User:Slmvbs/National Service Hostels Corporation

National Service Hostels Corporation

The National Service Hostels Corporation was set up in 1941 by Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour and National Service, as an independent non-profit making organisation to cater for the needs of workers arising out of their employment during the Second World War. In particular, the dispersal of factories and building in isolated areas required residential hostels to be built for workers manning the armaments industries because workers had to be sent from their homes to places where there was not enough living accommodation, and therefore the government decided to set up hostels in those areas. The Corporation was registered under the Companies Act 1929 as a company without share capital. Lord Rushcliffe, the former Minister of Labour, was appointed Chairman of the Corporation. The first was opened in January 1941 and by the end of the war, the Corporation was managing 155 hostels with accommodation for 36,000 industrial workers, 17,500 miners and over 18,500 building workers. Separate hostels were built for young miners and agricultural workers. Workers slept in single bunk cubicles and there was a sick bay, dining room and welfare facilities. Charges ranged between 25-30 shillings a week and included 2 full meals plus a snack daily.

The number of direct employees of the Corporation at the hostels was 2,335, and 496 were employed at hostels managed by private firms as agents. The Hostels Corporation also operated hostels for the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Works, the headquarters staff totalled 105.

By the end of the War, the Corporation was managing 58 industrial hostels and providing over 30,000 places. After the Second World War, the main function of the Corporation was the provision of accommodation for workers employed away from home on essential reconstruction work. Following a ministerial announcement in November 1954, the hostels programme was reduced, and progressively the remaining hostels were closed. In 1956 the Corporation was wound up.

EVW), a displaced person admitted into Great Britain between 1947 and 1950 in an effort to aid those made homeless during World War II and to alleviate the severe labour shortage in specified and essential industries in Britain. The EVW program was begun under the “Balt Cygnet” plan of recruiting Baltic women to do elementary nursing and domestic and textile work. After its success, “Westward Ho” was established to obtain men to work in the unskilled sectors of essential industries. Because of the housing shortage, the majority of those accepted were single; they came under contract and without guarantee of naturalization. Rapid assimilation was hindered by hostility from trade unions and by the fact that many EVWs had to reside in large camps, removed from contact with both their own families and the local populace. The EVW program was, however, one of the first responses to the large postwar refugee problem and made EVWs eligible for the benefits of Britain’s extensive social welfare system.

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