A Sydney RSL club during the 1940s …
… isn’t what it used to be.
Spot the difference (hint: it’s not just the colour in the photo). Poker machines are as much a part of an RSL club as the memorabilia cabinets and eternal flames. Financially, they’re vital. And it’s making some inside the returned services brigade nervous.
Jennifer Cornwell is writing a book on the history of RSLs. As she writes for Crikey:
“With the imminent return of thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, the cash-strapped RSL is seeking to reassert its relevance by professionalising its services and modernising its image.
“By contrast, the surviving RSL clubs are increasingly abandoning the very brand they played such a large role in shaping — old men sitting around drinking beer and playing the pokies — as they reinvent themselves in order to appeal to an entirely different demographic. Any association with the RSL is now considered bad for business. Yet their outrageous claim of fealty to the Anzac cause goes unchallenged.”
This Anzac Day, raise a beer to the Diggers who fought so bravely. As those who remain look around and wonder just what happened to their much-loved clubs.
Spot the difference: the blokes in the top photo appear to be socialising and communicating. Whereas the bloke in the bottom photo appears to have switched off.
There another difference, apart from the colour and the pokies – the men at the RSL club in the 1940s seem to be talking to each other!
I heard, on a rural station, that appalling ad. (not sure by whom) witht he tag line “raise a glass for Anzac day”. Was that not derided into the shame pit when first foisted on the airwaves?
RSL clubs started in the 1920s, and in some states had the advantage of longer trading hours (the pubs shut at 6.00pm in Victoria, NSW and SA). After 1945 possibly half the male population was eligible to join the RSL and RSL clubs boomed. Whilst we have been to Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan since, the proportion of veterans in the population has declined, whilst the veterans of the two world wars have been dying or moving into nursing homes. Clubs in NSW gained poker machines with cash prizes a few years after the pubs got 10.00pm closing. For many years the clubs were able to provide good social facilities, including sporting facilities, meals and drinks at affordable prices and cheap entertainment. Many excellent community clubs prospered in NSW.
In other states pokies were introduced with the prime purpose of raising revenue, and this attitude spread to NSW. There are no clubs anything like the NSW community clubs in Victoria, and state taxation is likely to significantly reduce the facilities offered by NSW community clubs.
RSL clubs that prosper have become returned services and citizens clubs, and unless there is another world war involving a significant proportion of our population, the proportion of returned service people will continue to fall.
In NSW, RSL clubs, by whatever name – and there were many – have generally adopted the name “[Town name] Diggers Club”
AFAIK, the term “Digger” is reserved under federal law to use by or under licence to the RSL movement, although I have not been able to locate the relevant legislation by searching the AUSTLII databases.
It’s time the RSL regained all of its names and marks.
I, who never served, write this as a full member of 20+ years’ standing of a Digger’s Club. In earlier years, full membership would not have been available to me.
Perhaps the best first move would be for the RSL to restrict use of its branding to only those enterprises which are governed, at least in the majority, by Directors who are elected by ex-Service men and women.