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

by H. G. Swift

For the first time in the history of postal journalism, a writer in the Post was called on by the department to explain a certain paragraph to which his name was attached. The whole thing was innocent enough and was proved so, but the spirit that inspired the interference was thought to savour of official censorship, and being promptly resisted, the Permanent Secretary, seeing the absurdity of pressing the point against the writer, very sensibly allowed the matter to drop. This ended as a comedy; but a rather more serious matter was the further trespass on the right of combination on the part of the officials in compelling Groves, the treasurer of the Fawcett Association, to resign from his position as a paid officer of the organisation. He had received a small appointment as a supervisor, and he was given the alternative of resigning his appointment as an overseer or ceasing to be a paid officer of the organisation. Groves had been identified with the movement from its inception, and was regarded as one of the pillars of postal combination. He had either to resign his position as treasurer or be reduced to the ranks. That was the Postmaster-General’s decision. Groves put himself in the hands of his constituents, and as it was decided that it would be impolitic and unnecessary for him to martyr himself he resigned his position as treasurer of the association.

The all-important question of civil rights for postal servants, and the outrage on the principle of combination involved in the dismissals of Messrs. Clery and Cheesman, was once more brought before the attention of the House, this time by Mr. Sam Woods, M.P., who on February 18, 1898, moved an amendment to the address. The reinstatement question had now come to be known as the “hardy annual” of the Post-Office. Sir Albert Rollit ably supported the amendment. Mr. Hanbury, as representing the Postmaster-General, replied to the strictures on postal administration, and in dealing with the particular matter of the dismissals and the question of reinstatement, made some very pointed allusions to the two dismissed officials of the sorters’ trades union, Messrs. Clery and Cheesman. After recapitulating the facts of the dismissals, as interpreted by the Post-Office, he went on to speak of Clery at some length, quoting a memorable speech made by Clery at Newcastle in 1892. He justified the dismissals, and maintained that postal servants had nothing to complain of in the matter of civil rights, and, while paying a high tribute to the loyalty that distinguished the service, urged that nothing should be done by the House to break down the foundation on which the service rested. The amendment was lost by a majority of seventy-seven.

At length, on March 15, 1898, the long-waited-for decision of the Postmaster-General to the various questions laid before him as the outcome of objections to the Tweedmouth scheme was announced. This decision on the numerous points was nearly as disappointing as the report of the Tweedmouth Committee itself. There were a few very minor concessions, which affected only a few, but which were said to involve an additional cost of £80,000 per annum; but the greater number of the questions raised were unceremoniously dismissed in a simple paragraph as “the various other matters which are not mentioned in this paper.” After all the solemn pretence of rehearing the case, and admitting evidence that seemed well-nigh irrefutable, postal servants expected something more satisfactory. Indignation meetings were once more held among the various postal bodies, and disappointment and disagreement again found vent in strongly-worded resolutions calling on the Postmaster-General for yet another revision, on the ground that the reply did not adequately deal with the facts submitted, and that in the main the representations had been ignored.

The expenditure of the additional sum of £80,000 on the further concessions did not go very far when spread over such a vast area of postal service, and it was far from satisfying.

The numerous representations made to the Postmaster-General as the result of this renewal of disappointment called forth some months afterwards, in September, what the Daily Chronicle described as a “stern message,” to be shared equally among the discontented. This “stern message” was conveyed in the Postmaster-General’s annual report, issued September 1898. Dealing with the Tweedmouth Committee and the grievances of sections of the postal staff covered by that inquiry, and the manifold representations that had since been made, the Postmaster-General stated that further concessions had already been made to the amount of £50,000; and he added, “Since that time I have declined, and I shall continue to decline, to allow decisions which have been considered by the Tweedmouth Committee, and which have been revised by Mr. Hanbury and myself, to be reopened. It is my belief that these decisions have been liberal, but whether they are liberal or not, it is for the interests of all parties that it should be understood that they are final.”

The word “finality” was written across the decisions of the Postmaster-General, and the postal service was given to understand that nothing more was to be expected. This did not tend to allay the feeling of disappointment that had taken possession of all bodies of postal servants. There were still more meetings, and still more protests; but to no effect so far as the department was concerned. The conviction that their claims had not been adequately met, however, obtained a strong hold everywhere, and helped to still further promote that spirit of federation which for some two or three years had been at work among the various associations. It was not so much the little they had gained by the Tweedmouth inquiry, as what they had actually lost, and the parsimonious manner in which many of the more favourable recommendations were being applied by the authorities, and even in some cases, as was alleged, wholly withheld.

The question of civil rights for postal servants and cognate matters occupied the attention of the Trades Union Congress at Bristol; and two resolutions were passed urging the matter once more on the attention of the Postmaster-General. The first of the two resolutions in question protested against the persistent refusal of the Postmaster-General to allow the legitimate right of combination and civil liberty to postal employés, and strongly condemned “the repeated attempts to break up the postal organisations by intimidating their officers.” The second resolution protested against “the failure of the Postmaster-General to carry into effect the recommendations of the Tweedmouth Committee in regard to split duties (emphatically condemned by the official medical officers as highly injurious to health), and the insanitary condition of Post-Office buildings, which were admitted to be in a most dangerous condition, and a standing menace to the life and health of the workers.” These two resolutions were forwarded by the Parliamentary Committee, through Mr. Sam Woods, M.P., to the Postmaster-General. The Postmaster-General, Nov. 15, replied to this impeachment of the Trades Union Congress; and, admitting much of its truth, pledged himself that “every effort was being made” in regard to the objectionable working conditions, and at the same time repeated his assurance that he had “no wish to curtail the privilege of combination in the Post-Office,” but he wished it to be distinctly understood that he was “unable to condone insubordination in any rank of the service, merely because it is disguised under the cloak of civil liberty.” The reply of the Postmaster-General was regarded with some slight satisfaction by postal servants, though it was not accepted as covering all the facts alleged.

The long-standing hostility of one of the higher officials towards the principle of combination again manifested itself in an unexpected manner not long afterwards. In the following month of December some severe animadversions on postal servants and postal combination from Mr. Lewin Hill, the lately-retired Assistant Secretary, reported in the Daily Graphic, provoked strong resentment generally, which, however, gradually subsided in amusement on the attacks becoming several times repeated, and as often replied to in other organs of the press.

In the prosecution of Parliamentary policy the postal movement had gained strong reinforcements, both in the service and in the House of Commons. Members of Parliament had come and gone, but the number of their advocates had not fallen away. Among the new adherents to their cause was Mr. W. C. Steadman, M.P., whose return for Stepney had been secured by the turning balance of the postal vote there. Among all the members of the House who had beaten their brains against the granite walls of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Mr. Steadman from the first moment of his election proved the most persistent and the most pushful in his advocacy of postal claims. On the opening of the February session, 1899, he moved an amendment to the Address, and once more recapitulated the sins of omission and commission for which the Tweedmouth Inquiry was responsible, and strenuously urged for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry to complete the work left undone, being ably supported by other friends of the postal cause. Mr. Hanbury, as representing the Postmaster-General, resisted further inquiry by the adoption of the official arguments which had served their purpose so well on former occasions. As strengthening his argument, the Postmaster-General’s representative took the opportunity of importing into the discussion a personal attack on W. E. Clery, who had, since his dismissal for furthering the right of combination, become notorious as the arch agitator of the postal movement. Mr. Hanbury made the damaging assertion that “the battle rages round Mr. Clery, the man who is responsible for the agitation.” Yet very illogically, as it seems, he tried to prove that the agitator round whom this battle was raging had not the confidence of trades unionists, inasmuch, as he averred, he was refused admission to the Trades Union Congress, “because he was neither a working member of the trade he represented nor a paid permanent official.” It was an absurd misstatement, as the chairman of the Sorters’ Association had never been refused admission at any Trades Union Congress, but had represented his society there for several successive years. If he was not literally and actually a working member of the craft he represented, he was so in the meaning of the Congress rules, and in any case it was a weak and unworthy argument. In conclusion, the Postmaster-General’s advocate, in paying an unintentional tribute to the postal agitator by allowing that Clery was the pivot on which the whole agitation turned, and that but for him there would be no organised discontent, used an argument which was most calculated to strengthen the hands of the agitator whom it was desired to efface. This speech for the defence on the part of Mr. Hanbury on this occasion was also rendered a cause for remembrance to the telegraphists, whose work he contemptuously described as only “superior type-writing.” The insult thus levelled at the telegraphists was pointed with a comparison with the sorters’ duties, which were described as requiring “more skill than telegraphic work.”

But neither the attack on Clery in the House of Commons nor the compliment to postal work at the expense of the telegraphists availed beyond the momentary triumph. The interests of postal servants were wedded and welded in a new comradeship, which neither insult nor flattery were likely to dissolve. The best answer to these strictures was the successful institution of postal federation throughout the service. The federation of postal associations was already an accomplished fact, and at last telegraphists, postmen, sorting clerks, sorters, and nearly all classes were united in one homogeneous whole for the furtherance of common interests. There had been several tentative attempts at this in the years gone by, but misunderstandings had forbidden its culmination till now. One result of the universal disappointment following on the Tweedmouth Inquiry and the Norfolk-Hanbury Conference was the burying by mutual consent of all class feeling, and the cementing of classes and sections which till now never fully realised that they had so much in common to strive for. The aim of the federated associations was to be at once simple and comprehensive. Unitedly they were to set about it as their first and primary duty to obtain an unofficial, impartial, and disinterested, yet authoritative, Committee of Inquiry into the remaining grievances of postal servants. This they apprehended would comprehend, if not all things, yet most. The vindication of full rights of combination, which could never bring its logical benefit to the men or to the department until it was coupled with official recognition, was another important matter which was to be accepted as a foremost plank in their platform. Of equal importance to every postal servant, whatever his grade, was the claim to full recognition of the liberty of the individual in his leisure time, and the abolition of paltry and unnecessary restrictions on a postal servant’s freedom to engage in any enterprise or undertaking of an honourable nature, according to his fitness or desire to better his prospects outside the service. Related to and closely following on this was to be the claim for citizen rights and all that it involved, including the reinstatement of the unjustly-dismissed officials of the Fawcett Association. They were to insist on more humane treatment as servants of the State, and all those better conditions of hours and work which even the Tweedmouth scheme had left them unprovided with. A better minimum wage for the juniors, the question of deferred pay and pensions, promotion, favouritism, harsh medical restrictions, and numerous other matters were to be included in the programme which should facilitate their hopeful journeyings in search of the postal land of promise and a contented service flowing with milk and honey. The general adoption of this programme by the combined associations at the first Congress, held at Derby, September 1899, marked an epoch in postal history. It was a fitting celebration of the jubilee of postal agitation. Now, with the purpose of achieving these ideals by the way, they steadfastly set their faces towards the time-point when the State should in very truth become the model employer and the great exemplar to the labour market of the world.