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in the universities around Australia and then to form a national student body which would ultimately to link up to an international federation of pharmacy students.
By bringing the state student societies under one banner he saw it as a means of hastening a national outcome on the education questions.
In Victoria the student body at that time was loosely represented by
the students’ representative council (SRC), which was founded in 1947.
One of the ex-service students, Bill Lumley, was elected president of this body in his second year of pharmacy studies.
Lumley set about persuading others to abandon the SRC, and form a pharmacy student’s association in their own right. He received a lot of support and encouragement from Les Cashen in establishing the Victorian Pharmacy Students Association (VPSA) and Bill Lumley became its president in 1949.
The Western Australian Pharmacy Student’s Association (WAPSA) was formed 1952 and the first president Cliff Carter, who had also been
a mature age student under the Commonwealth Repatriation training scheme qualified in 1953.
Cliff had a favourite saying when admonishing a group of colleagues to stir them to action which was ‘chemists work in grains and think in grains’.
Due to increasing numbers of students in WA, affiliation with NAPSA was negotiated and the local organisation was able to play a more significant role, particularly when
the full time course was established
at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, now Curtin University of Technology. In the other Australian states around this time, the story was similar.
In NSW, when the Sydney University Pharmacy Association (SUPA) was founded its inaugural president was Les Cashen, and he held that office from 1945 to 1947.
Les Cashen stimulated SUPA with his eventually successful plans to found a national union of pharmacy students and to affiliate with an international organisation with similar objectives. He encouraged his fellow students
to take an interest in pharmacy related groups and was, with others, instrumental in the decision by which student observers were admitted to NSW Society council meetings.
When the national body was formed, it was named the NUPSA and Les
Cashen was the secretary in 1948. He worked from an address in Bondi which would have been close to his home and work. He did not seek re-election to the board of NUPSA at the congress in January 1950.
The story goes that the NUPSA name was too close to that of the National Union of Australian University Students and so the name was changed to NAPSA. In 1949 the university students congress was held in Queensland and the pharmacy body was invited to attend.
It is difficult to assess Cashen’s influence in keeping the leaders of pharmacy on their toes. He was unsuccessful in his attempts to win election to the Board and the Society councils, yet the Guild committee took positive steps to prevent him from having a voice in pharmacy. Another group of students who, on qualification, became involved in the political scene were more aggressive than Cashen. They became known as the ‘young Turks’ and apart
from treading on a few toes in the older brigade, they also formed an exclusive fine dining group called the ‘Ottoman Club’.
One member of this group, still active in pharmacy today is Warwick Wilkinson, who in the 1950s had been apprenticed to Les Cashen, who no doubt imbued in him the spirit to be involved in the politics of the profession at home and abroad. Wilkinson certainly did just that.
After NAPSA was up and running, Cashen went overseas to England where he worked as a locum pharmacist for a period. He also
went to Europe to participate in
the formation of the International Pharmacy Students Federation (IPSF), and he became the
inaugural president at its meeting in Copenhagen in 1951. He later held the office of Australian member of the council of this body.
Whilst in Europe he learnt French as he included a visit to his friend, Vic Gilbert in his travels. Vic was the May and Baker representative in Sierra Leone, a French colony in Africa.
volume 5 no 37 NOVEMBER 2009
Pharmacy History Australia 23