Description:In addition to an application form for training men and youths in the manufacture of munitions of war, this letter includes rules for armaments classes and a timetable for the instruction of disabled soldiers and sailors in the Electrical Engineering Department at Birmingham Municipal Technical School. The context of this is the Naval and Military War Pensions Act (1915), which improved grants and allowances to men in service and their dependents and provided for the health, training, and employment of disabled soldiers, including their redeployment. The government needed a large number of skilled workers in munition factories, so by an arrangement with the Ministry of Munitions many technical schools undertook to train men and women for this work, including disabled veterans.
The Birmingham Municipal Technical School already had some trainees by 1916, having previously added various aspects of arms manufacture to the curriculum. Munition trainees were assessed in evening classes before admission to regular training, as the Ministry only supported fit candidates. Places for both men and the increasing number of women were grant maintained, while the school also ran ‘classes for disabled soldiers, the financing of which is helped by the Citizen’s Committee – the local representatives of the Ministry of Pensions’.<small><sup>1</sup></small> Trainees agreed to comply with institutional rules and regulations and ‘to work in any Munition Factory approved by the Ministry of Munitions.’ In fact, employment places were exclusively allocated by the School Authority. Students attended six-week courses on skills ranging from toolmaking and aero-engine fitting to acetylene welding and ‘machine drawing & tracing for women (evenings only)’. The Birmingham school also developed special electrical training courses in new areas including wiring, switchboards, motor testing, insulation and telephone technology.
Within Birmingham there was some controversy over the employment issues raised by this situation. The Principal of Aston Technical School reported that the demand for labour had been such that there was no difficulty in placing all their trainees. He fully expected that the intelligent and industrious would succeed, although he was pessimistic about the prospects of others: ‘the less-skilled men may be thrown out of work when the war is over.’ Sumpner, however, took a more circumspect view, arguing against market forces and for an independent body: "It is necessary in connection with each approved course to establish some form of Trade Advisory Committee to properly select disabled men for the course to ensure a steady supply of students to the school, and to take a leading part in placing men in posts after the course has been completed. It is not the function of a technical school to act as an employment agency; such work needs an expert knowledge of the trade, which knowledge is only possessed by men in immediate contact with practice."<small><sup>2</sup></small>
<small>W.E. Sumpner, Principal of Birmingham, typescript correspondence, Birmingham Municipal Technical College</small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Correspondence from W.E. Sumpner (Principal of Birmingham Municipal Technical School) to F.C. Forth (Principal of Belfast Municipal Technical Institute), 1917 [UBSC: LAdd6326]
<sup>2</sup> John Culbert Faries, Training in English Technical Schools for Disabled Soldiers, (New York: Red Cross Institute for crippled and disabled men, 1918)</small></font>