MINERS TO BE BARMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1935, Page 4

MINERS TO BE BARMEN

EMPLOYMENT SCHEME

LONDON, March 10

With the approval of the Ministry of Labour, magistrates, social workers, and the brewers, a scheme to train unemployed miners to be barmen is developing so quickly that in a few weeks’ time a large hostel for the accommodation of trainees will be opened.

Miss Ishbel MacDonald, who presides over the movement, will in all probability perform the opening ceremony when the Cross Keys Hostel, Blackfriars Road, opens its doors. Previously the Cross Keys has nourished as an ordinary London hostelry, but above the licensed premises accommodation is now being found for the miner-apprentices, and there will be facilities for interviewing between prospective employers and the men. It will, in effect, be a clearing house for “the trad-2.” Mrs. Ernest Sotham, honorary organising secretary of the Restaurant Public, Houses Association, who are sponsoring the scheme, told a "Sunday Tinies” representative that already 200 men had been trained and placed in employment.

"We are not displacing men already in employment,” Mrs. Sotham said, ‘•but, are merely placing our trainees in jobs which fall vacant, in the ordinary way. Brewers and retailers are doing all they can to help us, and we have the confidence of the licensing authorities.

“The time is nearly ripe to extend the scheme to the provinces. Not only is it finding work for men who had al-, most given up hope, of ever finding employment again, hut it is supplying a better type of barmen, fully trained in th? ordinary work and also in light catering.”

All the men who came under the scheme come from the distressed areas. They arc given eight weeks’ training, with full board and laundry, and 5s a week pocket money, and are attached as supernumerary assistants to selected houses. London brewers have placed several taverns at their disposal as training grounds, and among the supporters of the work is the Rev. J. B. L. Jellicoe (brother of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe). who for a long period ran the Anchor Tavern. St. Pancra-’, as a social centre.