Four Corners: Women 'rattle the chains' in public bars

Black-and-white footage from 1965.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

Half a century's traffic has flowed past Brisbane Regatta Hotel since the Suffragettes rattled their chains in England. But today at the Regatta Hotel, women are still fighting for equality - the right to drink with men in public bars in Queensland in 1965.

Women entering the hotel. They chain their ankles to the bar.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

It wasn't a very expensive protest. The dog chain cost only 5s 6d and the padlocks were only two bob each. But whatever the cost, the women felt it as the principle of the thing that mattered. If the publican served them with liquor, he faced a fine of 10 to 20 pounds, and so did anyone else in the bar who bought them a beer or even shouted them a brandy, lime and soda.

The women hand out pieces of paper.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

Before detectives reached the scene, it was time to hand out propaganda urging men to clamour for women's rights to drink beside them.

Tea cups.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

A few days later, over a non-alcoholic cup of tea, I heard about the protest from the women who made it - Mrs Merle Thornton, and Mrs Rosalie Bowdner, whose husbands are university lecturers. I asked why they chose the public bar issue.

MERLE THORNTON:

Well, it's not that we think this is the most important issue of discrimination against women. There are many more important issues, like the equal pay issue. But it's something we thought we could make a quick impact on, and we do think it's an important and significant issue, both in being a matter of legal discrimination against women, which is never trivial - there are always invidious situations arise out of this - and because of the social attitudes of protectiveness towards women, involved in the attempt to keep women out of bars. We think this is very significant and bad. Women ought to have and ought to demand the right to discriminate between the conversations that they'll accept and the ones that they won't for themselves.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

Well, when the policeman arrived, what happened then?

ROSALIE BOWDNER:

Um, well, at first the policeman asked us for the keys. We said we didn't have them, and we didn't know where they were. The police then asked for a hammer and smashed the padlock. And asked us to leave. We said that we wouldn't, didn't want to leave, that we weren't breaking any law, we had read the act, we had consulted a solicitor, and that it was quite within the law for us to remain in the bar as long as nobody served us with a drink. The policeman said, 'Please don't make a fool of me. Please go out quietly. I don't want to have to make a scene and carry you out bodily.' We said we were afraid he'd have to do this. He also told us in rather a fatherly way that we were breaking the law. If we would go and get the act, he would show us exactly which line did apply. We still refused to go, saying we did know the act. We had read it. We had consulted a solicitor. And finally the policeman left, saying, 'Stay as long as you like, have a good time, and don't drink too much.'

JOHN PENLINGTON:

Now, presuming you eventually get the right for women to buy liquor in a public bar in Queensland, do you think that many Queensland women are going to exercise this right?

MERLE THORNTON:

I think quite a number are. Obviously, the day after it's made legal, there won't be a great movement of women into bars, although we'll see that there's some movement, but in ten years' time it will be a different matter. Women are drinking in substantial, regular and increasing numbers in bars in Sydney and Melbourne. I've drunk there myself in bars and enjoying it. There are regular clienteles of women in these States. In time, there will be in Queensland, and we predict that what will happen then is that the women will become a little more broadminded, and the men a little more restrained in their bar behaviour, and this will have an entirely beneficent effect.

JOHN PENLINGTON:

At the present time, women in Queensland can buy liquor in a lounge or in a beer garden, and there are plenty of those around. Do you think there really is a case for women buying liquor in public bars?

MERLE THORNTON:

Yes, it's a legal discrimination. Women should have the discretion to do what they choose in this matter. No-one's going to force women into bars if they don't want to go, but they should have the right to go there. And awkward situations certainly do arise when a group of men from a business meeting or whatever it is are deciding to adjourn to the bar, and the woman has to either have the embarrassment of waiting to see whether they'll include her by specially deciding to go to the lounge, or she has to invent a headache to avoid the embarrassment. It's about time she stopped doing this. And also it's an issue not just for professional and business women, but even more - although I think they're less conscious of it - for housewives who get left outside the bar, you know, sitting in the car or something, while the husband goes in for a couple with the boys. One of the things that appalled me when I first came to Queensland was seeing the women standing around on the footpaths waiting for their men to come out of the bars in Queensland's suburbs. I think this is really an intolerable situation. It's a very general one.