Teetotal in World War I, Tom Playford later insists on letting only ex Diggers drink at night
Tom Playford served with the 27th Battalion during World War I at Gallipoli and the western front where he was seriously wounded.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
As a teetotalmember of the 27th Battalion, Tom Playford was regularly assigned to picket duty, charged with trying to keep order among drunken Australian soldiers frequenting the brothels of Cairo in 1915.
Having served with an Adelaide militia, Playford enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on May 17, 1915, and embarked for training in Egypt on May 31.
He served at Gallipoli for three months and then on the western front, taking part in the battles of Pozières, where he was promoted to corporal in 1916, the Somme and Flers. A German machine-gun bullet at Flers shattered when it hit his belt buckle, opening a large cavity in his chest and shredding his abdomen. Evacuated to England, he had many operations and, while convalescing, read a lot of English history.
He rejoined his battalion in October 1917, fighting at Passchendaele, Ville-sur-Ancre, Hamel and Amiens. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1919 and promoted later that year to lieutenant before returning to Adelaide in July. Playford suffered pain caused throughout life from the 30 pieces of shrapnel still in his body.
As a member of the South Australian parliament in 1934, Playford succeeded in enacting a private member’s bill giving the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia permission to sell liquor in its clubs from 8am until 11pm except on Sundays, Good Friday and Christmas Day. This was done, despite opposition from the premier and many others inside and outside the parliament.
Although he had conceded that ex-servicemen’s evening gatherings needed to have drink, the drunkenness that Playford had seen in Britain (1917-19) convinced him to oppose any easing of lawful access to alcohol for the poor, especially the jobless. From 1935, he opposed all move to extend hotel trading hours. This included a proposal to let hotels stay open until 7pm. Under his premiership, six o’clock closing of pubs remained law in South Australia until 1967.
