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

by H. G. Swift

It was only when agitation assumed much larger dimensions that it began to arouse that mingled feeling of apprehension and aversion which in itself became the means of aggravating still further those very evils which the authorities aimed at suppressing. Time and again the authorities, while complaining of the heat, yet added fuel to the fire.

Unionism in the Post-Office has ever been regarded as something verminous, something to be stamped out, something impertinently out of place in a Government office, and its leaders treated as breeders of sedition. And this has been so many years after the principle of trades unionism has at last been reconciled to Respectability and folded in her arms.

Slowly, step by step, labour in the Post-Office has gained something of a recognition of its value; but it has been forced to fight its way ofttimes with manacled hands and tape-tied feet. Happily, however, the story of postal agitation and the spread of combination throughout the postal service is not made up entirely of failures, contumacies, inflictions, and punishments. That combination in this branch of the public service has had to fight hard for its very existence from the beginning till now is perfectly true. It has been uphill work throughout, and its wounded have been left by the way. But in its struggle against the forces of bureaucracy it has snatched a victory here and there; it has received rebuffs, and even now and again courted defeat, but it has had its exultant moments of victory too. And, on the whole, there is little to regret that the fight so far has been fought; for where men have a principle at stake perhaps, to paraphrase a great dead poet, ’tis better to have fought and lost than never to have fought at all.

That the department has given as little heed as possible to the claims of postal servants, and far less sympathy, goes without saying. It has to be remembered that it is a public department, and, generally speaking, in a public department its niggardliness is in inverse ratio to its power of profit producing. It requires no argument to prove that a public institution such as this, run on the old conventional lines of red-tape and routine, and for the most part in the leading-strings of a watchful Treasury, would never spontaneously better the condition of its servants. If the same holds good generally as regards the relations between capital and labour, between the private employer and his man, it is more particularly so in a public department. Experience has proved that a betterment of the conditions of labour among the working staffs of public bodies as a rule have had to be forced from the authorities by every legitimate method which agitation can devise, by persistent petitioning, by deputation, by public meeting, often by taking the war into the enemy’s country, and getting M.P.’s to beard the Postmaster-General and the Treasury heads in their official lair, or by tracking them down in the House of Commons. And even then, after all this expenditure of force, there is often nothing but disappointment in return.

That it is not always the administrators of a public department who are to blame so much as the rule and the method which usage and convention have fossilised, must in all fairmindedness be allowed. It is easy to believe and understand that the various heads of departments, though never guilty of the unpardonable indiscretion of showing the smallest sympathy for agitation as such, none the less do often deplore the necessity of enforcing certain rules and regulations which act to the detriment of the men or which are productive of individual cases of hardship.

This point has only been touched on to show that the grievances which have given rise to agitation in various times have not been so much due to the action of officials as to the rules which they have had to administer. Hemmed in by such conditions, and bound to follow the customs prescribed by tradition and laid down by departmental etiquette, the natural inclination is to hold the reins tightly, to sit close, never to give way for fear of appearing weak, and never to willingly grant a concession merely because their private conscience may tell them there is some reason and justice in the demand. In such a situation the responsible public official has to face a higher tribunal than his own conscience. It is always fairly safe to refuse concession, but it is dangerous to grant it until you are compelled to. When the public, the press, and Parliament unite in saying such and such a demand must and shall be conceded, then it is time to act, not before. You bow with a good grace, and salaam and say, “Am I not my master’s servant?” And the public and the press and Parliament think none the less of you for your firmness, interpreting your stubbornness as zeal for the public service, though they would have turned to rend you for your incompetence had you given way sooner. Such to some extent is the trying position of those in authority in public departments, they needs must only when the devil drives, and not a moment before. They are more or less in the position of a constable whose duty it is to keep back a clamorous crowd testing a right of way; zeal and duty and anxiety for his position keep him firmly at his post till his superior and the law give him the nod and he has to fall back.

It is therefore perhaps not surprising that Government officials have steadfastly pursued a policy of resistance to all claims for reform emanating from the subordinate staff. And this policy has been rendered the easier by such resistance being shown through that abstract entity known as the “Department,” which may mean one man or twenty, removing as it does the necessity for any particular individual, from the Secretary downward, to show his hand or reveal his identity. This is the system which made possible Dickens’s famous piece of satire anent the “Circumlocution Office.” It also provides a justification for Sydney Smith’s equally famous dictum regarding corporations, and, of course, Government departments—that they “have neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned.”

Certainly, it holds generally true as an important and significant fact of postal history, at any rate, that the authorities have never allowed a claim except grudgingly. And a due appreciation of this fact will conduce to a better understanding of the events which follow.

That this species of official obstinacy is not altogether peculiar to the postal service may be abundantly proved by reference to the records of other public departments. The postal authorities have sinned in very good company; and, to be fair to both sides of the question, let it be said that on the whole the sins of omission and commission have doubtless been dictated as much by a virtuous desire to save the public funds as to enhance their own credit. That at least is a saving virtue which is always conveniently placed to the credit of every permanent and public official, even when he has carried his zeal to excess. Allowing such a defence to stand without cavilling or questioning, still the fact remains that in their zeal for the public service the rights, the privileges, the convenience, the creature comforts, the health, and, it might be said, the very lives of many of the staff under their control have often been sacrificed in the past. Yet there have been exceptions, and it will be seen that the tens of thousands comprising the rank and file of the lower grades of the service have some reason to hold in grateful esteem the memory of one Postmaster-General at least—Professor Henry Fawcett. The high-souled qualities of Henry Fawcett, the blind Postmaster-General, are even now as familiar as is the recollection of that lamentable infirmity which only roused him to “wrest victory from misfortune.”

Generally, however, there have been two opposing principles at work throughout. And with two such positive and negative principles—the desire of the postal workers to assert those rights already accorded to almost every other class of labour, and the determination of the officials that such aspirations must be suppressed as dangerous—it was only to be looked for that open discontent would manifest itself sooner or later, and presently assume a more or less definite shape.