ISHBEL AT WORK

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20668, 5 March 1937, Page 14

ISHBEL AT WORK

EXPERIENCE AT INN Miss Ishbel MacDonald, daughter of Mr Ramsay MacDonald and licensee of the Plough Inn, Speen, Bucks, discussed some of the problems of barkeeping with young men who, under a scheme devised by the Restaurant Public Houses Association, have been brought from the Special Areas to be trained and placed as barmen in London (states a London exchange). The occasion was the annual reunion of the association at the Windsor Castle Hotel. Victoria. S.W. Miss MacDonald, as president of the training branch, presided. “Very hard, very interesting, very enjoyable,” was her description of work in a public house. “Now that I have been working in an inn,” she said, “I believe what a responsibility your work is. You are in touch with all kinds of people, and you can ‘set the tone’ of all the houses in which you are working. “There are some public houses which are an insult to the working men who frequent them. You can make them all fit for any person to go into—they should be places in which people can spend their time in happy companionship.” Mr W. S. Douglas, representing the Ministry of Labour, which collaborates with the association in its work, said that since 1932, when the scheme was started, 600 boys had been helped to positions. Last year 200 boys had been placed in satisfactory and permanent employment. It was announced during the meeting that the scheme was to be extended to Scotland this year. A secondary course of training, which would fit men to become public-house managers, was also to be organised. Mrs Neville Chamberlain, who attended as a guest, said she had been touched by the surprise of a working man who had called on her and found that she really knew something about the plight of the Special Areas.