Methodists help win 1915 South Australian referendum on 6pm closing of hotel bars: stayed law until 1967
Part of the 1938 backlash campaign against attempts to revoke the law on 6pm closing of hotels.
Image by courtesy of State Library of South Australia
The South Australian temperance movement’s biggest win was in the 1915 referendum when 100,000 people out of 176,000 voted for 6pm closing of hotels.
The temperance movement had strong support from Methodists and other nonconformist Christians who had kept to total abstinence and hostility to the liquor trade from the 19th Century.
Their churches set up Bands of Hope that encouraged young members to pledge of life-long abstinence. Conferences regularly passed resolutions against intemperance as a major moral and social evil. The word wowser may be an acronym for “We Only Want Social Evils Removed”.
This concern with changing society meant the temperance campaign went beyond being anti alcohol.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1886) linked its opposition to alcohol with votes for women and to protecting women and children in the home and in the workplace.
The South Australian Alliance (1884), leading the temperance movement politically, also, through its general secretary, Matthew Wood Green, pastor of the Grote Street Christian Church, published support for women’s suffrage and opened the subject to men.
Achieving 6pm closing in 1915 encouraged support for total prohibition. Through the 1920s/1930s, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union taught “scientific temperance: in schools, temperance ideals flourished in Nonconformist churches, and the South Australian Alliance worked tirelessly through meetings, field days and its journal, the Patriot, to spread information and keep the debate going.
The goal became 1pm closing on Saturdays and the defence of 6pm closing on weekdays. This was supported by widespread opinion that 6pm closing had been positive.
An attempt in the South Australian parliament in 1938 to revoke 6pm closing encouraged temperance advocates into a major public campaign, involving huge and rallies and carefully targeting politicians. The 6pm bars closing continued until 1967.
