National Registration Act

On 15 July 1915 the National Registration Act received the royal assent in Britain. It ordered the compilation of a register of all inhabitants aged from 15 to 65, women and men alike, with the exception of soldiers and sailors. Everyone was to state their age, occupation and place of work, and to declare whether they were willing to take up other work for which they were qualified. Registration was set for Sunday 15 August.

Taking stock of the nation

The bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 29 June by the Conservative Walter Long, President of the Local Government Board, the department supervising local authorities, in the coalition government. He invoked the words of the prime minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, that the duty of the hour was to place the voluntary and organised help of all classes at the service of the state. The state, he said, must first know what resources it had at its disposal, just as a businessman looks at his bank book before deciding anything. He gave assurances that the act was not meant to coerce workers, but to organise properly. The register was to be compiled by the local authorities under the supervision of the Registrar General, as for a census. Among those who offered help were teachers, ready to work during the holidays. Those registered received a certificate, which Long wanted to be seen as a “badge of honour”. Failure to register was punishable by a fine of up to £5 and £1 for every day of delay.

In the House of Lords the bill was defended on 13 July by Lord Lansdowne. He spoke of the “amazing inefficiency of national organisation”, as a friendly foreign critic had put it. The war had shown that the army recruited men haphazardly. One armaments firm had let 600–700 workers go into the army at the beginning of the war and had felt their absence ever since. Farmers were losing their labourers, some districts had been drained of men while others had hardly felt recruiting at all. Married men with families to support were also joining the army in large numbers, which burdened the state with allowances.

Ireland was treated separately. There the act was to apply only in those areas where the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland introduced it. Lansdowne admitted openly that imposing the register on the whole island would be pointless, because no such response could be expected there as in Great Britain.

A step towards conscription

From the outset opponents saw the act as a harbinger of conscription. One Irish member called it the pilot of conscription as early as 29 June. The government denied it. Lansdowne stressed that the only compulsion was registration itself, and that the act said not a word about compulsory service in the army or in industry. Meanwhile the country still relied on volunteers, and within the coalition government the dispute over conscription was growing.

Registration took place as planned on 15 August. About 29 million forms were sent out. The results, known in mid-September, showed that almost 5 million men of military age remained outside the army, of whom about 1.6 million worked in occupations regarded as essential. The register was used in October for the recruiting campaign of Lord Derby, the last great attempt to keep the voluntary system going. When that too failed to bring the expected results, Britain introduced conscription in January 1916. The 1915 forms were destroyed after the war.