington’s reports of him were unfailingly positive. He reported that Grattan’s visit to Australia ‘may well prove to be the most valuable contribution which the Corporation has yet made to this country’.65

Grattan was a frequent visitor to the Remington home and very soon after he went on board ship for his return to the United States in September 1938 he warmly acknowledged Remington’s friendship. With a dash of youthful gallantry, he acknowledged Remington as, with the exception of a very close woman friend, ‘quite the most important person I met in Australia’. After mention of the value of his friendship and how moved he was to be leaving, he assured Remington that ‘To discover a friend in Australia was so utterly unexpected that it satisfied the trip’.66

Remington enjoyed many friendships, with younger people such as Hartley Grattan and his daughter’s friends, with his contemporaries such as Norman Cowper, Daniel

McVey, Ronald Walker and John Metcalfe, and with older men such as Herbert Gepp and Essington Lewis. Among them all, Angus McLachlan stands out as the most trusted and intimate. His daughter described him as her father’s ‘greatest friend’.67

McLachlan was a journalist, West Australian by birth, whose association with the

Sydney Morning Herald began in 1936. He spent thirteen years there as News Editor and was promoted to General Manager in 1949 and became Managing Director in

1965. The oldest surviving record of his association with Remington dates from

1940 when he wrote apologizing that he had not been in the office when the latter had

65Remington to Keppel, 1 September 1938, FLM Archives, 5/C Carnegie Corporation of New York. 66 Grattan to Remington, [no date] September 1938, Remington Papers ML MSS 808/9 Box 9 67 C.Maguire, Interview with Sue Remington, 7 January 2003.

268 called to see him.68 Evidence of their close friendship is provided by the letters they exchanged from 1955 to the end of Remington’s life.69 McLachlan’s confidence in

Remington allowed him to share frank insights into politics and personalities, such as his opinion of Evatt quoted above.

Along with serious matters such as The Entrance Sewage Scheme report and legal opinions, Remington’s correspondence with McLachlan often included verse and scripts of playlets in which Remington figured. In sending two of his sonnets he warned Remington: ‘My god, I’ll kill you if you show this to anybody’.70 Less than two weeks later, McLachlan was ‘rather horrified when you told me that you’d quoted some of the Lord Pomposity71 stuff to some Rolls Royce directors’. He tried to persuade Remington to present himself as he was, ‘A very able, well-informed and thrusting Australian who, by what he has achieved, establishes his own credentials and needs no praise or support from any man and who, in fact, can laugh aside those who would dare to praise him’. 72

Remington from then on may have been more circumspect in passing on McLachlan’s effusions. There was henceforth certainly no lessening of the openness and wit of the letters, whether the targets of McLachlan’s observations were of the shortcomings of senior colleagues on the Sydney Morning Herald and its publishers the Fairfax organization (such as Rupert Henderson who preceded him as Managing Director). or the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Menzies, to whom McLachlan attached the

68 McLachlan to Remington, 12 November 1940, Remington Papers Mitchell Library Uncatalogued MSS 808 Box 9. 69 Angus McLachlan - 1955 to 1968 letters verses plays – Remington Family Papers 1943-1988 ML 1350/63 70 McLachlan to Remington, 9 May 1961, Remington Family Papers 1943-1988, ML MS. 13560/63. 71 McLachlan had dubbed Australia’s Prime Minister, R.G. Menzies, ‘Lord Pomposity’ 72 McLachlan to Remington, 18 May 1961 Remington Family Papers 1943-1988, ML MS. 13560/63.

269 sobriquets, ‘Lord Pomposity’, or ‘the mighty RGM’.73 Remington’s side of the correspondence is poorly represented in the surviving records, but there is a frank report to McLachlan in London about Evatt’s behaviour at a meeting of the Public

Library Trustees.74

In mid 1964 McLachlan expressed his determination not to accept the managing directorship unless the role had been clearly defined by the Fairfax board and in particular that no executive authority was to be exercised by the Chairman, Sir

Warwick Fairfax. Acceptance of such limitation was not in the Chairman’s nature and his continued interference caused McLachlan to submit his resignation.75 A truce was brokered by which he was as managing director to be responsible only to the board of directors of the company. He assured Remington that ‘You are the staunchest of friends and in all this business you have been of incomparable help to me’ He went on to write what was simultaneously an encomium on Remington’s life and an apology for his own:

You see, I am not like you: I am not a hammerer at doors, an Achiever, a Person Who Gets Things Done, a Pusher for the Things That Should Be Done. Please, please don’t be modest when you chatter away into that tape-recorder of yours – tell it all: how you fought for this, pushed for that and all that flowed from the fighting and pushing. It’s a wonderful story and it MUST be put in the records and, if I live long enough, I might, if I can balance a pencil and pad on the arm of my wheel-chair, knock it all into shape for you. And the title of it will be (long titles are becoming fashionable both for books and musical comedies). THIS MAN SAW WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE --- AND DID IT. (That’s no longer than ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’). That’s you, dear Geoff: THE MAN WHO DID IT – KIN TO THE Essington Lewises and the Wally Wurths: all drive and achievement and accomplishment and a deep knowledge that

73 McLachlan to Remington, 23 May 1961; 1 June 1961 Remington Family Papers 1943-1988, ML MS. 13560/63. 74 Remington to McLachlan, 24 February 1962, Remington Family Papers 1943-1988, ML MS. 13560/63. 75 Souter, Gavin, Company of heralds: a century and a half of Australian publishing by John Fairfax Limited and its predecessors, 1831-1981. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981.

270 ultimately it is results that count: where the river gets to and not the meanderings and frustrations through which it got there. It is the End that counts much more than the Means. Now, it’s odd isn’t it, that you and I should like each other so much? Because with me it’s all Means rather than Ends.76 [Upper case in the original]

No more perceptive insight has been recorded into the wellsprings of Remington’s energy and determination. Despite McLachlan’s delineation of their differences the two men had much in common. They shared liberal political views. Both were admirers of Roosevelt’s legacy in the United States77 and agreed with Morris West’s anti Vietnam war stance.78 Neither was reluctant to express their affectionate concern for each other. Towards the end of 1965 when Remington was in hospital in the United States, McLachlan frequently warmly expressed his concern. He assured

Remington not only that he missed him and worried about him but also that ‘I feel much less secure when you are not here for me to rush to cry on your shoulder and be flattered by you. What your encouragement and advice has meant to me you’ll never really know.’79 When Remington returned McLachlan met him at the airport, a gesture Remington found ‘most charming and generous’, and he added: that ‘as you know your presence always excites me so much I was inclined to run around in circles’.80 On another occasion, McLachan admitted that ‘I always feel happier when

I walk into a room and find you there – as tonight’.81

76 McLachlan to Remington, 18 August 1964, Remington Family Papers, ML MS 1350/63. 77 Remington to McLachlan, 22 June 1965, Remington Family Papers, ML MS 1350/63. 78 McLachland toRemington, 9 August 1965; Remington to McLachlan, 11 August 1965, Remington Family Papers, ML MS 1350/63. 79 McLachlan to Remington, 16 October 1965, Remington Family Papers, Mitchell Library MS 1350/63. 80 Remington to McLachlan, 1 October 1965, Remington Papers, ML, Box 34C ‘STC World Trip: letters of introduction: personal use thank you’ 81 McLachlan to Remington, 10 April 1967, Remington Family Papers, ML MS 1350/63.

271 Their sympathy stands in sharp contrast with the antipathy between Remington and

Copland. McLachlan eschewed claims to greatness while his managerial and negotiating skills were notable, witnessed in the fact that his managing directorship of the Sydney Morning Herald was to survive until the end of 1969, one year longer than the life of his friend.

The last flurry

There was no diminution of Remington’s activities in the 1960s and his own late sixties, as he continued at attempts to effect political and social change, as well in his company directorships. Just where the idea of an economic advisory council to the federal government had been resuscitated is not clear. One impetus apparently was a paper delivered to NSW Regional Group of RIPA, Sydney, on 1 November 1966, by

Dr Harold F. Bell, Economic Adviser to the AMP Society, entitled ‘A council of economic advisers for Australia’.82 The copy in Remington’s papers has been attached to copies of the US Senate document which had propounded the idea in 1938 as well as articles by Remington published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1935 pushing Herbert Gepp’s ideas on the subject.83 At that time Remington sent the articles to R.G. Menzies as Attorney General. Prompted for a reply, Menzies promised to discuss the matter with Gepp.84 Thirty years later with the presentation of the Report of the Vernon Committee of Economic Enquiry, Prime Minister

Menzies made no pretence of interest in the idea of an economic advisory council.

82 Harold F. Bell, ‘A council of economic advisers for Australia. Paper delivered to NSW Regional Group of the RIPA, 1 November 1966. Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 35 ‘Further papers: government, admin (general) economics & trade, public relations, [Folder]‘Economic Advisory Council 83 Remington, G.C.‘Gepp proposals/An Advisory Council I.’ SMH 28 August 1935; ‘Gepp proposals/An Advisory Council II. Some examples’ SMH 29 August 1935. The SMH also published a Leader/Editorial on the subject on 9 August 1935. 84 Menzies to Remington, [date obscured, probably late 1935] Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 35, ‘Further papers: government, admin (general) economics & trade, public relations, [Folder]‘Economic Advisory Council

272 One of Remington’s contacts had seen an advance copy of Menzies’ statement on the report and agreed with the prime ministerial view that it was improper for any

Government to abdicate its responsibilities for deciding economic policy. ‘But’,

Remington’s contact added, ‘I think the Prime Minister’s objection stems from the fact that he detests the idea of policy advice being made public’.85 If Remington was naïve to believe that the idea of an economic advisory council could have been acceptable, he was in the company of some of the country’s foremost economic brains on the Vernon Committee. One of them, John Crawford, attempted to refute criticism of the Report, the seeds of which had been sown by Menzies’ clear rejection of the idea of a continuing economic advisory council, when the Report had neither been debated in Parliament nor widely distributed. Crawford let it be known that he considered ‘much of the apparent early misunderstanding associated with the Report is a good indication of the need for independent and public analysis of the complex issues of economic policies in the modern world.’86

While hardly influential in the realm of high public policy, Remington made a contribution in another field. As chairman of STC, he was a member of the

Australia/Japan Business Cooperation Committee and attended its fifth meeting with its Japanese counterpart in April 1967 in Tokyo. The group included Sir Ian

McLennan (BHP), James Vernon (CSR), Sir Edward Warren (Chairman, Australian

Coal Association), Sir Maurice Mawby (CRA) and Roland Wilson (Head of the

85 L.Leck to Remington, 21 September 1965, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 35, ‘Further papers: government, admin (general) economics & trade, public relations, [Folder]‘Economic Advisory Council 86 Crawford, Sir John, The Vernon report: some wrong impressions corrected. Address to the National Press Club, Canberra, 2/12/65. Canberra: National Press Club, 1965.

273 Federal Treasury)87. Kamada credited the Australia-Japan Cooperation Committee, founded in 1962, and the Japan-Australia Cooperation Committee, founded in 1963, as having ‘established outstanding communication channels between the Australian and Japanese business communities’.88 There is here a faint echo of Remington’s attempts in the 1930s with Herbert Gepp to establish contacts with the Japanese consular and business community in Sydney.89

In another sphere of his public service, Remington was elected president of the

Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in September 1967 – a position that he was never destined to occupy90.

The end of ‘the useful years’

Remington died at his home, 56 Edwards Street, Woollahra on 20 January 1968. He was seventy years old. The causes of death were listed as ‘coronary occlusion and auricular fibrillation’. The duration of the occlusion is listed as 45 minutes while the fibrillation was of five years’ standing. A third cause of death was listed as carcinoma of the colon, of six months’ duration.91 His health problems must surely have been exacerbated by personal loss with the death in Sydney, less than two months earlier on 22 November 1967, of his only son, John, who was also a solicitor

87 Itinerary, tentative for the 5th Joint Meeting of Japan/Australia Business Cooperation Committee and meeting for setting up a Pacific Basin Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, April 23 – May 2nd, 1967. Remington Papers, ML MS808,Box 35 ‘Further papers: government, admin (general) economics & trade, public relations: folder=‘Economic Advisory Council 88 Kamada, Mayumi, Australian-Japan Cooperation Committees: forging channels of communication. Canberra: Australia-Japan Research Centre, 1993. (Pacific economic paper no.219, May 1993) 89 Remington to Gepp, 4 August 1937; Gepp to Remington 12 August 1937, Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 9. 90 ‘Library election’ SMH, 26 September 1967. ‘Mr G.C. Remington (above) yesterday was elected president of the trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales. He succeeds Sir John Ferguson who has resigned because of ill-health’. 91 Deaths registered in the District of Sydney, in the State of New South Wales. Death certificate registration number 1968/000428.

274 who was by then a partner in Remington & Co. The causes of John’s death included

‘cirrhosis of the liver (alcoholic)’.92 Geoffrey Remington was cremated in a private ceremony on 20 January at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium with a service conducted by a Church of England clergyman. Notice of his death was published three days later in the SMH, and on the same day a short article appeared, mainly acknowledging his service to public libraries.93 He left an estate valued at

$57,930.07 which was bequeathed to his wife who was the executor, and among the money owed to him was a substantial loan to the Estate of his son, mainly to pay for medical bills for his last illness from April to November 1967.94

92 Deaths registered in the District of Sydney, in the State of New South Wales. Death certificate registration number 1967/038579. 93 SMH, 23 January 1968. p.22, and ‘Founder of free libraries in N.S.W. dies’, SMH 23 January 1968, page 8. 94 Supreme Court of New South Wales, Probate Packet 649161. Geoffrey Cochrane Remington. Perused at Supreme Court of New South Wales, 8 Sept 2011

275 Chapter 9

Conclusion: Remington: “This man who saw what needed to be done and did it”

Geoffrey Cochrane Remington was a man of many parts, not all of which fit easily together. But all were based on sound foundations in confidence, in himself and in his ability to influence others, and all were pursued with a great zest for life and openness to the possibility of enjoyment. As he told a friend, after the Free Library

Movement campaign achieved public library legislation in New South Wales in 1939,

‘I had quite a lot of personal fun in the last stages of getting the Library Act through.’1

His contradictions, or at least inconsistencies, were many. He combined well- developed skills in both flattery and plain speaking. No person, whether highly or lowly placed, went without Remington’s congratulations, whatever the honour or distinction they had attained, and whether or not they had any previous acquaintance.

One of his Rotary brothers reported that his introductions to speakers were flowery and flamboyant but he also had the ability to laugh off embarrassment caused by a social gaffe. In one such incident he wrongly attributed John Maynard Keynes’s achievements to a bemused speaker in his introduction. Later he turned embarrassment into anecdote which he later used against himself.2 He was totally at ease socially in any situation, which may account for the less than totally approving reaction of the women who became later distinguished librarians who encountered

1 Remington to C.H. Grattan, 4 November 1939, Free Library Movement Files, SLNSW Archives. 2 In preparing his introduction to Noel Hall, the principal of the Administrative Staff College at Henley, Remington turned over two pages in Who’s Who, and Hall had to explain that he was not the recipient of all the honours Remington had heaped upon him. Remington had detailed the honours awarded to John Maynard Keynes. S.F. Kellock in ‘Geoffrey Remington – an appreciation’, Public Administration, vol.27 no.3 (September 1968): 202.

276 him as young women in the Public Library of New South Wales. Few if any of the staff there, female or male, had come from backgrounds of privilege comparable to

Remington’s.

Like his father before him, he could be disarming in his admissions of susceptibility to the good opinion of others. In reply to a legal colleague’s congratulations on the passing of the Library Act, he wrote that ‘I am very susceptible to flattery so I enjoy to the full all the kind things that you said about my part in the campaign’. He then went on immediately to acknowledge that ‘it has been a joint effort by a large number of people’ and acknowledged the part played in it by his correspondent.3

In plain-speaking or plain-writing mode, Remington did not spare feelings when he wanted to berate Australians for their apathy. He was disappointed that the articles which he wrote, with Gepp’s input, on defence policy and which were published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1938 were ‘not supported as vigorously as they deserved’. Fearing that the time had passed for development of a vigorous policy for

Australia’s defence, he wrote that ‘we will relapse into our characteristically complacent attitude; we will have a nice little army, a tidy little navy and a neat little air force to defend us, all of which will have nothing to do with “us” – “we” can go on earning our livings in the best of all possible worlds.’4 A few months earlier he spoke his mind to an advocate of education for citizenship who had sought his help.

He told her: ‘Notwithstanding our continually repeated claims to lead the world in practically everything worth while, I believe we are a very backward, conservative to the point of reactionary people, our social ideas are crude and unformed’. At the end

3 Remington to Cadogan, 21 December 1938, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. 4 Remington to Gepp, 16 November 1938, Remington Papers ML MS808, Box 9.

277 of the World War II Remington told the Legacy Club in an address on ‘Libraries and the war’ that ‘We should ignore flattering statements of how we excel at everything’.5

He based his address on Keynes’s Economic consequences of the Peace, written after

World War I. Remington pointed out some of the unsuccessful attempts at soldier settlement on the land which had taken place then.6

Some of his plain-speaking was not especially well suited to his audience. He told

Russell of the Carnegie Corporation of New York that ‘With a few exceptions our wealthy people are strong examples of the old saying “God showed what He thought of money by the people He gave it to”’.7 Since the Corporation had just granted

$25,000 of Andrew Carnegie’s legacy to assist library development in Australia, expression of scorn for the rich might not have been especially tactful. The

Corporation’s benefactor was almost as famous for his ruthless suppression of organized labour as for his enormous wealth.8 So, along with God’s opinion of the rich, the Corporation might not entirely have shared Remington’s pride that a senior trade union representative, Mr Charles Nelson, President of the Miners Federation of

Australia, had promised to recommend to his union affiliation with the Free Library

Movement.9

In another contradiction, Remington was an inveterate name-dropper who also hid some of his good deeds under other people’s bushels. In the 1930s he and Gepp ran a sort of helpline in finding employment for Jewish refugees from Europe. Other good

5 GC Remington, ‘Libraries and the war’. Address to Legacy Club. [1945?] 6 John Maynard Keynes, Economic consequences of the Peace. London: Macmillan, 1919. 7 Remington to Russell, 20 March 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York, SLNSW Archives. 8 David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie, New York: Penguin Press, 2006. 9 Remington to Russell, 20 March 1937, FLM correspondence files, 5C/Carnegie Corporation of New York, SLNSW Archives.

278 deeds were his kindness and even indulgence in assisting his friends. One example was the time and effort he invested in getting Gepp’s book Democracy’s Danger published by Angus & Robertson. Typically, Remington dealt with the top. In this case it was Walter Cousins, who took charge of Angus & Robertson publishing after

George Robertson’s death.10 Remington’s correspondence as go-between between author and printer/publisher is voluminous, an expenditure of time and effort disproportionate to any possible advantage he could derive from the publication. His dealings with Hartley Grattan are marked by the same generosity.

Part of Remington’s urbanity was his skill in the politics of manners. His charm was exercised on the powerful, and seems to have worked on Beatrice Webb, not an easy woman to charm on the evidence of her Diary.11 He was unfailingly courteous to casual inquirers. He was amused by some the conventions of formality prevailing for at least the pre World War II period of his life. He and Waldegrave, who was secretary to the Institute of Public Administration in Britain, became firm friends.

Remington reported with some amusement that, after writing to each other over five or six years as ‘Dear Mr’, and the first time Waldegrave addressed him as ‘My dear

Remington’, he began the letter with ‘I hope you will forgive this familiarity’.12 On the other hand, his initial rapport with Copland was marked with address to ‘Dear

Geoffrey’ and ‘Dear Douglas’ and it was shortlived. Remington detested rudeness,

10 Jennifer Alison, Doing something for Australia : George Robertson and the early years of Angusand Robertson, Publishers,1888-1900, p.31. 11 Beatrice Webb, The diary of Beatrice Webb. Edited by Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie. London: Virago, 1982-1985. 4v. 12 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 1, side 2.

279 especially of the great to the small and one such example by Evatt riled him.13 On the other hand, he was patient, not so much with fools as with the naïve and troubled, such as Miss Maddox of the Theosophists Society.

Remington’s political beliefs were not in line with the conservative traditions in which he had been educated and the upper middle class with whom he could have been expected to align himself. So suspect was his ideology in some quarters that a

Sydney businessman denounced him as a Communist at an Institute of Public

Administration lecture which Remington had arranged. The speaker was Sir Terence

Stamp who headed up the Institute in Britain.14 Again it appeared that it was the rudeness to the distinguished guest which riled Remington, rather than the accusation of his communism. At the same time, he was careful not to be identified closely with any on the left. He refused, on his own behalf and that of Cowper and Duncan, a request from Brian Fitzpatrick of the Council for Civil Liberties, to intervene in the

“Italian cruiser incident”.15 His inability to accept Lloyd Ross’s invitation to an informal discussion on Australia’s defence policy because of the pressure of FLM business might have been genuine.16 To Jessie Street’s invitation to a meeting of the

Australian Society for the Promotion of Cultural Relations with the Peoples of the

Soviet Union, he pleaded a Public Library Trustees meeting on the same night. But he let her know that ‘Frankly, I am not sure where I stand in regard to the Society and its aims, but I would like to have had the opportunity of meeting you and the other

13 Remington to McLachlan, 2 September 1958, Remington Family Papers, 1943-88. ML MS 1350/63.. , complaining of Evatt’s curt dismissal of a man who had sought to speak to Evatt on Remington’s suggestion. 14 Remington to Waldegrave, 4 February 1938, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. Remington’s accuser was T.H. Silk of Mort’s Dock. 15 Remington to Fitzpatrick, 17 and 18 February 1938, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. 16 Remington to Ross, 8 November 1938, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9.

280 members had it been practical to do so. . .’17 In an attempt at fairmindedness not usual among commentators on the political scene in Australia, Remington wrote to the

Editor of the SMH in 1940 decrying ‘the carping criticism of Mr Menzies, Mr Curtin, and particularly Dr Evatt’ since the recent Federal election, and he went on ‘Fair minded Australians with a sense of responsibility will appreciate the very great difficulties that confront our Federal leaders in their endeavours to weld a strong

Federal Government’.18 Remington was an admirer of both Labor Prime Ministers,

Curtin and Chifley. He and his economist friend E. Ronald Walker discussed with approval Chifley’s attempt to pass Banking legislation, with Remington reporting to

Walker, who was serving with Unesco in Paris, the wild prognostications of doom being circulated in Sydney anonymously, presumably by the banking community.19

Remington was a man of peace, witness his efforts to help European Jewish refugees in the 1930s. With more foresight than many, he worked with Gepp identifying influential people in the Japanese community and seeking support of the Austral-

Asiatic Section of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, formed in 1926, and for its Austral-Asiatic Bulletin launched in April 1927.20 At the same time,

Remington loved a fight. He and Metcalfe seem both to have enjoyed their machinations in the Newcastle imbroglio involving the FLM with the Mayor and the

School of Arts Committee.21 His pugnacity is most obvious in his unholy alliance with Metcalfe in attempts to bring down the Commonwealth! Rivalry between the

Australian states had begun when they were colonies. Federation provided them with

17 Remington to Jessie Street, 16 February 1940, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. 18 Remington to Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1940, p.3 19 See Remington Papers, ML MS 808 Box 10: Personal correspondence. 20 Gepp to Remington, 28 July 1927 and Remington to Gepp, 31 July 1927, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. 21 See Chapter 4, pages 124-126 above.

281 the chance for new and wider conflict. This was exacerbated after the Second World

War when the effect of the States having ceded income taxing powers to the

Commonwealth became obvious. Canberra had gained not only more money but much more control over the States.

For Remington and Metcalfe, dislike of Canberra and all its works found a focus in the Commonwealth National Library, which was a child born not of legislation but of the ambitions and aspirations of librarians at the Commonwealth Parliamentary

Library. Well before the National Library of Australia was established under the provisions of the National Library Act 1960, the Commonwealth National Library used its power to attain materials which might otherwise have been acquired for the

Mitchell Library of the Public Library of New South Wales. In 1923 Captain James

Cook’s Journal came up for auction and the Trustees of the Public Library of New

South Wales made enormous efforts to raise the funds to enable a bid. Principal

Librarian, W.H. Ifould, went to London ostensibly on a holiday and the Library’s ability to bid was concealed alike from book dealers and other libraries. The Journal was bought by the Commonwealth National Library and, in the most unkindest cut of all, W.H. Ifould, Principal Librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales was required to place the winning bid on behalf of the Commonwealth at the auction in

London.22 The loss to the Public Library had not been forgotten.

In 1939 the Commonwealth National Library acquired the Mathews Collection, a splendid ornithological library which Gregory M. Mathews assembled for his

22 See David J.Jones, W.H. Ifould and the development of library services in New South Wales 1912- 1942. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales,1993, pp.159-166.

282 monumental Birds of Australia.23 In the Public Library of New South Wales a belief existed that Mathews had promised them first offer on the collection. Remington, deputy chairman of the Trustees, wrote personally to Eric Harrison, then Minister for

Territories, asking him to stop the Federal Government’s purchase of the Mathews collection for the National Library.24 Harrison’s response was swift and decisive:

‘No doubt you have heard ere this that the Government has decided to accept the

Gregory Mathews Library on Australian Birds without any commitment by them’.25

Not only had Canberra won another prize, it had got it for nothing.

Remington and Metcalfe assisted each other in maintaining the rage against the

National Library, which was passed on to other Public Library of New South Wales staff, and which underlay Remington’s outburst against the Commonwealth at the meetings in 1954 from which the Australian Advisory Council of Bibliographical

Services was created.26 In their bitter resentment against the inevitable continued increase of Commonwealth power, Remington and Metcalfe revealed themselves unable to abandon a mindset in which they could continue to regard New South Wales as the first and greatest State, and the true heart of the nation.

In another paradox, Remington was simultaneously ahead of and behind his times.

His awareness of and prowess in public relations was ahead of most of his contemporaries. So was his instinct for the value of information per se not only of the packages in which it was contained. Long before special libraries were common

23 Gregory M. Mathews, Birds of Australia. London: Isbister, 1910-1927. 14 v. 24 Remington to Harrison, 15 Feb 1939, Remington Papers: Personal correspondence. Uncat. ML MS 808, item 9. 25 Harrison to Remington, 20 Feb 1939, Remington Papers: Personal correspondence. Uncat. ML MS 808, item 9. 26 See Chapter 7 pages 222-3 above.

283 in either government or private industry, Remington told Wallace Wurth, Chairman of the NSW Public Service Board that the Board did not want ‘a pile of books on public administration’ but a ‘library without books’ but with ‘an extensive and comprehensive card catalogue with a librarian research officer in charge’.27

Remington styled himself a ‘largely uneducated man’ yet the tape in which he goes along the shelves of his home library demonstrates that he had read extensively, in economics, public affairs, and public administration, as well as in history and philosophy. Machiavelli rated special mention and so did Lord Haldane’s biography, which prompted him to remark that ‘I believe a lot in biography’.28 On the same audiotape, he made the exaggerated claim that ‘I never had any formal education’.29

The pose of an anti-intellectual was another shared with John Metcalfe. Some of

Remington’s scorn for intellectuals seems to have arisen from encounters with attitudes conveyed by some purely academic academics at the University of Sydney.30

The anti-intellectual stance conflicts not only with his evidence of assimilation of his wide reading but also appreciation of art, since as a hobby, he used buy etchings at auction.31

27 Remington to Wurth, 10 January 1940, Free Library Movement correspondence files, 2B, Miscellaneous Folder “F”, 3F./FLM letters to V/Ps of Council, etc. SLNSW Archives. 28 G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 1. 29 ibid 30 In seeking a home for his projected business school, Remington was assured by Professor Noel Butlin, Dean of Economics in the University, that the proper study of the University was economic theory not practical business management. Butlin to Remington, 15 July 1953, Remington Papers ML MS 808 Box 30. The refusal of the University of Sydney Senate to allow his friends W.G.K. Duncan and E. Robert Walker to take the chairs for which they had been chosen had also irritated Remington. 31At viewings before the art auctions, he made the acquaintance of Sir Phillip Street, Chief Justice and Deputy Governor of the State, and Remington learned from him in judging the etchings on offer. Street also encouraged him in founding the NSW Group of the Institute of Public Administration. G.C. Remington, Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, Mitchell Library GY MLOH 1-6, Tape 1.

284 In bookbinding terms, Remington was not only a forwarder but also a finisher.

Witness the tenacity in his both forwarding and finishing the achievement of the

Library Act 1939. As a tactician he left nothing to chance, and many of his successful tactics were based on his powers of persuasion. In his friend Daniel

McVey’s opinion, Remington was ‘a dangerous fellow, because you have the ability to convince people against their better judgment and you ought therefore to be in

Parliament where you would be held answerable to other people as a whole for the dictums you preach and the effects of their adoption’.32 His greatest friend, newspaper executive Angus McLachlan, characterized him as ‘a hammerer at doors’ and threatened to knock into shape the autobiography he ought to write with the title,

‘This man saw what was needed to be done - and did it’.33

This man, great at making and keeping friendships, also made some enemies. In the parlance of 21st century managerialism, he was ‘not a team player’. Essentially he submitted to no-one’s authority. His tendency to denounce the failures of the bureaucratic systems in which he was employed must have been galling to his superiors in the organization charts. He did not hide his zeal for improvements which might well have been implicated in his abrupt transfer or removal from his wartime posts, two as a Commonwealth public servant and the other as an international public servant in UNRRA. He seemed simultaneously to get on well with the workforce and to fall out with bureaucrats. While he was frank in his admiration of tall poppies,

32 McVey to Remington, 23 Septembeer 1940, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 9. 33 McLachlan to Remington, 10 August 1964, Remington Family Papers 1943-1988. ML 1350/63.

285 or ‘big men’ as he called them,34 he failed when he had to deal with one in Douglas

Copland.

He was a generous host and a bon viveur; in dress he was dapper though not a dandy.

If the Army’s measurements in 1918 were correct, he was 5 feet 9 inches tall. While he was not of commanding height, this was after all the period in which the so-called

‘seven dwarfs’ flourished.35 He was Australian to the core, with British and US influences well mixed. He was loyal to family and friends, and the bohemian lifestyle of Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s which so appealed to Jack Lindsay and

Kenneth Slessor apparently had no attraction for Remington. He was not partisan in either politics or religion and he did not amass a personal fortune.

Throughout his life, his outlook was rather prospective than introspective. He could never identify what had impelled him to a life of service. The elements are there in his comfortable wealth, and his strong upbringing amid firm Christian principles. His early loss of a strong father might have allowed him to develop greater independence of spirit and more confident belief in his opinions than might have been possible under stern masculine discipline. He grew up with the baby nation, of which he was only three or four years older. In congratulating him of his CMG in 1960, Sir

34 Remington, G.C. ‘Librarians and the public’ in Proceedings of First annual meeting and conference of the Australian Institute of Librarians, Sydney, June 11th to 13th, 1938. Melbourne: Brown, Prior, Anderson Pty Ltd., 1939: pp.57-64. 35 In Canberra postwar parlance they were Sir Roland Wilson, H.C. Coombs, Sir John Crawford, with identities of the other four suggested included Sir Frederick Shedden, Sir Kenneth Bailey, Stanley Carver, Sir Allen Brown, Sir Henry Bland, and Sir Richard Randall. ‘Unearthing the seven dwarfs and the age of he mandarins’ J.R. Nethercote, Canberra Times, 5 October 2010:26-27. The author has also heard W.J. (Jock) Weeden, Head of the Commonwealth Office of Education, mentioned as one of them.

286 Norman Nock referred to his ‘remarkable capacity to get things done’.36 Perhaps the number of things to be done in the fledgling nation helped to call forth that capacity.

Remington coped with the discontinuities of the extremes of his times in much the same way as he managed the discontinuities within himself. He discounted physical setbacks, disobeyed doctors’ orders and got his own way as much as possible, while helping others get theirs. Impatient of pomposity but supreme in his belief in his own self worth; as confident in his ability to persuade premiers and prime ministers to change legislation as he was to persuade a neighbour to re-locate a clothes hoist. He was a very unusual citizen.

36 Sir Norman Nock to Remington, 2 February, 1960, Remington Papers, ML MS 808, Box 19.

287 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Manuscripts Burmester papers. National Library of Australia, NLA MS 2321.

Remington Family. Letters received from Harry and Geoffrey Remington, 1906. State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, ML MS 6451.

Remington family papers concerning Geoffrey Remington, 1948-1988 mainly biographical information and personal correspondence with journalist Angus McLachlan. State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, ML MS 8329.

Remington Papers. . .being correspondence and other papers relating to public activities. State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, ML MS 808 and add-ons 18,19,108,114,124144; and ML 1350/63. [42 boxes + 6 extra consignments]

John Cochrane Remington papers mainly relating to freemasonry. State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, ML MS 494.

Free Library Movement, Correspondence files, 1936-1940. Archives of the State Library of New South Wales, File nos. 32871, 32878-32882, 32885-32890, 32892, 32918-32921, 32923-32924, 32934-32935, 32945-32950, 32953, 32955-32956, 32959, 32962, 32969-32971, 32975-32979, 32983, 32987- 33003. [These numbers were not available when I read the files so in citing them I have used the descriptions which were on the files themselves].

Free Library Movement, Press cuttings [April 1937-September 1951] 4vols. Mitchell Library F/815 SET.

Archives

Australian Administrative Staff College, Mount Eliza Archives.

Australian Council for Educational Research Archives, Series 41, vol.85

National Archives of Australia, New South Wales Branch. Series MT96/1, personnel file G.C. Remington

National Archives of Australia, Series B2455 Item 8028394 consulted 19 September 2009 Geoffrey Cochrane Remington, ‘Attestation paper of persons enlisted for service abroad’, ‘Application to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force’. ‘Conduct sheet’ ‘Trainee section’, ‘Australian Imperial Force training card’,

288 National Archives of Australia, Canberra Office, Prime Minister’s Department, file no.58/2183, ‘G.C. Remington/Civil honour’.

United Nations Archives, New York S-1021-0075-0008. N.O.P. Pyke, UNRRA South-West Pacific Administration History.

Publications by Geoffrey Remington Remington, G.C. Audiotapes recorded in July and August 1964 in his home at Woollahra, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library ML MS 808, CY MLOH S44/1-6.

Remington, G.C. An amateur turns administrator Public Administration v.5 no.6 (June1945).

Remington, G.C. ‘The commonsense of Australian support for UNRRA’ Australian Quarterly v.18 no.2 (June1946): 51-62.

Remington, G.C. ‘Cooperation in library matters between state and local governing bodies’ in Proceedings 3rd and 4th annual meetings and conferences. . .Sydney: Australian Institute of Librarians, 1941: pp.115-118.

Remington, G.C. ‘The cry for better men in government’, Australian Quarterly v.12 (September 1940) 36-41. Reprinted Australian Quarterly v.72 issues 5- 6(October-December 2000): 54-57.

Remington, G.C. ‘Fellowship and Service: What also can the Rotary Club of Sydney do in its area? An address by Past President Remington to the Rotary Club of Sydney Weekend Conference at Kiama – Sunday 23rd November 1952. Processed.

Remington, G.C. ‘Foreword’, Public Administration: the journal of the Australian Regional Groups of the Institute of Public Administration n, v.7 no.3 (September 1948): 127. ‘A series of articles meant to form 'an appraisement [sic] of the unique contribution which Professor Bland has made during thirty years and more to the study and practice of government and public administration in Australia.'

Remington, G.C. ‘The Free Library Movement’ Commonwealth Technical Co- operation Scheme, Australian Library Seminar, 1952, Canberra Session. [Paper delivered on 5 March 1952] Processed.

Remington, G.C. and J. Metcalfe. The Free Library Movement 1935-1945. Sydney: New Century Press, 1945. Reprinted from The Australian Quarterly, June 1945.

Remington, G.C. Guest of honour [Australian Broadcasting Commission broadcast 24 October 1948] ‘Your future depends on what you know’. [Sydney, 1948]

289 Remington, G.C. ‘Librarians and the public’ in Proceedings of First annual meeting and conference of the Australian Institute of Librarians, Sydney, June 11th to 13th, 1938. Melbourne: Brown, Prior, Anderson Pty Ltd., 1939: pp.57-64

Remington, G.C. ‘Libraries and the manufacturer’ Australasian Manufacturer, 15 June 1950, p.91.

Remington, G.C. ‘Library development in Australia: talk – A.B.C. – Sunday 17 July 1949, 10.05 a.m. Typescript.

Remington, G.C. ‘Principles of party politics: a little study and reflection for the critics’ United Australian Review 21 November 1934

Remington, G.C. ‘The purpose of the Institute of Public Administration’, Public Administration (London), v.14 no.1 (January 1936): 30-39.

Remington, G.C. The useful years : occasional address delivered at the conferring of degrees at the University of New South Wales on April 27, 1960. Sydney: University of New South Wales, 1960.

Publication edited by John Cochrane Remington Mutual Life Chronicle, no.1-v.5 no.182 (November 1888-December 1903). Sydney: Mutual Life Association.

Publications about Geoffrey Remington ‘Big men and little men’ [Open letter from Trades Hall, Brisbane to G.C. Remington (late Assistant Director of Personnel, Allied Works) and signed ‘The Building Trade Workers’, Building Workers Journal, 13 April 1943.

‘Founder of free libraries in N.S.W. dies’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January, 1968,

‘Geoffrey Remington: an appreciation’, Public Administration, vol.27 no.3 (September 1968): 195-204. ‘Library election’ Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 1967. ‘Mr G.C. Remington . . . yesterday was elected president of the trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales’.

‘An organiser of intellect: Sydney lawyer’s quaint hobby’ Smith’s Weekly, 19 June 1937.

‘Talent scout for UNRRA’ Smith’s Weekly, 23 June 1945, p.13.

Free Library Movement Publications Constitution of the Free Library Movement , with an introductory note[by G.W. Brain]. Sydney, Free Library Movement, 1935.

Constitution of the Free Library Movement, with an introductory note and a model Branch constitution. 2nd ed. Sydney: The Movement, 1936.

290 Constitution of the Free Library Movement: with an introductory note and a model branch constitution. 3rd ed. Sydney: Free Library Movement,1938.

Free Library Movement. Report of Council for the year ended March 31, 1938. Sydney: 1938.

Grattan, C. Hartley. Libraries: a necessity for democracy. Sydney: Free Library Movement, 1938.

Kandel, Isaac Leon. The Free Library Movement and its implications. Sydney: Free Library Movement, 1938.

Secondary sources

Monographs and articles Alison, Jennifer. Doing something for Australia: George Robertson and the early years of Angus and Robertson, Publishers, 1888-1900. Melbourne: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand, 2009.

Anchen, J. O. Frank Tate and his work for education. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1956.

Ashton, Chris. Tudor House: the first hundred years. Moss Vale, N.S.W.: the Tudor House Council, 1997.

Australia: new frontiers: a seminar held at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, April 26 and 27, 1965. New York: Chase Manhatten Bank, 1965.

Bean, C.E.W. Here, my son: an account of the independent and other corporate boys' schools of Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1950.

Black, Alistair. ‘Introduction: the public library in concept and reality’ in Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland v.3 Part 1: Enlightening the masses: the public library and reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Blaikie, George. Remember Smith’s Weekly: a biography of an uninhibited Australian newspaper. Adelaide: Rigby, 1966.

Blainey, Geoffrey. The steel master: a life of Essington Lewis. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1991.

Bolton, Geoffrey. ‘Evatt, Herbert Vere (Bert) (1894-1965) Australian Dictionary of Biography, v.14 (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996): pp.108-114.

Bolton, Geoffrey.‘The idea of a colonial gentry’, Historical Studies vol. 13 no.51 (October 1968): 307-328.

291 Bolton, Geoffrey. The middle way 1942-1995. 2nd edition. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996. (The Oxford history of Australia, vol.5)

Brown, Nicholas. Governing prosperity: social change and social analysis in Australia in the 1950s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Buckridge, Patrick. The scandalous Penton: a biography of Brian Penton. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1994.

Butlin, S.J.War economy 1939-1942, Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1985, p.494. (Australia in the war of 1939-1945, series 4: Civil, vol.3)

Cain, Neville. Australian Keynesian: the writings of E. Ronald Walker. Canberra: Australian National University, 1983. (Working papers in economic history (ANU) no.13).

Clendinnen, Inge. Dancing with strangers: Europeans and Australians at first contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Clune, David and Ken Turner, editors. The Premiers of New South Wales 1956-2005: volume 2 1901 – 2005. Leichhardt, N.S.W.: Federation Press, 2000.

Cooke, Simon. ‘A "dirty little secret"?: the State, the press and popular knowledge of suicide in Victoria, 1840s-1920s’. Australian Historical Studies, vol.31 no.115 (October 2000): 304-324

Cornwall-Jones, A.T. Education for leadership: the international Administrative Staff Colleges 1948-1984. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985

Cox, Eva. A truly civil society.1995 Boyer lectures. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1995.

Crawford, Sir John. The Vernon report: some wrong impressions corrected. Canberra: National Press Club, 1965.

Crockett, Peter. Evatt: a life. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Crotty, Martin. Making the Australian male: middle-class masculinity 1870-1920. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001.

Cunneen, Christopher. William John McKell: boilermaker, premier, governor- general. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2000.

Cunningham, Kenneth Stewart. The Australian Council for Educational Research and Library Services in Australia. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1961.

Curthoys, Ann and John Docker, ‘Is history fiction?’ http://evatt.org.au/papers/history-fiction.html Accessed 28 February 2012.

292 d’Abbs, Peter. The Vestey story. Collingwood, Vic.: Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union, 1970.

Darian-Smith, Kate. On the home front: Melbourne in wartime, 1939-1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Darian-Smith, Kate, Patricia Grimshaw and Stuart Macintyre. Britishness abroad: transnational movements and imperial cultures. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007. Davidson, Jim . A three-cornered life: the historian W K Hancock. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010

Donaldson, Ian, Peter Read, and James Walter. Shaping lives: reflections on biography. Canberra: The Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University, 1992.

Drummond, D.H. Report of inquiries into various aspects of education. . .Sydney: Government Printer, 1937.

Dutton, Geoffrey. Kenneth Slessor: a biography. Melbourne: Viking, 1992.

Eakin, Robin. Aunts up the Cross. London: Blond, 1965.

Edel, Leon. Literary biography: the Alexander lectures 1955-6. London: Hart Davis, 1957.

Edwards, Zeny. The architectural gems of Warrawee. Sydney: the author, 2000.

Evans, Mary. Missing persons: the impossibility of auto/biography. London: Routledge, 1999.

Evatt, H.V. Rum rebellion: a study of the overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1938.

Finch, Janet. Married to the job: wives' incorporation in man's work. London: Allen & Unwin, 1983.

Fletcher, Brian H. Achieving for others: the Rotary Club of Sydney, 1921-2005. Sydney: Rotary Club of Sydney, 2005.

Fletcher, Brian H. Magnificent obsession: the story of the Mitchell Library, Sydney. Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with the State Library of New South Wales, 2007.

Gascoigne, John. The enlightenment and the origins of European Australia. Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Gepp, Sir Herbert. Democracy’s danger. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1939.

293 Gepp, Sir Herbert .‘From one democracy to another’. Atlantic, June 1938: 770-775.

Gillespie, James, ‘White, John Menzies (1911-1971)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.16 (2002)

Goddard, R H and R L Calvelli. The Union Club: a historical sketch. Sydney: the Club, 1990.

Graham, Jim, A school of their own: the history of the Armidale School. Armidale: The Armidale School, 1994.

Griswold, Erwin N. ‘Observations on legal education in Australia’, Annual Law Review, vol.2 no.2 (December 1952):197-214

Gronn, Peter, ‘”Will anything ever be done?”: Geelong Grammar School and the Associated Public Schools Head of the River in the 1930s’ Australian Historical Studies,vol.26 no.301(1991):242-261

Harwood, Gwen. Blessed city: the letters of Gwen Harwood to Thomas Riddell, January to September 1943. Edited by Alison Hoddinott. North Ryde, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1990.

Hasluck, Paul. The government and the people. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952. (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series Four, Civil, vol. 1)

Henderson, Kent. The Masonic Grand Masters of Australia. Melbourne: Ian Drakeford Publishing, 1988.

Hergenhan, Laurie. No casual traveller: Hartley Grattan and Australia – US connections. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1995.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. The age of extremes: a history of the world 1914-1991. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Hordern, Marsden. A merciful journey: recollections of a World War II Patrol Boat Man. Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2005.

Hudson, W. J. Casey. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1986.

Hudson, W. J. and Wendy Way, editors. Australia and the postwar world: documents 1946. Canberra: AGPS, 1991. (Documents on Australian foreign policy, 1937- 1949, vol.9).

James, Alfred. Sir Norman Cowper: biographical note. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, v.86 no.1 (June 2000):74-84.

Jones, David J. ‘From Munn-Pitt to Library Act: stimulating support for public libraries in New south Wales 1935-1939: Part 1 Enthusiasm and optimism’. Australian Library Journal, vol.44 no.2 (May 1995): 55-66

294 Jones, David J. ‘From Munn-Pitt to Library Act, stimulating support for public libraries in New South Wales 1935-1939: Part 2 The Ifould Report’. Australian Library Journal, vol.44 no.3 (August 1995: 134-151

Jones, David J. ‘From Munn-Pitt to Library Act: stimulating support for public libraries in New South Wales 1935-1939, part 3: Troubled times’. Australian Library Journal, vol.44 no.4 (November 1995): 225-236.

Jones, David J. ‘Public libraries: “institutions of the highest educational value”’, in A history of the book in Australia 1891-1945: a national culture in a colonised market, edited by Lyons, Martin and John Arnold. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2001: 157-175.

Jones, David J. ‘Unfinished business: John Metcalfe and his professional association’, Australian Library Journal, v.56 nos.3&4 (November 2007): 444-461.

Jordan, Matthew. A spirit of true learning: the jubilee history of the University of New England. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004.

Kamada, Mayumi. ‘Australian-Japan Cooperation Committees: forging channels of communication. Canberra: Australia-Japan Research Centre, 1993’. (Pacific economic paper no.219, May 1993)

Keneley, Monica. ‘The life insurance industry in Australia: an historical perspective’. Deakin University Faculty of Business and Law Working paper, no.2104 (February 2001).

Keppel, Frederick P. Philanthropy and learning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.

Keynes, John Maynard. Economic consequences of the Peace. London: Macmillan, 1919.

Kingston, Beverley. Glad, confident morning. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988. (The Oxford History of Australia, vol.3)

Kingston, Beverley. A history of New South Wales. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Lee, Hermione. Body parts: essays on life-writing. London: Pimlico, 2008.

Lindsay, Jack. The roaring twenties: literary life in Sydney in the years 1921-1926. London: Bodley Head, 1960.

Long, Gavin. The six years war: a concise history of Australia in the 1939-45 war. Canberra: Australian War Memorial and the Australian Government Publishing Service, 1973.

Lyons, Mark. Third sector: the contribution of nonprofit and cooperative enterprise in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001.

295

Macintyre, Stuart, ‘Biography’ in The Oxford companion to Australian history, edited by Graeme Davison, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview+Main&Entry= t127.17

McCalman, Janet. Journeyings: the biography of a middle-class generation 1920- 1990. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993.

McKay, Claude. This is the life: the autobiography of a newspaper man. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1961.

McKenna, Mark. Notes from the underground: Kathleen Fitzpatrick lecture, 31 May 2007. Melbourne: School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne, 2008.

McKernan, Michael. The strength of a nation: six years of Australians fighting for the nation and defending the homefront in WWII. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008.

Maguire, Carmel. Advances in Australian library services in Advances in librarianship, vol.9 (1979): 257-289.

Maguire, Carmel. ‘Remington, Geoffrey Cochrane (1897-1968)’. Australian Dictionary of Biography v.16 (1940-1980) Pik-Z. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp.76-77.

Marr, David. Patrick White: a life. Milsons Point, NSW, Random House, 1991.

Martin, Sylvia. Ida Leeson: a life. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2006.

Mellor, D.P. The role of science and industry. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1958 (Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 4 (Civil), vol.5).

Mitchell, A.G. The Rotary Club of Sydney 1921-1981. Sydney: the Club, 1981.

Mitchell, Bruce. House on the hill: Booloomimbah, home and university 1888- 1998. Armidale, NSW: University of New England, 1988.

Morrison, Ian. ‘The popular press and the Munn-Pitt Report’, in Australian Library History Forum V: Libraries and life in a changing world, the Metcalfe years, 1920-1970. Sydney: School of Information, Library and Archive Studies, University of New South Wales, 1993.

Munn, Ralph and Ernest R. Pitt. Australian libraries: a survey of conditions and suggestions for their improvement. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, 1935.

Murphy, John, ‘The voice of memory: history, autobiography and oral memory’. Historical studies, vol.22 no.87 (October 1986): 157-175.

296 Nadel, George. Australia's colonial culture: ideas, men and institutions in mid- nineteenth century Eastern Australia. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1957.

Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Niall, Brenda. Life class: the education of a biographer. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007.

O’Farrell, Patrick, editor. St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, 1821-1971. Sydney: Devonshire Press for St Mary’s Cathedral, 1971.

O’Farrell, Patrick, UNSW a portrait: the University of New South Wales 1949-1999. Kingston, N.S.W.: UNSW Press, 1999.

Oppenheimer, Melanie. ‘The imperial girl’, Journal of Australian Studies, vol.34 no.4 December 2010).

Oppenheimer, Melanie. Volunteering: why we cant survive without it. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008.

Public Library of New South Wales. Proceedings at the opening of the South-East wing, Friday, 20th March, 1964. Sydney: the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1964.

Pyke, N.O.P. ‘Has UNRRA lessons for the South Pacific Commission?’ Australian Outlook vol.1 no.1(March 1947): 29-32.

Radi, Heather, Peter Spearritt and Elizabeth Hinton, Biographical register of the NSW Parliament 1901-1970. Canberra: ANU Press, 1979.

Rayward, W. Boyd, editor. The variety of librarianship: essays in honour of John Wallace Metcalfe. Sandy Bay, Tas.: Library Association of Australia, 1976.

Rich, Joe. An Edwardian childhood: Sir Lawrence Harnett and the search for identity. Australian Historical Studies, vol.24 no.95 (October 1990): 252-266

Roe, Jill. Beyond belief: theosophy in Australia, 1879-1939. Kensington, N.S.W.: University of New South Wales Press, 1986.

Roe, Jill. Stella Miles Franklin. Sydney: Fourth Estate, 2008.

Roe, Michael. Nine Australian progressives: vitalism in bourgeois social thought, 1890-1960. St Lucia, Q.: University of Queensland Press, 1984.

Rose, F.G.G. ‘The pastoral industry in the Northern Territory, 1911-53’, Historical Studies, vol.6 no.2 (1954): 150-172.

297 Russell, Penny, editor. For richer, for poorer. Melourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994.

Rutland, Suzanne D. Edge of the diaspora: two centuries of Jewish settlement in Australia. Rose Bay, N.S.W.: Brandl & Schlesinger, 1997. Rutledge, Helen. My grandfather’s house. Sydney: Doubleday, 1986.

Ryan, Peter. Brief lives. Melbourne: Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004.

Saunders, Malcolm and Ralph Summy. The Australian Peace Movement: a short history. Canberra: Peace Research Centre, Australian National University, 1986

Scott, Joanne and and John Wanna. ‘Trajectories of public administration and administrative history in Australia: rectifying “a curious blight”?’ Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol.64 no.1 (March 2005): 11-24.

Selleck, Richard J W. Frank Tate: a biography. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982.

Sherington, Geoffrey. Shore: a history of Sydney Church of England Grammar School. Sydney: the School in association with Allen & Unwin, 1983.

Sherington, Geoffrey, R.C. Petersen and Ian Brice. Learning to lead: a history of girls' and boys' corporate secondary schools in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987.

Souter, Gavin, Company of heralds: a century and a half of Australian publishing by John Fairfax Limited and its predecessors, 1831-1981. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1981.

Spalding, Frances, ‘The biographer's contract’, Australian Book Review, issue 328 (February 2011): 38-44.

Spaull, Andrew, ‘Dedman, John Johnstone (1896-1973)’. Australian Dictionary of Biography, v.13 (1993): 606-207.

Strachey, Lytton, Eminent Victorians. London: Chatto & Windus, 1918.

Talbot, Michael R. A chance to read: a history of the Institutes Movement in South Australia. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1992.

Tauber, M.F. Resources of Australian libraries: preliminary undated draft. Canberra: AACOBS, 1961

Tauber, M.F. Resources in Australian libraries: summary report of a survey conducted in 1961for the Australian Advisory Committee on Bibliographical Services. Canberra: AACOBS, 1963.

298 Turner, Ken House of review: the New South Wales Legislative Council, 1934-1968. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1969.

Vincent, Ida. ‘The campaign for public libraries in New South Wales, 1929-1950’. Libri, vol.31 no.4 (December,1981): 271-293.

Walker, E. Ronald. Australia in the world depression. London: King, 1933.

Walker, E. Ronald. The Australian economy in war and reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.

Webb, Beatrice. The diary of Beatrice Webb. London: Virago, 1982-1985. 4 vols.

Weisbrot, David. Australian lawyers. Melbourne: Longman/Cheshire, 1990.

White, Judy. The White family of Belltrees: 150 years in the Hunter Valley. Sydney: Seven Press, 1981.

White, Michael A. ‘Carnegie philanthropy in Australia in the nineteen thirties: a reassessment’. History of education review, vol.26 no.1 (1997): 1-24.

White, Patrick, Flaws in the glass: a self-portrait. London: Vintage, 1988.

Whitelock, Derek. The great tradition: a history of adult education in Australia. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1974.

Whitmore, Raymond L. ‘Hornibrook, Sir Manuel Richard (1893-1970). Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online edition. www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A1405636b.htm Accessed 3/06/10.

Wigzell, S.W. ‘Cameron, Sir Donald Charles (1879-1960)’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.7 1979: 532-533.

Williams, Brian, ‘Cunningham, Kenneth Stewart (1890-1976)’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol.13 (1993): 544-545.

Zawawi, Clara in Jane Johnston and Clara Zawawi, Public relations: theory and practice, Crows Nest, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 2009.

Ziegler, Philip ‘Biography: the narrative’ in Ian Donaldson, ‘Introduction’, in Shaping lives: reflections on biography. Edited by Ian Donaldson, Peter Read and James Walter. Canberra: The Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1992: p.226.

Dissertations Alison, Jennifer. ‘Angus and Robertson as publishers, 1880-1900: a business history. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales, 1997.

299 Heaton, Barbara. Aspects of the School of Arts movement with particular reference to the Newcastle institution. Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) thesis, University of Newcastle, 1985.

Horrocks, Norman. ‘The Carnegie Corporation of New York and its impact on library development in Australia’. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1971.

Jones, David J. William Herbert Ifould and the development of library services in New South Wales, 1912-1942. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales, 1993.

Snibson, Rodney P. ‘The Free Library Movement in New South Wales, 1935-1944’. M.A. dissertation, Monash University, 1987.

Vincent, Ida C. ‘Goal formation and modification in public libraries: a theoretical analysis with particular reference to public library service in Bankstown, New South Wales’. PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales, 1985.

Oral history Bowman, Elizabeth, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 15 October 2006.

Fanning, Pauline. Interview with Carmel Maguire, 8 November 2000.

France, Brian. Interview with Carmel Maguire, 27 October 2006.

Penfold, Dulcie. Interview with Carmel Maguire, 6 November 2000.

Remington, Susan. Interviews with Carmel Maguire, 12 December 2000, 11 September 2001, and 7 January 2003.

Remington, Susan and June Lamb. Conversation with Carmel Maguire, 27 March 2001.

Richardson, G.D. Interview with Carmel Maguire, Inverness, 15 June 2001.

Souter, Gavin, Interview with Carmel Maguire, 30 March 2006.

Street, Sir Laurence. Interview with Carmel Maguire, 13 August 2003.

Personal communications

Radford, Wilma. Letter to Carmel Maguire, 16 April 1999

Ramage, Ian. Letter to Carmel Maguire, 15 June 2004.

Wilkinson, Eoin. Telephone conversation with Carmel Maguire, 23 March 2004.

300

301 Appendix 1

Free Library Movement Broadcasts 1936 – 1937: a partial list, constructed from FLM correspondence files in the State Library of New South Wales Date Time Station Topic Speaker/s 1936 Jan 7.20 pm ? Free Library G.C. Remington 12 Movement Feb ? 2GB Adult education G.S. Reichenbach 23 Nov 7.35 pm National Free books – the Free G.C. Remington 18 Network Library Movement through 2BL Dec 2GB 6/15 minute G.C. Remington Theosophical Society H.M.Storey public welfare Miss B.M. broadcasts Thomas (gave one each) Dec 2GB The Free Library for ? 14 adults Dec 3.30pm 2GB ? Mrs Thelma 15 Metcalfe Dec 2GB Free libraries and Mrs Thelma 16 peoople in the Metcalfe country Dec 11 am 2GB ? Mrs Thelma 17 Metcalfe Dec 11 am 2 GB Mrs Thelma 19 Metcalfe Dec 2GB The children’s needs Miss B.M. 22 Thomas 1937 Feb 2GB What is being done Miss B.M. 26 for the children Thomas Mar 2GB Dialogue Mr Storey & Mrs 19 Metcalfe Mar 2GB Books and Mr Storey, Mrs 23 democracy Annette M. Stiver Mar 2GB Dialogue Mr Storey & Mrs 26 Metcalfe Mar 2GB ? Mrs Metcalfe 27 Apr 2GB Dialogue Miss Thomas & 14 M.C. Cadogan Apr 2GB Dialogue Miss Thomas & 21 M.C. Cadogan

302 May 7 pm ?National Free Library G.C. Remington 16 Network Movement: its (in place of Sir origins, its aims and Frederick methods of procedure Stewart) May 2GB Aims & objects of the J.M. Storey & 19 Free Library Mrs Metcalfe Movement May 2GB Books for democracy Mrs Stiver & 23 M.C. Cadogan May 3.30 pm 2GB Children’s libraries Mrs Metcalfe & 26 and librarians G.W. Martin May 2GB? Aims & objects of the Mrs Stiver & 30 Free Library G.C. Remington Movement Oct 2UE ? Edna Gallagher 26 Dec 1.25 – National Address at Newcastle G.C. Remington 22 1.50 pm Network Businessmen’s Club through 2NC

303 Appendix 2

304