Another Registration
The main effect of the new Order announced by the Minister of Labour in Parliament on Tuesday will possibly be psychological. Like its predecessor, the Control of Engagement Order (1947), which came into force on October 6, it is hedged round with safeguards. The Control of Engagement Order, which (besides requiring em- ployers to notify their vacancies to Employment Exchanges) required the unemployed to obtain work through the Exchanges, referred only to men between eighteen and fifty-one and women between eighteen and forty-one—and also did not include professional and managerial and other types of workers. The same limited age-groups are covered by the new Order, which will come into force on December 8 ; and the announcement-is-equally conciliatory in tone. Unoccupied persons and those employed in betting and gambling, amusement arcades, night clubs and street trading are to register, but Mr. Isaacs hastily repudiated any suggestion of force—police or prison. Instructions on the registration will be given by poster, the radio and the Press, as during the war ; but the actual designation of those who are to register will be more difficult than on any previous occasion. Registration will take two forms ; individuals will register and employers will register their staffs. Registration will be followed by interviews, and circumstances will be sympathetically considered. Nor is it intended that the undertakings mentioned shall close ; they will be able to draw workers from those outside the age-groups affected or from the disabled. Some thousands of the 5oo,000 or so people who do not appear in Ministry of Labour records may thus be drawn into the priority occupations—the mining and textile industries, agriculture, industries earning dollars, the essential public services. But the very mildness and intricacy of the arrangements will probably mean that determined idlers will be able to avoid conscription. What these two Orders may do is to impress further on the public the seriousness of Britain's position, and if they do that they will have accomplished something.
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