Women take to streets in Adelaide in 1938 to stop – by one vote – any change to law for 6pm closing of hotel bars
Women protesting outside parliament house in Adelaide in 1938 against any change to the 6pm closing of hotel bars.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
An attempt in the South Australian parliament in 1938 to revoke 6 o’clock closing of hotels encouraged temperance advocates into a major public campaign, involving huge marches and rallies and carefully targeted lobbying of politicians.
With many independent members in parliament being lobbied, the “booze bill” was defeated – by one vote. But women temperance’s last great victory and marked the end of its greatest vigour and popular support, although 6pm closing remained intact until 1967. A widespread opinion, not all wowserish or prohibitionist, was that 6pm closing had been a positive reform.
The Women's Christian Temperance Union formed in 1886 in South Australia (along with the South Australian Alliance, the Total Abstinence League and the Rechabites) taught “scientific temperance” in schools in the 1920s/30s.
Temperance ideals flourished in Nonconformist churches, and the South Australian Alliance (later People for Alcohol Concern and Education) worked tirelessly through meetings, field days and its journal, the Patriot, to maintain debate. The target became 1 o’clock closing of pubs on Saturdays.
The alcohol-free Grand Coffee Palace at Waikerie, a two-storey stone building, was still going in 1935. Besides those city (Hindley Street had the Grand Coffee Palace, (Jonathon) Grant’s/West’s Coffee Palace and MacDonald's Coffee Palace), the Grosvenor Hotel on North Terrace (1918) was alcohol-free. Another surviving coffee palace is at 80 Esplanade, Semaphore.
There were also coffee palaces throughout country South Australia: Renmark, Tailem Bend, Beachport, Mount Gambier, Victor Harbor, Peterborough, Waikerie, Terowie, Port Pirie and Kadina. But, in many cases, the buildings were unprofitable for the temperance movement in the long run and became hotels.
