'Working for the Duration?'
Aspects of Voluntary Work in Queensland during World War Two
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600000696Keywords:
Voluntarism and the voluntary principle, Australian home front, World War Two, class and cultural boundariesAbstract
This paper will examine aspects of voluntarism and the voluntary principle on the home front in Australia during World War Two. The general assumptions which pervade historical texts and public consciousness consistently refer to voluntary work as simply knitting socks and balaclavas and little else. In fact the voluntary work carried out during World War Two was far more encompassing, complex and multifaceted. It may be surprising to some, although not, I suspect, to those who lived through the war, that voluntary work was extensive, crossed class and cultural boundaries, and had the overwhelming support of the community. Although this paper will focus on the state of Queensland, it is important to give a general outline of the types of voluntary work carried out on the home front, and what was involved.
References
‘This paper arises out of work towards my PhD thesis for Macquarie University, to be completed in 1996, ‘Voluntary Workers and Patriotic Funds in Australia during World War Two’.
One such example is Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front. Melbourne in Wartime, 1939–1945, Melbourne, 1990. In her chapter on work, she reiterates the stereotype of voluntary work and the volunteer in a very superficial manner, see pages 55 – 56. For an example of how voluntary work continues to be measured by the numbers of socks knitted, see Sydney Morning Herald, 15 August 1995.
Patriotic funds have a long history in Australia. I have traced them back to the Crimean War. Patriotic funds were regularly established thereafter during periods of conflict, most notably during the Sudan War, the Boer War and of course the Great War. See my article ‘Alleviating Distress. The Lord Mayor's Patriotic Fund in NSW, 1914–1920’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historial Society, vol. 81, part 1, 1995, 87.
These figures have been gathered from material found in a range of documents held in the Australian Archives in Canberra. These include records of the Department of Repatriation which had certain responsibilities for patriotic funds at a federal level. Annual reports of the ARCS have also proved useful.
The YMCA, Salvation Army, ARCS and ACF (and later the YWCA) were officially sanctioned by the federal govermnent to work alongside the armed forces during World War Two. These organisations sent officers into the field essentially to look after the physical and moral well-being of the servicemen and women. Many of these officers worked in an unpaid capacity throughout the war, working alongside the frontline troops in areas such as the Middle East, Singapore and New Guinea. A number became prisoners of war, and some were killed. There has been very little written on the role these organisations played in the war.
Established in Queensland in 1931 at the height of the Depression.
The Patriotic Fund of Queensland. TR 1770 Box 4. Chief Secretary's Department, 1942/43. Queensland State Archives, Queensland. It is worth pointing out that there has been little research carried out on this particular facet of home front life – the dislocation, disruption and break-up of families.
NSW Red Cross Division, Red Cross News, February 1942, 1. This close relationship was extended in December 1944 when Alfred Brown, Secretary General of the ARCS wrote to Mr A. Monk, Secretary of the ACTU, regarding a position of a member of the ACTU on the National Council of the ARCS. Letter from Alfred Brown to Mr A.E. Monk, Trades Hall, 18 December 1944, Records of the ARCS, National Headquarters, Melbourne.
Frances, Raelene, ‘Shifting Barriers. Twentieth Century Women's Labour Patterns’ in Evans, Raymond and Saunders, Kay (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, Sydney, 1992, 251.
For example, Premier Wayne Goss used the slogan ‘re-establishing community values’ extensively during the July 1995 election campaign in Queensland.
Jill Julius Matthews, ‘Deconstructing the Masculine Universe: the Case of Women's Work’, in Women and Labour Publications Collective (eds), All Her Labours. Working it Out, Sydney, 1984, 11–23.
ARCS, Notes on Activities, no. 49, June 1944, 7. I refer to the Red Cross as a women's organisation run by men with women doing the hard work at the branch level. These figures certainly rival Judith Smart's assertions that the Federated Association of Australian Housewives was the largest women's organisations in Australia with 130,000 members during the inter war years. See ‘“For the Good that We Can Do”: Cecilia Downing and Feminist Christian Citizenship’, Australian Feminist Studies, no. 19, Autumn 1994, 40.
Hasluck, Paul, The Government and the People, 1939–1941. Volume 1. Series 4 (Civil), Canberra, 1952 and The Government and the People, 1942–1945. Vol 2. Series 4 (Civil), Canberra, 1970.
See Carmel Shute, ‘From Balaclavas to Bayonets: Women's Voluntary War Work, 1939–41’, Hecate, vol. VI, no. 1, 1980, 5–26.
Damousi, Joy and Lake, Marilyn (eds), Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, Melbourne, 1995.
The Lavarch Report, Half Way to Equal. Report of the Inquiry into Equal Opportunity and Equal Status for Women in Australia, Canberra, 1992 documented the lack of recognition of voluntary and unpaid work in the community.
Inglis, Ken, ‘At War’, in Australians from 1939, Sydney, 1987, 1–19.
Preliminary research has been carried out on the Queensland branch. See Shauna Hicks, ‘The Women's Voluntary National Register’, RHSQJ, vol. 15, no. 2, May 1993, 106–108. See also Aline Gillespie, ‘Brisbane Women's Voluntary Work’, ibid., 109–113.
Quoted in The Courier Mail, 15 March 1939.
Editorial, Australian Women's Weekly, 18 March 1939.
In Victoria, 78% of the WVNR members were aged between 17 and 35, with 67% single. In South Australia 68% were in the 17–35 category, with 57% single. See South Australian WVNR Progress Reports, A663/1 0130/4/120, Australian Archives (AA), Canberra; and Victorian WVNR Progress Reports, A663/1 0130/4/119 + att., AA, Canberra.
ARCS, Qld Division, 28 Annual Report, 1941–42, 5. Helen Taylor says there were approximately 310,000 adult women (white women) in Queensland during World War II, out of a population of approx. 1 million. Therefore 7% of women were members of the Red Cross during this period. See Helen Taylor, ‘War Mobilisation: A Matter of Geography’ in Gail Reekie (ed), On the Edge. Women's Experiences of Queensland, St. Lucia, 1994, 113.
ibid., 39–42.
This figure was commonly stated from 1940 onwards. Never more, never less. In the Third Annual Report of the ACF, Queensland Division, there were 315 branches with only seventeen male presidents.
The formation of the CWA in Qld in August 1922 followed on from NSW's example the previous Easter. By 1948, there were 438 branches across Queensland with 17,573 members. See Mrs Neve Scarborough, History of the Associated Country Women of the World and of its Member Societies, London, 1953, 204. After New South Wales and Queensland, CWA's were formed in Western Australia in July 1924, Victoria in March 1928, South Australia in 1929 and Tasmania in February 1936.
Victoria was different again. There were a number of women in key positions of power within the Victorian ACF, particularly Ivy Brookes, one of Alfred Deakin's daughters and wife of Herbert Brookes. However, Victoria used the system of local government as did New South Wales. The Returned Serviceman's League had considerable influence in South Australia and Tasmania.
‘Editorial’, ACF Qld Magazine, June 1941, 7. The Patriotic Fund of Queensland, TR1770 Box 3. Queensland State Archives, Brisbane.
In 1943/44, the four Divisional Presidents of the QCWA were on the ACF, Qld Division executive. They were Miss L. Palmer (Southern Division); Mrs E. Crowther (Northern Division); Mrs F. Dehnert (Western Division) and Mrs W.K. Galloway (Central Division).
The Joint Committee of the ACF and Qld Patriotic Fund was dissolved in April 1947 after raising approximately one and a half million pounds.
