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

by H. G. Swift

There was also started soon afterwards another belonging to this class of ephemeral journalism, but of somewhat better tone and character, an East-End local organ called Toby, which, during 1886, dealt week after week with Post-Office abuses. Toby was supposed to have some additional claim on the patronage of postal servants by its being edited by a man who had once been behind the scenes in the Post-Office. It enlivened its more or less pointed criticisms with rough caricatures of certain of the so-called petty tyrants who were supposed to float on human misery; but the simulated and insincere malice of the caricatures was, fortunately for the intended originals, almost completely lost in the quality of the art. Toby for a time flourished in the gutters of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and sold in the streets about the City, but it was principally while the caricatures lasted to afford the amusement and excitement of guessing competitions among the sorters and letter-carriers of the General Post-Office. When the caricatures gave out, and there were no more guesses as to who was meant as the latest victim of the new Hogarth’s pencil, the star of Toby waned in St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

Advocacy of this nature, such as it was, did no more than cause annoyance and irritation to those who found a ready means to visit reprisals on the men whom they might suspect of being the secret instigators of such insults, while among the men it only satisfied an idle curiosity. Yet the men undoubtedly would have welcomed some proper medium to ventilate their growing grievances. The Postman, which had been started as the organ of a previous agitation, was long since defunct, and a copy of the Beehive was now almost a relic of ancient history. It was in response to this growing necessity for discontent to once more find utterance that a new postal organ started. It was called the Postal and Telegraph Service Gazette, and was contributed to by both sides of the service. It was admirably edited, and from the pens of the ablest writers among the telegraphists and the postal force some stirring articles occasionally appeared. It afterwards became the Postal Service Gazette. These new ventures in postal journalism provided a healthy outlet for the pent-up discontent of years. The articles were generally ably written and forcible, but there was not too much personality allowed in the letters from correspondents with a grievance. These organs helped in no inconsiderable measure to shape the course of future events, and, while promoting a spirit of freedom among postal servants, gave it a healthy and manly tone.

Still, even with the help of these organs, there was not yet a properly-organised movement either among the letter-sorters or the letter-carriers. Their recovery from the unmerited onslaught of Lord John Manners, and the effacement of the memory of it, was slow.

But, as is inevitably the case in the same set of circumstances, the harvest was sowing: there was a repetition of the same grumblings, and all the elements of discontent were once more developing. Gradually the old impositions as regards compulsory extra duty were being introduced; the men’s time counted for little or nothing, and their convenience as little. The Fawcett scheme had laid it down expressly that Christmas Day and Good Friday should be paid for as extra duty, but the whole recommendation, if not rendered nugatory altogether, was applied in a very unsatisfactory manner.

Christmas morning 1886 was nearly witnessing one of those disgraceful rushes for the doors which had taken place on several occasions some years previously. The sorting force had been on duty all through the preceding night, and a long time before many indeed had been working the round of the clock. The men were dead beat, and they had been promised their liberty at nine o’clock. Perhaps there would have been nothing very unreasonable in the request that they should work a few hours longer, had it not been that they had to be back again on duty in the afternoon. But they had experienced this kind of treatment too many times before; and when the clock struck the welcome hour of nine they left the sorting-tables and made to leave the office. Christmas extra duty at this time was looked on with aversion by the most of them, for, as an actual fact, the money they earned on that occasion, they knew, would not be paid them for three or four months to come. Every branch in the office, especially the Inland Letter Branch, was choked with work from floor to ceiling. But the men were eager to get home to snatch a few hours’ rest. Once more they found all the exits closed and bolted against them; and they stood about in sullen groups considering what was best to be done. Mr. Jeffery, the then Controller, who had a reputation for great kindliness and consideration, came on the scene and appealed to the men to clear up the duty. He asked them why they refused to work when the department was willing to pay them so well. There was no response for a few moments, when a youngster named Groves up and spoke to the great man, and told him that it was because they had to wait so long for the money; and pointed out that the Christmas extra-duty money the previous year was not paid till the middle of the following summer; and offered an assurance that if the money were quickly paid the men would doubtless be willing to stop. The Controller, it appeared, had not been aware of this senselessly-unfair cause of delay.

He readily gave his promise that if the correspondence were all cleared up before the morning was over, he would see that the money should be paid as speedily as possible, and that a special staff of men would be employed to get the account out. There was a cheer, and every one started work. The extra-duty money was paid within a fortnight, and was afterwards paid as quickly.

It was such petty annoyances and such instances of neglect as these, so long continued, that at last began to awaken the men to a fuller sense of their grievances, and which once more fostered the desire for combination amongst them. In addition to this, too, the idea was gaining ground that they were being systematically cheated out of benefits which the Fawcett scheme entitled them to. Now that he was dead, Mr. Fawcett was more than ever regarded as the postal Moses, and they looked for a clearer interpretation of the tablets of the law which he had left behind to help to build his monument.

The new desire for combination at first only asserted itself in a somewhat feeble manner when it became known that a Royal Commission on Civil Establishments would be likely to look in at the doors of the Post-Office. It was then for the first time after so long that a few of the more venturesome banded themselves together for the purpose of collecting and tabulating suitable evidence on postal grievances generally, and for working up the interest of the men affected. Of this little committee J. H. Williams was chairman, and W. E. Clery was secretary. These two sorters, the latter especially, were destined to play a more important part in agitation later on.

The Commission on Civil Establishments had been moved for and obtained by Lord Randolph Churchill, and it was confidently expected that it would take evidence from the Post-Office employés. An invitation had appeared in a Post-Office Circular of December 1886 for postal servants to prepare evidence, if any, to lay before the Royal Commission. Consequently there were several meetings held, and representatives of almost every branch of the service on the postal side were present at these meetings, comprising sorters, letter-carriers, porters, bagmen, and even clerks and members of the major establishment, who were as anxious to make their case heard. A stupendous amount of evidence was thus got together and properly prepared. But though an enormous amount of labour was thus expended on the accumulated grievances of so many years, it was all love’s labour lost, and never got beyond this stage. They sustained another disappointment, added to so many others, and learnt that the promised Royal Commission was not intended to come their way, but had concluded its labours. There was nothing left but for the postal committee to disband likewise, which they did with feelings of disappointment, which went to feed still further the smouldering discontent among the men. They felt they had been deliberately fooled by the department in being thus invited to prepare evidence which was to be wasted. Yet it was far from wasted, and the lesson had a real educational value, and one which was to bear fruit a little later on. The little experience, though fraught with disappointment, had none the less taught them the better to prepare their weapons for a future occasion.

At this time, if anything there was more real discontent among the juniors of the sorting staff than among the seniors. The greatest dissatisfaction prevailed among them mainly owing to the lack of promotion, for the sorting force being divided into two classes, first and second, the juniors had to remain at a certain barrier until a vacancy occurred in the class above them. They virtually had little but the hope of waiting for dead men’s shoes. This system of promotion was becoming utterly discredited, owing to the fact that while the juniors’ class was practically unlimited in number, that of the seniors was limited, and by no means in fair proportion. The average of deaths and pensions among their elders afforded a prospect only to the merest section of their number. It was maintained by them that the only fair remedy was the substitution of promotion by service, and not by death or pension. Five years, it was urged, was a fair period of service to entitle them to promotion to the class above them, and a movement was soon on foot to submit their proposal to the Postmaster-General. They were the young bloods of the service, and new blood had brought new courage and new vigour. Their case, carefully prepared, had been awaiting the arrival of the expected Royal Commission which never came. They in consequence resolved—or rather the youth who led them did, the same W. E. Clery who had acted as secretary of the late abortive Royal Commission movement—to effect what they could in amelioration of their position by using the readiest means to hand. Mr. Raikes was now Postmaster-General, and from all that had reached them of his justice and impartiality, they were inspired with a desire to go forward. It was thought that from every point of view this resolve was a wise one, as should another Royal Commission after all be ready to accept their evidence, and it was learnt that they had failed to petition the Postmaster-General, it might be urged that the hardship of a lack of promotion was one specially manufactured to suit the occasion, since nothing had before been heard of it. So there was a preliminary meeting of the juniors held in the largest refreshment-room of the General Post-Office, and a bigger meeting was held in the same place a few days later, when a draft of the proposed petition was read and discussed. In the following month, September 1887, the second-class men’s petition was forwarded. This petition, to the Postmaster-General direct, was memorable if only from the fact that it was the first petition worth speaking of, the outcome of a general meeting, which had been forwarded to the public head of the department since the day when Lord John Manners dismissed five and punished over a hundred of others practically for the same thing. The petition forwarded on the present occasion expressed in no unmistakable language that the men were unqualifiedly dissatisfied with the system of promotion by vacancy made by pension or death in the ranks of their seniors, and pointed out that, young men as the petitioners were, yet the most of them would be superannuated before their turn for promotion came. It was conveyed to the Postmaster-General for the first time by means of this memorial that the provisions of the Fawcett scheme had not been fully given effect to. Now, one of the most marked features of the 1881 scheme was that the remuneration of postal employés should be “based upon the intelligible principle of paying for work solely according to its quality.” It was urged therefore by these juniors, who so commonly were put to perform higher-class duties for their scanty wage, that their responsibilities should be recognised on the principle laid down by Mr. Fawcett. The petition concluded with a respectful request that, if the Postmaster-General required a further explanation on any particular point, he would receive a deputation of their body. There were two months of silence and waiting. Then in January 1888 permission was obtained to hold another meeting in the refreshment-room, the meeting being called by the youth Clery to consider what further steps should be taken to obtain an answer.