A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day

by H. G. Swift

If this experiment to “test the labour market” did nothing more, it tended to promote still further the feeling of misunderstanding in the minds of the general public, and assisted to obscure the issue.

However, the aggrieved postal employés, as represented on the London Trades Council, were accredited trades unionists. The trades unionists of the Metropolis, little as they understood their case, were compelled to take them into partnership.

By this time the efforts made by the postal employés had attracted considerable attention from every quarter; but trades unionists generally were almost as much at a loss to understand the precise nature of their claims as were most people, and there was much need for information. From the press reports and allusions to the matter in Parliament from time to time, a vague notion existed that postal employés were badly paid, and wanted better treatment, but little was known as to the real objects sought, or of the means by which they were to be obtained. The peculiarity of their position, the fact of their not being handicraftsmen in the generally-accepted sense of the term, caused their movement still to be looked on as the ugly duckling of trades unionism, and many were against allowing its claim for kinship. It was principally due to Mr. George Howell that this feeling of misunderstanding was removed. The condition of the postal employés and their battle for liberty was for the first time brought prominently before the trades unionists of the country at the Sheffield Trades Union Congress, January 1874. Mr. George Howell was secretary of the “Trades Parliamentary Committee,” and as a special delegate of the Postal Society, he read a paper which most clearly and convincingly showed that postal servants were in need of sympathy and moral assistance from the organised labour of the country. To the majority present it came as a revelation that those in Government employ were so restricted in the matter of civil rights. In thanking Mr. Howell for his valuable paper, they desired to express their sympathy with the movement of the postal employés for increased pay, better regulation of the hours of labour, the abolition of Sunday work, and a just system of promotion. The Congress recommended their cause to the trades societies of the United Kingdom, as well worthy of support.

The first General Election of 1873-4 had come and gone, and Mr. Gladstone found himself again returned to power, but with a majority of only forty. He immediately dissolved the House, and forthwith appealed to the country a second time.

The country was again in the throes of a General Election, and towards the fag-end, and before the result was certain for either party, another meeting of postal employés was called again at Exeter Hall. Meantime a written letter was sent by the Society’s secretary, Hawkins, to every Parliamentary candidate, asking for support in their demands. Nearly one hundred of those who gave their pledge were eventually returned to the new Parliament.

When it became known that preparations were in progress for holding another meeting, the authorities issued an official edict threatening with the penalties of insubordination any one found attending. They liked the Cannon Street Hotel meeting but little for the unenviable publicity it gave the department, but the prospect of the Exeter Hall meeting they liked still less. The meeting was again “proclaimed,” but a full two thousand attended, notwithstanding. Again there was music and banners, and a procession through the streets, and two thousand or more filled the vast space confronting the historic platform. Mr. Mundella took the chair on this occasion, and was supported by several Tory M.P.’s just returned triumphant from the poll. There was among them Mr. Ritchie, Mr. William Forsyth, Captain Bedford Pim, and Sir Charles Dilke. There were a number of eminent clergymen, among them the Rev. John Kennedy, D.D., and the Rev. Hugh Allen. The latter reverend gentleman generally prefaced his remarks at postal meetings with the words, “Those who distribute the correspondence of the country, distribute the wealth of the country, and their pay should be in proportion to their responsibility.” This agreeable sentiment was at once appropriated as the motto of the movement, and it figured on the stationery, and more than once on their banner. There was also the Rev. John Murphy, well known at the time as the “Bishop of Lambeth,” who had assisted right through the struggle till now. Altogether the platform presented a gathering of eminent men of almost every degree.

Mr. Mundella, as chairman, was just about finishing his address when the herculean form of Charles Bradlaugh was seen hurriedly pressing his way on to the platform. As the heretic agitator took his seat not far from that region of the platform sanctified by the presence of so many clerics of different denominations, there were some signs of dissent among some of the postmen in front. It almost immediately subsided with a wave of the chairman’s hand; and at Booth’s request Mr. Bradlaugh was given fourth place among the speakers, as he had to leave early. The several other speakers spoke, and it came to Bradlaugh’s turn. But immediately his huge form rose from the chair there was a hostile demonstration which gradually swelled in volume. Mr. Mundella requested the postal leader, who was sitting beside him, not to insist on Mr. Bradlaugh being heard. Charles Bradlaugh himself, always considerate in the interests of his friends and those whom he wanted to assist, thought his speaking might mar the success of the meeting, and made as if to leave the platform; the “booing” and groaning continuing meanwhile. They had not till now been ashamed to listen to and take counsel from the freethought lecturer “Iconoclast,” and many who now groaned at him had cheered him to the echo when it suited them. The hostile demonstration was probably only their way of paying a compliment to their reverend friends on the platform, though there were one or two, at least, among them who had come to assist in this good cause who would not have hesitated there and then to burn the heretic amidst a bonfire of his own godless pamphlets kindled with the light of sacred truth.

“You see, Mr. Booth, they will not hear him,” said Mr. Mundella, rather testily. But “Bulldog” Booth, as he was now known among his intimates, was not to be beaten. “Then dissolve the meeting, sir,” said he stoutly. “But they will hear him.”

The chairman rose and succeeded in calming the storm; and Mr. Bradlaugh essayed to speak. He had always been an active sympathiser with the postmen and the postal movement. It was not the first time he had stood before them. Once on his feet with a determination to make himself heard, he would not be denied. A towering figure, a leonine head, and huge, pale, clean-shaven face, with its mastiff’s mouth, he looked as ugly as Mirabeau, and as tremendous. Yet there was the charm of simplicity and a conviction of earnestness in his utterance, which made them feel ashamed at his reception. He spoke for four minutes, and adjured them to maintain the principle of combination; to stick together, to exercise their rights as citizens and to use their votes, and to support those who supported them. When he had finished, Bradlaugh received probably as loud an ovation as any who followed. A number of the clerical friends of the postmen naturally took the line of denunciation against forced Sunday labour, and their utterances for the most part were curiously reminiscent of those speeches on the self-same topic on that same platform twenty-five years before.