When, after some months of silent and unseen deliberation in preparing their recommendations, the long-looked-for report of the Tweedmouth Committee was, on March 10, 1897, issued, it immediately produced a thunderclap. It was eminently disappointing to the whole Service. The mountain, after all its long labour, had brought forth a mouse. The many who had asked for bread were offered a stone, while only to a few were given some small crumbs of comfort. The new scheme was to appropriately take effect on the First of April.
An examination of the scheme revealed it to be full of flaws and omissions; and what it appeared to so generously offer with one hand it filched with the other. It was regarded by every section of the service as a clever piece of financial thimble-rigging. The only class who appeared to derive any material benefit worth speaking of were the London sorters, their maximum being raised to £160 per annum; but even this benefit was found to be minimised by restrictions, while certain emoluments and allowances for extra responsibilities and particular duties were to be sacrificed.
The telegraphists, so far from benefiting, were the principal sufferers, their maximum, instead of being raised as they had hoped, now being reduced from £190 to £160 uniformly with the sorters. The postmen, except in the matter of one or two additional good-conduct stripes, were no better off than before; while the vexed question of Christmas-boxes—a source of humiliation to themselves and an unjust tax on the public indirectly imposed by the department—was left untouched. Altogether the Tweedmouth scheme was a source of still further grievance all round. The provincial sorting clerks were “bitterly disappointed,” the postmen were “dumfounded,” the sorters “by no means satisfied,” and the telegraphists were simply “overwhelmed with consternation.” These were the verdicts of the various bodies who were included in the scheme; but several of the classes who had tendered evidence, in hopes of getting their grievances redressed, were herein conspicuous by their absence. If there was a little given there was much taken away. If there was a slight increase in the holiday period and other minor advantages, ample compensation was taken in the serious reduction of the telegraphists’ maximum, and the abolition of allowances for special and senior duties among other classes, the sorters and sorting clerks. When, indeed, these reductions and abolitions were considered, it was difficult to accept as an actual and literal fact the alleged enormous cost of this scheme, seemingly so hollow and so empty.
The two concessions to sentiment and humanity principally appreciated by the sorters and others were the acknowledgment of the insanitary conditions of the sorting-offices and the proposed reduction of the rigours of middle-of-the-night attendance and split duties. But other grievances almost as pressing were either ignored or glossed over, or wholly rejected as not sufficiently proved. In spite of the representations that had been made on every ground of proof that postal servants were overloaded with work and responsibility; that the growing strain and stress was a common cause of brain malady and nervous breakdown; that the conditions of postal life generally conduced to premature decay, and were becoming a prolific cause of consumption, especially among the indoor staffs, the Tweedmouth scheme was to supply no remedy. In spite of the evidence that the conditions of work and the disgraceful overcrowding during the performance of important duties were so largely responsible, it seemed that men were still to be punished and humiliated for errors next to unavoidable. The Tweedmouth scheme, moulded within the narrow groove of a mechanical economy, was to bring no relief for these things. The charges of favouritism in the service had been scouted as not proven; but if there were few well-defined cases of direct nepotism, there still obtained the kindred evil of the neglect, suppression, and humiliation of deserving merit for no other reason than that it was not accompanied with the prescribed abjectness and self-effacement. These evils, and the thousand and one grievances arising out of them, exhaustively and conclusively pleaded as they were before the inquiry, were practically left untouched by the scheme intended to provide a panacea for all postal ills. Hence the disappointment of all classes, both those who were included in the too meagre benefits and those who were not. It was regarded all round as a scheme more for the department than for the force. If the department had made a few concessions, it had exacted a heavy price for them. It had been confidently thought that if they would not concede they would not take away; but the result showed that in return for the little that had been given old privileges were to be ruthlessly cut away and old landmarks disturbed. The scheme reckoned so costly was found by this means to partly pay for itself, and even the hours of duty in some cases were so manipulated as to more than compensate the department for the three days’ increase in annual leave, the most costly item of the whole.
It is unnecessary here to go into a close analysis of so technical and complex a scheme as that embodied in the report of the Tweedmouth Committee; but such was the feeling its introduction produced among every class to which it applied, that it was regarded as an insult and a fresh injustice; and serious outbreaks of discontent seemed imminent all over the country. However, whatever the merits or demerits of the Tweedmouth scheme, the serious fact had to be faced that it had met with sweeping and universal condemnation, even those whom it most favoured accepting it only as a Pyrrhic victory for agitation.
CHAPTER XXIII
CONTINUANCE OF AGITATION—ANOTHER THREATENED STRIKE OF TELEGRAPHISTS—THE NORFOLK-HANBURY CONFERENCE—THE “HARDY ANNUAL” OF THE POST-OFFICE—POSTAL FEDERATION—THE JUBILEE OF POSTAL AGITATION—CONCLUSION.
During the deliberations of the Tweedmouth Committee, the attitude of the service had necessarily for the most part been one of waiting and expectancy. But it was not without its record of work in the interim. The vexed question of civil rights and the reinstatement of Clery and Cheesman was urged in Parliament and on the attention of the Postmaster-General whenever there was an opportunity. In the previous session of Parliament, Sir Albert Rollit raised the matter in the House of Commons for the twentieth time, on a motion to reduce the Postmaster-General’s salary, but the motion was withdrawn on a promise of a reconsideration of the question. Parliamentary policy was, however, almost of necessity during this while in a passive state, though a hold was still kept on the numerous Parliamentary friends of the movement. The connection between the postal organisations and the general labour movement outside had by this time become more intimate than ever. The sorters’ organisation, the Fawcett Association had through its chairman, W. E. Clery, been mainly instrumental in bringing into existence; the Government Workers’ Federation started with the ambitious project of ultimately embracing all classes of Government workers. Moving along the lines on which it was originally started, it bid fair to become an important and formidable factor in domestic politics; but differences arose among the leaders on points of policy, and Clery having so many demands upon his time in connection with postal agitation proper, relinquished the leadership of it, though the sorters’ organisation still continued affiliated to it. The chairmanship of the Government Workers’ Federation was then filled successively by G. E. Raby, then organising secretary of the Fawcett Association, and by W. B. Cheesman, general secretary of the same body, and under the latter especially continued to exert some amount of political influence. The postal movement particularly, as represented by the sorters’ organisation, discharged its due share of work and responsibility in connection with the general crusade of labour, sending delegates to the Trades Union Congress each year, holding a respected position in the London Trades Council, and rendering assistance both moral and pecuniary in most of the functions of trades union and labour politics.