After many Members had supported the request for a Select Committee, the Prime Minister, Mr. A. J. Balfour, said: “I have listened with great interest to this debate, and, I confess frankly, with considerable anxiety as to the future of the public service if pressure of the kind which has been put upon the Government to-night is persisted in by this House. This House is omnipotent. It can make and unmake Governments. It can decide what, when, and how public money is to be spent. But with that omnipotence I would venture to urge upon Members their great responsibility with a subject like this. Everyone knows that a great organized body like the Post Office Service has in its power to put great pressure upon Members, but I earnestly urge upon honorable Gentlemen that unless we take our courage in both hands, and say that, although most desirous that all legitimate grievances shall be dealt with, we cannot permit the Government as a great employer of labor to have this kind of pressure put upon it, I think the future of the public service is in peril. I assure the committee that I speak with a great sense of responsibility. In this very case the Post Office employees have brought forward their grievances year after year. Two Commissions have been appointed, and no one ever ventured to impugn the ability or impartiality of the members of those Commissions. These Commissions made the fullest examination into the case put before them, and reported at length, and as a consequence of that report the British taxpayers are now paying $2,500,000 more of money than they paid before…. In none of the speeches has any specific complaint been brought forward, or any point urged which suggests the necessity for further inquiry, but only the statement that there is a feeling of uneasiness, and a desire for further examination, and that when such a desire is expressed, the House should listen to it. We cannot keep the Civil Service in a sound and healthy condition if we are going to examine into it by a committee every five years. If the House of Commons were to yield to the very natural temptation of granting a committee such as had been asked for, though we might escape an inconvenient division, we should be unworthy, in my opinion, of bearing any longer the great responsibility of being the enormous employer of labor that we are. We should not be carrying out our duty to the public, and, worst of all, we should aim a blow at the Civil Service, which is the boast of this country and the envy of the civilized world, because we should become the parliamentary creatures of every organized body of public servants who chose to use the great power which the Constitution gives, for ends which I am sure they believe to be right, but which this House could not yield to in the manner now suggested without derogating from the high functions and spirit of pure impartiality which the House must maintain if Members are to do their duty by their constituents.”
Mr. Bayley’s Motion was lost by a vote of 148 to 103; it being supported by ninety-one members of the Opposition and nine Government supporters.[197]
Captain Norton demands a Select Committee
On April 18, 1902, while the House of Commons was in Committee of Supply, Captain Norton[198] moved the reduction by $500 of the item: Salaries and Working Expenses of the Post Office Telegraph Service: $12,056,250.[199] He said: “The case briefly was this, that the Government had been guilty of a distinct breach of faith in connection with a certain number of worthy Government officials. He knew that to make this statement of breach of faith was what must be called a strong order, but he was prepared to prove that he was not exaggerating in the smallest degree.” He went on to state that the telegraphists who entered the service in London in 1881 to 1891, when the Civil Service Commissioners had advertised that entrants had “a prospect of obtaining $950,” had a contract with the Government that the possession of “ordinary manipulative ability, with regular attendance and good conduct” would insure advancement to a position paying $950. The Government had broken that contract by prescribing, in 1892, that men “must be equal to supervising duties” in order to be promoted to the positions carrying $950.
Sir Albert Rollit[200] supported Captain Norton with the words: “For a long time past there had been a very strong and general feeling in the service that many of the men had been the victims of something amounting almost to an imposition, however unintentional, on the part of a public Department. Strong terms had been used in the course of the debate, but he should endeavor to deal with the matter on the basis of what he believed to have been a contract between those employees and the Post Office. It was not difficult to show that that implied—or, he might even say, express—contract had induced many to enter the service, only to find that the contract was afterward departed from by one of the contracting parties, the State.”
Mr. Keir Hardie supported Captain Norton’s Motion with the argument that the concessions made by the Tweedmouth Committee had imposed no additional burdens upon the taxpayers, for that committee merely had allocated a small portion of the extra profit made by the Post Office to the Post Office servants who made that profit. Mr. Keir Hardie at one time has held the office of Chairman of the Independent Labor Party,[201] an organization that brings to bear upon the British municipal governments a pressure similar to that here shown to be brought upon the House of Commons.
Members of Parliament coerced
Mr. Gibson Bowles said: “He was aware that many honorable Members who brought forward the position of servants of the State, did so against their own desires, because of the almost irresistible pressure placed upon them by the servants of the State, who were at the same time electors…. He supported the Secretary to the Treasury in resisting this particular amendment, because it was one of many which tended to illustrate a form of tyranny that was becoming unbearable, and which tended seriously to injure the character of this House as making its Members the advocates of classes, sections, and little communities, instead of being trustees not for them alone, but for the whole community.”