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

by H. G. Swift

The grievance speedily attained to the dimensions and importance of a grave scandal. Yet the authorities seemed determined that, kick and struggle against the pricks as the men might, they should submit to it. And the men, grown weary of complaining against the injustice, and losing all faith in the fairness of those over them, were equally resolved that it should not continue much longer without one last vigorous protest from them. The climax of indignation was reached one morning in March 1873, when the whole of the force were ordered as usual to stay behind their time. There were mails above and below in the Newspaper and Letter Branches, and tons of circulars waiting in reserve. The men rushed to their kitchens, and securing their articles of clothing, made for the principal exit leading to liberty and the Post-Office yard. This they found closed and bolted against them and guarded by a posse of overseers, the official doorkeeper, and numerous amateur policemen—constables disguised as sorters. They were sternly ordered back to their duties; but by this time, even if they would, they could not turn for those now pressing behind and thronging the lobby. The officials appeared on the scene and exhorted them not to disobey orders; but the murmurs that arose convinced them that at last the mutiny had come. The men demanded the door to be opened and the removal of the constables. They took it as an added insult that such Siberian methods should be put into force against them, for whatever their humble position in the public service, yet still they bore the name of free-born Englishmen. The officials, convinced they were acting within their right, refused and repeatedly ordered them to fall back. For half-an-hour or more the men, nearly a thousand strong by this time, endured it; the heat was oppressive in the closely-packed crowd, and the stubborn obstinacy of the men guarding the door was making the crowd excited. There were cries of execration, and from the rear came a hurricane of balls of twine with sticks of sealing-wax. The officials retreated to safer quarters, leaving the men guarding the door to carry out their duty or die. The lobby, which was a narrow neck of space leading from the Letter Branch to the coveted doorway, was becoming like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and many men were on the point of fainting. The doorkeepers were pale but determined, and stood with their backs to the coveted door. The situation was as serious to them as to the mutineers themselves. With the men the injustice of the official instruction to stay at their duties without pay might be sufficient to palliate their disobedience to it, especially when there were nearly a thousand of them to answer for it. But with those at the door it was slightly different; they had to do their duty, and they looked like men who were determined to sell their lives dearly if it came to it, though it is probable that if they could have trusted each other the bolt would have been quietly drawn. To those in the thick of the swaying, sweltering crowd of angry and excited men the heat was getting unbearable. Some one, or several at once, suggested rushing the doors; but to deliberately break down the barrier seemed to spell mutiny of the worst kind, and numbers of the front ranks held back at the prospect of afterwards being named as ringleaders. The responsible officials retired to a distance and watched with the grim satisfaction of schoolmasters who were “keeping in” a refractory class of school-children. The realisation that they were being kept prisoners at the behest of one or two of their superiors was intensifying the impatience and the excitement of the sweltering crowd behind, and impatience soon grew to desperation. The air was repeatedly filled with groans and hisses, and the storm of groans was presently turned by some one facetiously striking up a bar of “Britons never, never shall be slaves!” That was enough, for the men behind especially. They remembered they were Britons. A square of infantry with fixed bayonets could not have stopped them now. They were solidly packed several hundreds strong in one long stream, fed every moment by reinforcements as they gained courage to leave the sorting-tables. Fortunately some one by an adroit manœuvre had turned a line of heavy mail-trucks and trolleys, placed there either carelessly or purposely, or the result might have been disastrous to those in front. Menaces and shouts were directed towards the men who barred their way; but neither threats nor appeals would move them, and it seemed they would be flattened against the door they were so zealously guarding, for those in front could no longer hold against the mighty pressure of the hundreds behind. The crowd heaved and rocked like a huge billow. There were shouts and groans and some were real, a tremendous scuffle, a sound like the cracking of ribs, a crash of woodwork, a shattering of glass accompanied with a louder yell; the doors burst from their fastenings, and the hot perspiring stream of angry men vomited itself into the open air and the daylight. Then the wild mob’s several hundred feet scattered down the steps into the Post-Office yard, and the men who had broken their red-tape bonds to assert the liberty of the person again burst into such a roar of triumph that a jaded horse on the cab-rank outside in Aldersgate Street took fright and bolted. The untoward commotion stopped the stream of traffic in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and crowds assembled outside the Post-Office railings while the police hurried to the scene from every by-turning. The general traffic was disordered for half-an-hour, till the last remnant of the imprisoned men issued from the gates.

As the result of the scrimmage several men got scratches and bruises, and there were one or two bloody noses. It ought to have been as much a matter for congratulation for the authorities as for the men that nothing more disastrous occurred. But the officials chose not to see it in that light, and several who had been grabbed in the rush by the doorkeepers were haled up like escaped convicts before the presiding superintendent and others of the smaller authorities to answer for the conduct of the whole. Six men were there and then suspended from duty without pay for an indefinite period, and with the prospect of dismissal before them.

It was only to be expected that the public would take an exaggerated view of the incident; and the idea gained credence that a veritable riot had taken place inside the Post-Office. Some, indeed, thought it meant a postal strike. The evening paper came out with an account of the “Riot at the General Post-Office,” which, it need hardly be said, was scarcely accurate.

The humour of the situation was skilfully hit off a day or two later by a parody on “The Light Brigade,” by one Tom Glamorgan, already recognised as a postal poet. It was said the verses were scribbled hurriedly on his shirt-cuff during moments snatched from the duty the same evening; and being printed next day were sold for a penny a copy amongst the sorters and postmen and others, the small sum realised being sent to some charity. The actual verses perhaps would interest but few, but the printed paragraph introducing the lines epitomised the whole incident The print formed one of a short series of “Postal Fly-sheets,” and the paragraph in question read as follows:—

“Insubordination at the General Post-Office.

“On Monday morning, 31st March 1873, a large quantity of ‘Circulars,’ the postage of which amounted to some hundreds of pounds, were required to be sorted and despatched to their various destinations. The men, assistants, and boys worked well till 9 A.M. (having been on duty since 4.30 A.M.), at which time the juniors struck work and congregated around the lobby door to depart; several of the older officers were stationed there to prevent their exit, the ‘Acting Superintendent’ on duty declaring they should not go till all the work was done. The assistants and boys replied to this by tremendous shouting, hooting, hissing, groaning, and pushing, declaring they would do no more that morning unless paid extra for it. At length some of the ringleaders, assisted by the crowd around, continued to push against the officers guarding the doors, striking at one of the ‘overseers’—breaking hose from all order, discipline, and control.…”

The six sorters, innocent or guilty of the charge against them, were still suspended, but the resentment of the authorities did not stop here. One of the official doorkeepers was pounced on to account for his not successfully resisting the several hundred determined men who so forcibly objected to be made prisoners of. The doorkeeper was rather a small man, and built more on the lines of a jockey than of a gladiator. But it was useless to urge such a fact on the official mind bent on inflicting condign punishment. So the poor little man was pronounced guilty of failing to perform a feat which would have baffled Hercules. He was in consequence reduced to an inferior position entailing greater responsibility; and failing to become competent in a duty which was entirely new to him, he was incontinently bundled out of the service on a starvation pension of six shillings a week. He did not long survive his defeat, but died a little while afterwards of a sheer broken heart.

That the so-called riot at the General Post-Office was only one of the straws which showed the way of the wind may be taken for granted. Whether it could have occurred in a better-regulated service is perhaps doubtful.

The scheme which with its small benefits had given so much satisfaction to the letter-carriers as to induce them, if not to remain satisfied, to abandon agitation for the present, had caused corresponding dissatisfaction to the letter-sorters. The only benefit derived from the Manners scheme, if it could be called such, was the increase of sixpence a year in the increment. The keenest disappointment prevailed, and a movement was already afoot to find expression for that disappointment in a memorial to the author, Lord John Manners. Yet, though the feelings of the men were scarcely concealed, it had been officially represented to the Postmaster-General and the Controller that the demands of the sorting force were now fully satisfied, and that the men themselves acknowledged it. This official misrepresentation was followed by an anonymous note being pinned on the notice-board in the retiring-room. It was to the effect: “Who thus misrepresents the spirit of the Inland Branch? As mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.” The note was detached and taken to the superintendent; and one of the men, Glamorgan, who had already distinguished himself in the line of a satirical verse-maker, was suspended for some days on suspicion of being its author.

At the end of November 1874 the dissatisfied sorters drew up a respectful and moderate memorial to the Postmaster-General, pointing out that “whilst grateful for the recent improvements made in … pay and prospects of promotion, they were yet unable to accept so small a revision as a satisfactory settlement of their claims to increased remuneration,” and giving some very valid reasons for a reconsideration of their case. The petition was signed by 140 men as representative of the entire sorting force, and presented through their immediate superior. To the startling surprise of every one, a copy of this memorial appeared in the Times and other morning papers the next day, and from that moment the most discerning could see that it was doomed to failure from the fact of being published in the press before the Postmaster-General had had time to consider it. For in those days especially such a thing was regarded as a most unforgivable breach of official etiquette, to say the least. Its publication at this juncture was therefore generally thought to be the last blow to all their hopes of further revision. But few dreamed what was to follow.