Margaret Barrett’s association with credit unions in Australia began in 1954 and never ceased. She was Assistant to the General Manager of the Australian Federation of Credit Union Leagues (AFCUL) and Voluntary Secretary at the Australian Credit Union Historical Co-operative (ACUHC), the forerunner to Australian Mutuals History.
The first association Margaret had with credit unions happened when she joined City Council Employees Credit Union six months after getting a job at the Sydney City Council as a stenographer, which was her first job after leaving school. She told Tom Kelly and John Lee who interviewed her in 2002 for ACUHC’s Memories & Recollections book that she, “joined City Council Employees Credit Union [now Sydney Mutual Bank] as a saver but then I had to take out a loan. I found them absolutely wonderful”.
Most of Margaret’s work in credit unions was done with the legendary Dermot Ryan, first as his Assistant in his role as foundation General Manager of AFCUL and as his voluntary assistant when ACUHC began in his home in Lidcombe, Sydney in 1985.
Margaret had a high regard for Dermot and obviously the feeling was mutual because he asked her to join him as his assistant at AFCUL in 1966. Of Dermot’s motivation for such tireless commitment to the credit union movement she said, “He was pushing for financial equality for all people. He loved his fellow man. He felt if a person was financially secure, the rest would come. He would be emotionally secure and happy”.
The early days of AFCUL were anything but glamorous with Margaret and Dermot often working through the night during Annual General Meeting season and having to make do with very few resources.
“We were in a little converted house. One side of it was an engraver and the other side was us. It was very primitive. I had an old underwood typewriter which nearly broke your fingers as you typed on it. We had no equipment at all, we used the local printer. I used to type the minutes on stencils and I can honestly recall one time bringing back to the office 500 copies of minutes, each 24 pages, walking down the street with these great bundles and having to get in the gutter. We were so primitive but we got by”, said Margaret.
By the mid-1970s Margaret’s role with AFCUL had become very demanding as this was a boom time for credit union growth in Australia but it was also a time of struggle as many credit unions were in financial peril but they just kept forming. In 1977, Margaret resigned from AFCUL and took up teaching, eventually gaining a Masters in Education degree and specialising in educating children with learning difficulties.
In her 2002 oral history interview she had plenty of goodwill towards what was then Sydney Credit Union, with whom she had belonged since 1954. She said, “My credit union is wonderful. I use them for travel and of course Dermot started that. I didn’t join it straight away because my membership is 2373. But it was probably in the first 6 months of it. That’s all I have today, my credit union. It’s still as good today, it’s still as caring today as the day it started.”
