Rover History 1945 - 1956

1950 - "Membership increases and a New RSL is found"

We started the year with renewed endeavour to show the the outside world that we were far from being 'down and out', much, I think, to the outside's amazement.

A series of visits was decided upon and during the year, we visited the Police HQ, the CID HQ and the GPO.

Our internal organisation underwent a series of changes in that Dick became Assistant Treasurer as well as Assistant Secretary.
Dennis became Dave's Deputy, Ray Neil took over as QM in addition to being our Librarian.

During March, we had a new face introduced to the Crew and we found that this chap was called Paul, who was to eventual become our new RSL, though not before a lot of controversy and apathy had been ironed out. The membership of the Crew began at this stage to progress by leaps and bounds. In all, we had eight more chaps in the Crew before the year ended. These were Paul, Pete A (who we were delighted to see back with us), Alan Azimuth, Stuart, Dave Wallis, Sydney Knapp, Colin Dickinson and Geoff Lomas.

Paul soon became established and the Crew agreed to him becoming Acting RSL, on the 12th of June.

New legislation was brought into being at the AGM of this year in that we decided to change our Financial Year from the 30th of September to the 31st of March, in order to bring ourselves in line with the policy dictated by HQ. At the same time, a proposal that business meetings should only be held once per month was rejected by 9 votes to 3. A further proposal that we should change our uniform to blue was thrown out on its ear.

Our New Zealand friends paid us their farewell visit and it was with genuine regret that we saw them go.

Gibby had made a number of calls upon us during the years and I think he was very suprised and indeed gratified to find that the 59th. was a very thriving Crew, and because of his "great admiration" for us in weathering the storms that had beset us, he said that he would like to show his admiration in some tangible
way and asked if we would let him buy us a Flag. The answer to this can now be seen in the Den.

All was not well in our financial sphere, and week in and week out, we had the same 'thorn' to contend with, and eventually the Crew could stand the state of affairs no longer, and the Secretary was asked to write to the Treasurer and ask for his resignation from office. This has been the only time that such a drastic step has been taken. The Treasurer did resign but not only from office but from the Crew. Dick was appointed as the new Treasurer. Owing to heavy work, Ray relinquished the post of Librarian and Dave Wallis took over the post. Dick asked for two auditors to be appointed and Geoff Booth and Stuart were made Auditors. The subs were then levied at £1 per annum.

To end the year - a piece of history was made and that was that, in recognition of the many services to the Crew rendered by Keith Jones, he was made an Honorary Life Member of the Crew.