Such concisely supplies, so far as it has gone, the history of a remarkable agitation. Whatever its lesson, and whatever the ultimate verdict upon it from a strictly impartial standpoint, postal agitation is a fact that bears recording in the general history of organised labour. Whether it may be deemed wholly justified or not, it has its value as an episode.
Agitation in the Post-Office may not always have been studiously correct in attitude and demeanour, but perhaps it has committed no more and no greater mistakes than have the officials in their dealings with it in the past. It might almost be said that it represents, if only in miniature, the people’s fight for freedom and the gradual extension of popular liberty; for the Post-Office has seen its pre-Chartist days, when to dare openly organise discontent would have been to make men amenable to the Law of Conspiracy. It has represented a continuous conflict between the spirit of exaction on one side, and the natural desire for betterment in pay and conditions, in just accordance with the improving value of labour everywhere, on the other. It has, indeed, been but a reflection and an analogue of the earlier struggles between capital and labour outside, and generally a protest against that fixed and fossilised scale of pay and that Procrustean standard of conditions for all time which have been shown to be no more possible here than in the broader arena of the labour market. Right or wrong, but always sustained by the conviction of right nevertheless, with the self-same tenacity with which their efforts have been repelled, the men who have from time to time engaged in this movement have persisted till they have beaten down the barriers, and gained some proportion of those advantages they laid claim to as their just dues.
Perhaps in a manner it may be accepted as a faint tribute to our Constitution and a self-compliment to our freedom-asserting and freedom-loving character as a people to say that only in England could a history of postal agitation have been possible. It is in itself a small consequence, perhaps, but it is significant as a consequence and an outcome of that free, powerful, and independent public opinion which safeguards and promotes our liberties; it is only one of the natural results of that dominating spirit of democracy which has so broadened our boundaries morally and materially as a nation.
THE END
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