VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22193, 21 August 1935, Page 20

VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

SOCIAL §ERVICE COUNCIL appointment as president [from our own* correspondent] 'LONDON. July 13 Viscount Bledisloe was introduced in the House of Lords this week, and took the oath on his elevation to a viscountcy. His sponsors were Viscount Halifax and Viscount Dllswater. Although Lord Bledisloe has now got rid of his sciatica, he says that he is not yet well, and he longs for a good rest. Doubtless, this will be forthcoming at the beginning of August, when a definite pause in the activities of social and official life in the West of London occurs. In the meantime, he appears to be examining several spheres of usefulness. It was announced last week that Lord Bledisloo would become President of the National Council of Social Service. Speaking to his own people in Gloucestershire, he said that he had accepted this post only after a strong personal appeal from the Prince of Wales. This council, he said, embraced in its ambit social services of every description in both town and country throughout the United Kingdom.

Mutual Helpfulness The council's object was to spread a communal spirit, the consciousness of mutual interdependence and the obligation of mutual helpfulness between all classes and all agencies, national and local, which make for social progress, the relief b.y voluntary effort of unemployment and brightening of the lives and homes of tho people of this country. As president it would be his ambition —and he wanted them to support him —to see Gloucestershire point the way to ideals. There was one respect in which ho felt inclined to emphasise the outstanding work which the national council was doing to-day, the speaker said, and that was the establishment of occupational clubs or centres for the unemployed in the most distressed area of England and Wales. Why he emphasised that in particular was because he wanted to see a revival of migration of the good type of Britisher to New Zealand and the other overseas Dominions. The one great handicap to those that had been sent out, or in the case of many who had been sent out, during the last 15 or 20 years was that they were only capable of pursuing one vocation, and if that happened to fail, if there was no scope for its exorcise, they drifted into the ranks of the unemployed. Olubs and Workshops The excellent clubs and workshops established by voluntary effort throughout the country, Lord Bledisloe said, were making workers more adaptable and more capable of turning their hands to more than one vocation. He was certain that through his knowledge of Ndw Zealand, there would bo a far greater readiness on the part of Governments of the Dominions to open their arms to men and women from this country if they were more adaptable and capable of taking up alternative employment. Lord Bledisloe says he is not yet in a position to speaK in detail of his proposals. He will make it more of a whole-time job than it has been in the past, but he has not yet decided what particular work he will make his very own.