W. E. Clery, now that he was free from the trammels of Post-Office life, devoted himself almost exclusively to the promotion of postal interests through public and Parliamentary channels. He contributed numerous articles to the press on postal grievances; he daily interviewed M.P.’s both in the House and at their private residences; delivered a long series of lectures on the need for postal reform; and generally did all those things which no postal servant still in the service dared openly do. By this time, having become well known as a writer and an enterprising young journalist, he commanded no little influence with the London press; and numerous articles that created a stir were either from his pen or inspired by him. There had been some allegations of wrong treatment of a patient by the postal medical department, to which the premature death of a popular young officer was ascribed. An account of this appeared in the Sun, and immediately there followed quite a shoal of correspondence on postal maladministration generally. This was continued for a considerable time, and the grievances of postmen and sorters were reviewed from every possible standpoint. Following on this, W. E. Clery delivered a lecture on the subject matter of the correspondence at the South Place Institute, one Sunday morning in March; and a report of the proceedings appearing in the press next morning, the Postmaster-General was stirred so far as to direct a denial of the truth of the allegations. Unfortunately for the departmental case this denial only provoked still further criticisms, and brought forth an abundance of fresh evidence, which elaborately proved that Mr. Arnold Morley had been at least a little too premature in his denial of facts.
It could not have been want of evidence that stood in the way of the Postmaster-General’s conviction that the postal dominion over which he reigned was suffering from the effects of maladministration. Mr. Arnold Morley may not have been responsible for it, and he might have remedied it to some extent if only he had the power; but throughout he weakly pretended that there was nothing to convince him, that there was really nothing wrong with the service beyond the imaginary evils produced by chronic discontent fomented by self-advertising agitators. Yet from top to bottom the whole postal service was honeycombed with discontent, and moth-eaten with the most squalid grievances. It was not only the letter-sorters, the telegraphists, the postal clerks, and the still more familiar postmen, who were now engaged in this battle for the betterment of the service. These had now been reinforced by the postmasters and sub-postmasters; and the crême de la crême of the service were united with the despised and outcast mail-cart drivers in a demand for better pay, better hours, and better conditions generally. In the face of this, Mr. Arnold Morley chose to put his fingers in his ears and forcibly shut his eyes. The Postmaster-General appeared to think that by affirming and reaffirming the right of combination among postal employés, there his moral responsibility ended. It was gratifying to postal servants throughout the kingdom to learn that on April 2, 1895, Mr. Arnold Morley, in correspondence with Mr. Murray Macdonald, had once again reaffirmed this right to combine. It so far pinned the department down, and was a contract it could not decently depart from in future; but where was the real value of this right, when the real and painful grievances from which they complained were to remain ignored? But Mr. Arnold Morley was not the first Postmaster-General who had played the part of Mrs. Partington with her broom. The inevitable was to happen in this case as in similar others; and at last the growth of discontent, backed by the sympathy of the press and the public, was to bear down the barriers of departmental opposition; and the Postmaster-General was forced to capitulate. The matter was brought to this climax on May 17, 1895, when Mr. Hudson Kearley, M.P., moved for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry. Mr. Arnold Morley, as the department personified, naturally resisted with a brave show of strength, and then pretending to melt into a magnanimous mood, agreed to, as a compromise, a Departmental Committee of Inquiry. The pretence of magnanimity, however, was in serious reality intended as a practical piece of cynicism, characteristic of its author, and introduced solely as a means of contributing to the undoing of the enemy. If the malcontents of the service would have edged tools to play with, Mr. Arnold Morley was not to be blamed if they badly cut themselves. And so it came about that the Inter-departmental Committee of Inquiry, afterwards to become notorious as the “Tweedmouth Committee,” was appointed, June 11, 1895.
CHAPTER XXII
PROGRESS OF THE TELEGRAPH MOVEMENT—CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY—ITS TERMS OF REFERENCE—FIRST SITTINGS—THE AWARD OF THE TWEEDMOUTH COMMITTEE—DISAPPOINTMENT AND CONDEMNATION.
While the history of the letter-sorters’ agitation was progressing towards the point concluding the last chapter, contemporary movements in the service were passing through the same vicissitudes, and emerging from similar difficulties in their process of development. The Postmen’s Federation, independent and strong, had spread itself over a wide area, and extended its ramifications throughout all the ranks of postmen, till it now embraced a vast proportion of the rural letter-carriers, and numbered a roll-call of 20,000 or more. The postal clerks had likewise strengthened their movement in spite of the blow sustained by the deprivation of Lascelles, their founder and secretary; and by the importation of new men and new leaders in the persons of Paul Casey, Leo Brodie, and George Landsbery, their organisation continued to flourish and do able and useful work in the direction of Parliamentary inquiry for the general good. The telegraphists in the same manner had rendered a good account of themselves. By assiduous lobbying, circularising, and by private interviewing they had gained over to their side a numerous band of supporters in the House. The telegraphists had now quite a respectable literature of their own, their grievances being set forth in pamphlets and brochures innumerable; while through their organ the Telegraph Journal, and afterwards the Telegraph Chronicle, the merits of their case were kept well to the forefront by the most brilliant service-writers among them. The guiding spirits of the telegraph movement during this time, and for a considerable period before, were Hall of Liverpool, Scott of Manchester, and Nicholson and Garland of London.
But one of the most remarkable effects of the appointment of the new Inter-departmental Committee of Inquiry was that new postal organisations, of which the rest of the service had scarcely ever heard, suddenly made their presence felt. The Head-Postmasters’ Association and the Sub-Postmasters’ Association had been in existence some time, but they had conducted themselves with such a studied decorum, eschewing anything that hinted at the dreaded appellation “agitation,” that it was confidently expected by many that they would never consent to lay evidence before a Committee of Inquiry that was born of sheer agitation or nothing. But they were to come forward none the less. And beside them, in a motley crowd, came associations of postal porters, overseers and supervisors, telegraph linesmen, tracers, writers, and others, a never-ending line of witnesses, all prepared with voluminous evidence on the long-accumulated grievances of their respective classes.
The Inter-departmental Committee on Post-Office Establishments consisted of Sir Francis Mowatt, K.C.B., Secretary to the Treasury; Sir Arthur Godley, K.C.B., Secretary to the India Office; Mr. Llewellyn Smith, Secretary to the Board of Trade; and Mr. Spencer Walpole, Secretary to the Post-Office.
Thus, with the single exception of Lord Tweedmouth, who presided, the committee was composed of representatives of departmentalism, and who, being high Government officials, could not in human nature be expected to have an impartial sympathy with the claims to be laid before them. It was a committee of permanent secretaries of important Government departments, with whom the principle of economy was the guiding and paramount one. It was manifest from the first moment that there was little generous treatment to be expected from a tribunal so constituted. If anything were wanting to strengthen this supposition, it was the fact that Mr. Arnold Morley, as Postmaster-General, in laying down the terms of reference for the guidance of this committee in its deliberations, expressly made it a condition that they should be guided by the consideration that the “Post-Office is a great Revenue Department, and that, in the words of the Select Committee on Revenue Departments Estimates in 1888, ‘it is more likely to continue to be conducted satisfactorily, if it should also continue to be conducted with a view to profit, as one of the Revenue-yielding departments of the State.’” Thus it was made abundantly clear from the first that sheer justice was not to stand in the way of all-sacred economy. Things had come to such a pass in the Post-Office that the Liberal Postmaster-General was bound to make a show of doing something, especially as the days of his party were now drawing to a close. Liberal Ministers had of late made much of the platitudes which were likely to catch the ephemeral applause of the multitude, and they had been mainly responsible for the doctrine that the State should be the “model employer of labour,” and that the Government should be in the “first flight of employers.” Mr. Arnold Morley had not shirked his share of the responsibility of giving utterance to these mock heroics. If only for the sake of an appearance of consistency, therefore, it was well to have called the Committee of Inquiry into existence. By the time it either failed or succeeded in its object the General Election would be over, and the responsibility for the acceptance of its recommendations, whatever they might be, would come as a legacy to the next Government.