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

by H. G. Swift

Then came the announcement on March 10, 1897, of the recommendations of the Tweedmouth Committee, and the consequent disappointment of the whole of the postal service. That disappointment became the stronger the more they realised that their confidence and patience, so sorely tried, had been so ill repaid. The voice of discontent broke out with renewed vigour, and found expression in public meetings all over the country once more. There was a general demand that the whole thing should be thrown into the melting-pot and recast. Fiercely-enthusiastic and crowded meetings of postmen and telegraphists were held in London, and among the latter particularly there were growing warnings of a renewed disposition to adopt a strike policy.

Certainly among the postmen and the telegraphists the application of the scheme threatened only to make confusion worse confounded. Considering the amount of discontent it had revived, and the manner in which it bid fair to strain the loyalty of postal servants to the uttermost, it seemed the Treasury and the Government were by no means to be congratulated on their bargain, costing, as it was supposed to, the enormous sum of £275,000 a year. So far from effecting its purpose, it appeared rather to be producing a spirit of open and unveiled revolt among the very classes it was supposed to pacify. A recognition of this circumstance and the influence of pressure brought by members of Parliament at last induced the Postmaster-General, the Duke of Norfolk, who had now succeeded Mr. Arnold Morley, and Mr. Hanbury, Secretary to the Treasury, to consider the advisability of a further inquiry, presumably with a view to some revision of the scheme so strongly objected to. The fault of the situation lay not so much with the malcontents, or any proneness to agitation on their part, as to the innate defects and anomalies of this costly and cumbrously ineffective scheme; and members of Parliament, and a considerable section of the press, held to that view in calling on the Postmaster-General to institute a further inquiry. It had been urged from every postal platform throughout the United Kingdom that the scheme, that all servants of the Post-Office had looked to to bless them, had produced quite the opposite effect. From the postal servants’ point of view, the Tweedmouth Committee had acted the part of Balaam reversed. The scheme, instead of proving the plentiful cornucopia they had hoped for, and felt they merited, had turned out a Pandora’s box, full of evils, but with not even hope at the bottom.

The tide of indignation quickly gained in strength, till among the London telegraphists their inclination to strike became scarcely any longer disguised. The threatened strike was, it was understood, to take the form of a general refusal to perform overtime, a contingency which, in view of the already undermanned condition of the staff, was likely to give rise to serious complications for both the department and the public, especially with the approach of the busy summer season. Some of the press in their comments on the situation were ill-advised enough to assure the telegraphists of their support and sympathy in the event of their adopting this course, but there is no reason to think that such assurances influenced the telegraphists in their decision. They boasted of being able to fight the battle on its merits, and with confidence as to the result if they did so decide. There had already been telegraph strikes, and all had ended with more or less success for the men concerned. The first was that of 1871 in England, the second was in France in 1881, and the third was in Spain in 1892. All three were conspicuous examples of what inconvenience to the public could be caused by a stoppage and dislocation of the telegraph service, and in each case the struggle was brief. But that was before the general adoption of telephones. Possibly the telegraphists who at first contemplated striking against overtime recollected this in conjunction with other considerations. While they were making a show of preparation, and subscribing to an emergency fund started in Liverpool, the authorities were not slow to take advantage of the warnings, and, none too secretly, were providing against the emergency accordingly.

On June 15 the Duke of Norfolk granted an interview to the aggrieved telegraphists, and by a deputation of the London men was made personally acquainted with the full text of their grievances. The Postmaster-General promised to give full consideration to the facts laid before him, and to acquaint them with his decision at an early date. After waiting for five weeks for the promised answer, the telegraphists gave vent to their further impatience by deciding to take a ballot of their members on the question of ceasing to work overtime. The result of this ballot showed practically a unanimous vote in favour of a refusal to obey overtime summonses, the proportion of the whole country being 83 per cent. in favour, or fully 70 per cent. of the whole male staff. In London the vote showed 94 per cent., in Liverpool 85 per cent., and other provincial towns gave similar results. The ballot showed that the men were getting angry; but in view of a promise given in the House by Mr. Hanbury as representing the Postmaster-General, the executive of the telegraphists announced their intention to recommend their members to delay for a while before carrying the intention into effect. There was an excited mass meeting of London telegraphists, male and female, and it is probable that only the intervention of Sir Albert Rollit averted a threatened strike.

The platform utterances in public meeting during this exciting period were in some cases none too guarded, and, as a result, two Newcastle telegraphists, and Garland, the secretary of the London branch, one of the ablest of the leading agitators, were called on officially to explain certain expressions used by them in reference to the avowed intention of their body to “walk out” from the operating-rooms when the signal came to be given. Their explanations were, however, accepted a little later on as more or less satisfactory; and this was done with a tactful exhibition of leniency in a trying emergency that at the time was favourably commented on in the press, and possibly did much towards conciliating the telegraphists as a body and turning them from their intention; though it must be noted that some little indignation was expressed among them owing to their two comrades at Newcastle having their salaries reduced.

Meanwhile petitions and memorials were being numerously signed and sent in from almost every class of postal servants pleading for interviews with heads of departments, and urging the authorities in various ways to remedy the newly-discovered defects of the Tweedmouth scheme, or to see that its more favourable recommendations were interpreted and applied more equitably; for during this time it was observable that the department showed a marked reluctance to give postal servants the full benefits the scheme entitled them to, though every advantage on its own side was almost at once rigidly exacted.

Little or no satisfaction resulted from these appeals, and on July 16, 1897, the report of the Tweedmouth Committee being brought on for discussion in the House of Commons, the opportunity was taken to raise most of the knotty points afresh. Sir Albert Rollit was again to the fore, and well vindicated the claims of the postmen, the telegraphists, and sorters, and, to promote discussion on the matter, moved the reduction of the Post-Office vote by £1000. He was ably supported by Captain Norton, Mr. Hudson Kearley, Mr. William Allen, Mr. Pickersgill, and a number of other influential members, the whole ground of the established forces and the rural and auxiliary postmen being once more gone into.

As the indirect result of this debate, a conference was arranged between members of Parliament and the Postmaster-General and Mr. Hanbury, as Secretary to the Treasury; and to this conference members of the still aggrieved classes in the service were invited to give supplementary evidence. The Norfolk-Hanbury Conference, as it came to be known, occupied several sittings during July, representatives of the numerous classes affected giving further evidence. What was at first hailed as a Committee of Arbitration was, however, found to be presided over and dominated almost entirely by the Postmaster-General, members of Parliament being reduced to the position of witnesses and having no voice in the decisions to be arrived at. Sir Albert Rollit, as the principal advocate of the postal case, strove earnestly and strenuously to convince the Duke of Norfolk and Mr. Hanbury that the Tweedmouth scheme was inadequate; that where it had not actually introduced fresh grievances it had but imperfectly met the just demands of the service; and that the shortcomings of the scheme were aggravated by the niggardly manner in which the few favourable recommendations were being applied.

An additional volume of evidence on fresh points was put forward by various witnesses called from among the men; and in many respects it was sought to be shown that the conditions of the service were far from being bettered by the scheme, and that many unfair advantages were being taken by the authorities. At an early stage of the proceedings one more effort was made to discuss the questions of civil rights and the notorious dismissals; but it was as promptly ruled out of order as before. There was a deal of ammunition expended by the various postal bodies on the Norfolk-Hanbury Conference, but from certain indications in the Postmaster-General they were led to believe that he was not wholly unsympathetic. They had, however, to wait for a period of seven months for the second instalment of their great disappointment.

During this seven months of waiting for the Postmaster-General’s final decision on the points raised, there were several interesting happenings.