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

by H. G. Swift

The constitution of the Committee of Inquiry, as soon as it became known, called forth a deal of comment from the discontented service it was called on to examine into. The general feeling was one of distrust from the very beginning. Both the telegraphists and the sorters were some time considering whether to trust their destinies into the hands of such a committee, whose only redeeming feature seemed the presence of Lord Tweedmouth, generally accepted all round as honest and disinterested in a judicial capacity. The leaders of the various associations were especially dubious. It was not the independent inquiry they had looked for; but then gradually the feeling set in among the members that, come what may, the inquiry could not result in rendering their position worse. They might get nothing; but there was a chance of getting something. W. E. Clery of the sorters’ organisation endeavoured from the start to combat this feeling among his followers, and warned them that the committee being constituted as it was, it would be only a waste of time and energy preparing evidence. He urged that only on one condition should they accept its authority and its recommendations in their case; and that was, that the question of civil rights and the dismissals of their chairman and secretary should be considered and adjudicated on.

At an early stage of the proceedings, it was sought to ascertain whether these two important questions would come within the purview of the committee, and also to obtain consent for their chairman, W. E. Clery, to be accepted as a witness in respect to this part of their case.

As the result of a meeting held at the Memorial Hall, May 30, it was decided to put the matter before the Postmaster-General as the subject of an inquiry. This was accordingly done, and the reply, through the Permanent Secretary, one of the newly-constituted committee, was to the effect that as Mr. Clery “is no longer a servant of the Post-Office, he will not be at liberty to appear before the committee which it is Mr. Morley’s intention to appoint.” The one question which, as a matter of the highest principle, was of the utmost importance to postal servants, was to be burked from the outset. The treatment of this question went far to strengthen the prejudice against Lord Tweedmouth’s inquiry. The sorters had, however, meanwhile consented to accept the inquiry, and accordingly prepared evidence. The sorters’ case was to be taken first. The committee held its first meeting, Monday, June 24, 1895, and the inquiry was conducted in Committee-Room “B,” a small apartment of the House of Lords overlooking the Thames. The proceedings had all the air of a police court inquiry, and the court seemed centred in a strong atmosphere of officialdom imported from St. Martin’s-le-Grand. But it was scarcely imposing either in its assembly or its surroundings. There was little to relieve the sombre dulness of it except the red splashes of colour supplied by the crimson-leather chairs with their embossed coronets, and the gliding vision of Thames steamers and barge traffic beyond, seen through the generous expanse of window. The grave and reverend seigniors who constituted the committee were ranged in a semicircle at a horseshoe-shaped table, and the enclosed space was occupied by the witness, an arrangement which hinted at inquisitors and a prisoner in a trap. Lord Tweedmouth as the presiding judge, and perhaps the chief inquisitor, was a striking figure. Gaunt and towering even as he sat, the sunlight strongly reflecting on his curious pyramidal-shaped cranium, his visage hawk-like, for the most part silent and grim, he seemed like a great brooding eagle, supported on either side by kindred birds of lesser personality. Sir Francis Mowatt, with his disposition towards making ponderous jokes in a dry croaking raven’s voice, pitched curiously enough, however, in a surprisingly pleasant key, was perhaps, next to Lord Tweedmouth, the most striking figure among the committee. The others were ordinary unobtrusive-looking gentlemen; and the most unassuming-looking of them all was a rather slight elderly man, with grey hair and beard turning white. That was Mr. Spencer Walpole, late Governor of the Isle of Man, and now Permanent Secretary to the Post-Office. Courteous, bland and dignified in demeanour, there was nothing except the mouth, seeming set in a perpetual sneer, to indicate the man; yet he it was who was to dominate the proceedings from start to finish.

If postal servants indulged the hope that the vexed question of civil rights and the cognate one of the unfair dismissal of trades-union officials would be included for consideration, Lord Tweedmouth in his opening address made it clear that it was to be tabooed. There was naturally some disappointment manifested over this, and one of the witnesses for the Fawcett Association, E. J. Nevill, gallantly tried by a manœuvre to get it discussed. Lord Tweedmouth sternly negatived it, and the Controller of the London postal service, as one of the attorneys for the department, with prompt significance demanded the name of the man who had dared to ask so impertinent a question. It was the presence of this official, and the way in which he was allowed to openly influence the proceedings, which largely served to show the real character of the inquiry, and to weaken the men’s confidence in its ultimate impartiality. The little incident of demanding the name of a lower subordinate witness, and the manner of it, induced the witnesses present, through one of their number, to get a protective guarantee from Lord Tweedmouth that none should suffer in their prospects for speaking openly. That it should have been deemed necessary to seek such a guarantee was suggestive.

The presence of all the heads of departments arranged in reserve squadron, and commanded by the Controller of the London postal service and other officials in turn, deprived the inquiry of its strictly impartial character. These officials were allowed to sit apart from ordinary witnesses and immediately behind the Permanent Secretary to the Post-Office, the departmental representative on the committee, to perform attorneys’ work, to make suggestions, provide questions to be put, and to pass written communications innumerable. If Lord Tweedmouth felt ashamed of the unfair latitude allowed in his court, he scarcely betrayed it.

In the meantime, either by implied understanding or by the weak acquiescence of the rest of the committee, the Postal Secretary was quietly but diligently asserting his mastery over it. Mr. Spencer Walpole had a reputation as a man of brilliant parts, and being a descendant of that historic Walpole who so cruelly used the poor boy-poet Chatterton, and who is asserted to have laid it down as a dictum that “every man has his price,” it had come almost as a natural heritage to him to be regarded as a born cynic. A little of this inborn cynicism seemed to peep out when asking a witness who and what were his parents, adding with what was regarded as unnecessary sarcasm that the witness need not answer the question if he did not like to. The question was supposedly put for purposes of comparison, but it produced a rather sore feeling against the commissioner, and in no way tended to alleviate the growing conviction as to his unsympathetic attitude. They knew that Mr. Spencer Walpole was an important factor to be reckoned with, but they did not realise as yet that he was virtually the committee. It did not become marked for the first day or two. Each member of the committee was allowed to put a fair number of questions to witnesses, but gradually Mr. Spencer Walpole’s personality spread itself over the entire gathering, and it became an acknowledged fact that it was the Post-Office administration personified in him that was sitting in judgment on itself and moulding the inevitable verdict. The Permanent Secretary, backed up by his silent but industrious force of officials preparing the ammunition that he was to fire off, took the lead with almost every witness. If it was thought he was partial, it had to be acknowledged he was clever; if he was merciless, he was also artistic to an extent, especially when he forgot his cynicism. The manner of his smartness, his alertness, and directness in choosing the leading question and putting it at every opportunity would have done credit to an Old Bailey lawyer. It seemed to gradually dawn on two or three of the committee that there was little left for them to do, so they accordingly subsided, only to pop up occasionally as if for the sake of appearance. Sir A. Godley from an early stage of the proceedings was either so thoroughly bored with the whole business, or so thoroughly convinced that the verdict could be come to without his active assistance, that he unblushingly dropped off to sleep, commonly for half-an-hour at a stretch. The only commissioner who inspired energy into the proceedings was the most interested party of all, the Permanent Secretary of the Post-Office, whose administration it was that had come up for judgment. Not even the occasional laugh, always in such deliberations eagerly snatched at as a welcome break in the oppressive decorum, could deprive the occasion of that air of unreality and insincerity that seemed to pervade it.

The sorters, introduced and led by Groves, the treasurer of the association, stated their case already so familiar, and in one or two instances received the compliments of Lord Tweedmouth for the clear and able manner in which they had made themselves understood. That, of course, so far as it went, was gratifying, and as each representative in turn was questioned as to whether he was not an officer of such-and-such an association, it was calculated to heighten the conviction that official recognition of their organisations had come at last. The hope, however, was only a temporary one, doomed to be obliterated by the growing realisation that this was only too likely to prove a solemn farce. The witnesses came and went, sorters, telegraphists, postmen, and others, and in every case with wearisome monotony came the iteration of that cold, metallic leading question from the Permanent Secretary—the spare man with the yellowish-white beard surrounding the cruelly sneering lips—“But is it not the fact,” &c. The question was always so framed that the counsel for the Post-Office very often wrung from a witness a reluctant or unwary admission afterwards turned to good account in the summing up.

The rebutting evidence of the officials as witnesses for the department was taken alternately with the completion of statements for each class or section of the service. The evidence of the Postal Controller was not altogether unfavourable, containing as it did some valuable admissions; but strong exception was taken by the sorters to his denials of undue pressure in the working conditions, while surprise was felt that he should seek to justify a lately-developed system of petty secret reporting and espionage, execrated and condemned by the staff generally as unworthy of an English Government department. The evidence of the chief medical officer was in most respects distinctly favourable, corroborating their evidence of unhealthy hours and conditions of labour and the insanitary surroundings of their workaday lives; and his evidence, so far, in a large measure helped to remove the bad impression prevailing in respect to the medical officials’ attitude towards the staff at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The telegraphists found in their Controller a very friendly witness so far as his utterances went, and they felt they had cause to congratulate themselves; only they had yet to learn that fine words butter no parsnips. The hostility of the Assistant-Secretary, Mr. Lewin Hill, nephew of the founder of the penny post, was blunt and undisguised, and especially displayed itself towards the postmen, portions of his evidence being received by them with the strongest signs of dissent.

The evidence of the officials originally intended to minimise the value of that given by the subordinate and manipulative staffs, could not on the whole, however, be adjudged altogether unfair. The authorities had to play the game according to the rules prescribed for them, and mostly with a view to scoring for the department. If they did not play the game entirely devoid of prejudice, they played it consistently as witnesses for their department on its defence. The tribunal itself may have been unfairly constituted, but there were few outward and visible signs that it was so during the taking of evidence. The naked truth was as decently draped as possible. And for the artistic arrangement of the drapery there was much credit due to the secretary of the committee, Mr. Bruce, to whose courtesy and considerateness the host of witnesses owed much in carrying through their tasks. Lord Tweedmouth was, as the president of the inquiry, always studiously fair and strong in his judicial capacity; but he struck one at times as being uncomfortable and pained at the realisation, that had come too late, that he had been betrayed into a false position.

If ever it was a case of “Save us from our friends” it was so with Lord Tweedmouth. Mr. Arnold Morley as Postmaster-General had lightly and airily granted this inquiry, apparently with the full conviction that the case of the postal malcontents was so weak and flimsy that examination would only cover them with confusion. That indeed was to be the end and purpose of the whole inquiry; and Lord Tweedmouth, trusting to the representations of his friend, agreed to risk his reputation on it. However open-minded Lord Tweedmouth may have been when he approached the problem, the constitution of the committee, the terms of its reference, the restrictions with which it was hedged in various ways, all conspired against a free and impartial verdict. It is probable that Lord Tweedmouth was as surprised as anybody to find how complex, how tangled, and how stupendous was the problem so lightly laid before him by Mr. Arnold Morley. Whatever may have been his chagrin at being thus betrayed into the acceptance of so onerous and gigantic a task, Lord Tweedmouth courageously determined to see it through to the end. And he did; but he came out of the fearful ordeal scarcely the man he was when he went in, and his public reputation, if not sullied, was certainly not enhanced. If the recommendations of the Tweedmouth Committee were not the result of a prearranged and foregone conclusion, the subsequent discontent was largely based on the suspicion that it was so. The inquiry lasted for some two or three months; there was an elaborate examination of witnesses drawn from every branch and every section of the lower ranks of the service, there was a very industrious show of getting at the facts of things, there was some amount of patience and tolerance displayed, but considerations of economy were to warp and stultify the verdict to be presently given. If the verdict had only been in just accordance with the promise implied in the simulated earnestness of certain members of the committee, there would perhaps have been little to object to. But it was not to be. Certainly, few held optimistic views of the result of the inquiry, but scarcely any one was prepared for what was coming.