Mana Tangata, People of Action: Rotary Clubs in New Zealand and the Pacific by Stephen Clarke (review)

MEN’S SERVICE CLUBS occupy a particular space in the constellation of voluntary organizations. Mostly originating in the American mid-west, they had their heyday in the years after World War II and, from the 1980s, shared the challenges of declining membership. In New Zealand, Rotary was the first of a cluster which included Lions, Jaycees and Kiwanis, their logos welcoming visitors to communities large and small.

These organizations were ideally suited to the needs and opportunities of the post-war years, benefitting from the desire of a cohort of ex-servicemen for fellowship, and from internationalism and a desire for world peace, which gave great appeal to their international structures. The post-war baby boom, new schools and suburbs gave plenty of opportunity for the community endeavours. There was sufficient leisure (and, it appears, knowledge of the workings of a concrete mixer) to see projects through during the ‘working bee era’, though Lions clubs were more generally seen as having practical skills of this kind. As Clarke and others have noted, the international service clubs attained a level of participation by New Zealand’s adult male population that was unequalled elsewhere.

Founded in Chicago in 1905, Rotary gained a foothold in New Zealand from 1921. Clarke indicates that this was no external colonization, but the result of active encouragement, led by former Cabinet minister George Fowlds. One of Rotary’s first achievements during this early phase was to support and underpin the Crippled Children Society, established in 1935. Children’s health and well-being has remained a focus through to more recent ‘Cure Kids’ campaigns.

Rotary reached its peak growth and influence in New Zealand during the 1950s and 1960s, but by the time it reached its highest membership in 1985, it already seemed out of touch, a ‘bastion of middle-class maleness’, as Clarke puts it. In the last ten years membership has continued to fall by 25%, despite the admission of women from 1989.

To focus on a ‘rise and decline’ narrative would not do justice to Rotary and like organizations. Clarke’s centennial history provides an insightful pairing to Susan and Graham Butterworth’s excellent history of Jaycees, published in 2007. Both books chart an extraordinary range of community activities, calibrated to the needs of different decades. Rotary had the more exclusive membership, based for decades on the restriction of one member from each profession or business in a club, though the proliferation of sub- and associate categories underpinned its expansionist period. Elite names feature in the membership of the older, large city Rotary clubs, but the suburban clubs emerging in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s had a more egalitarian feel.

While avoiding a heavy-handed ‘life and times’ approach, Clarke provides a lens onto social change and associational life more broadly. Patterns of leisure and expectations of social life shaped Rotary’s internal workings and the kinds of causes it adopted. The lunchtime meeting shifted in some clubs to an evening meal once suburban members lived at a distance from their workplace, or professionals were unable to schedule a longer lunch into the working day. Once women were admitted to clubs, the breakfast meeting started to emerge, as working women claimed evening time with families. The ageing membership of Rotary is a feature of twenty-first-century clubs, as with membership-based organizations more generally.

Mana Tangata provides many threads of interest well beyond the organization itself, so embedded was it in New Zealand life. Gender inevitably gets its place in the book. Prior to 1989 women’s role was a supportive one, and Clarke suggests that this was actively embraced rather than resented by ‘Rotary wives’. If Rotary was a way of life, it was not necessarily confined to male members or to formal meetings. Just as there were ‘Jayceettes’, there were ‘Rotary Anns’, presented with their badges on ‘ladies nights’, a parallel supportive...