Thirty M. P.’s threatened with Loss of Seat
“At this point I would like to state briefly my own experience…. Last year great pressure was brought to bear in the House of Commons on Members of Parliament, and, with thirty other Members, I was threatened with the loss of my seat unless I voted to meet the demands of the Postal servants. It was further intimated to me that the Postal servants’ vote, 100,000 strong, would turn out any Government. A few minutes afterwards it fell to my lot to address the House on the question of increase of postmen’s wages…. I ended my speech by declaring that civil servants who threatened Members of Parliament for refusing to vote them increased salaries ought to be disfranchised. Result—a meeting called in my constituency, my opponent placed in the chair, and a vote of censure passed on me. The London postmen came to Canterbury and addressed my constituents at the meeting. It is not surprising, therefore, that at the recent election my agents informed me that 46 postmen voted solid against me.[241] I do not blame the postmen; they were perfectly justified in using their power; but if I had not had at my back one of the most intelligent bodies of electors in the United Kingdom, I should have been defeated through the postmen’s action.
“It was some consolation to me to receive in the House of Commons, after my speech, hearty, though private, congratulations from hard-working, earnest workingmen representatives, who expressed their entire approval of what they were pleased to call my courage. But something ought to be done to prevent a recurrence of such a scandal.”
In view of Mr. Heaton’s closing remarks, it is interesting to note that four of the eight[242] Labor Members voted, and that all of them favored the appointment of a House of Commons Select Committee.
Post Office Employees and the General Election of 1906
In the campaign preceding the General Election of January, 1906, the several associations of Postal and Telegraph employees addressed letters to the candidates for Parliament, asking those candidates whether they would “support the claims of the Postal and Telegraph employees and vote for the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons for the purpose of inquiring into their conditions of pay and service; and stating that on their part the workers pledged themselves to accept as final the decision of such a tribunal.” At the annual conference of the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association, held in March, 1906, the President of the Association said that nearly 450 of the 670 Members of the House of Commons[243] had pledged themselves to support a motion for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the position of the Post Office employees.[244]
In the third sitting of the new Parliament, held on February 20, the Postmaster General, Mr. Sydney Buxton, announced that the Government had decided to appoint a Select Committee of the House of Commons.[245] And on March 6, the Postmaster General introduced a motion for a Committee of seven to be nominated by the Committee of Selection. In response to the wishes of the House, the Postmaster General subsequently changed his motion to one calling for a Committee of nine, to be appointed by the whips of the several parties in the House.[246]
The Prime Minister on Election Pledges
The motion was carried without debate upon the question whether a Committee should be appointed. In the course of the debate whether the Committee should be appointed by the Committee of Selection, or by the Party Whips, Lord Balcarres, who had been a Junior Lord of the Treasury in the Balfour Government, used these words: “As regards those Honorable Gentlemen who had entered Parliament for the first time,[247] he thought he was fairly accurate when he said that they had given pretty specific pledges upon the matter [of the appointment of a Select Committee] to those who had sent them to the House.” Sir A. Acland-Hood, who had been Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary to the Treasury in the late Balfour Government, said: “There was a debate and a division [upon this question, last year,] and nearly the whole of the supporters of the Government voted against the appointment of the Committee. No doubt many of them suffered for it at the General Election; they either lost their seats or had their majorities reduced in consequence of the vote.” And, finally, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Prime Minister, expressed himself as follows in the course of an argument in favor of a Committee appointed by the Committee of Selection rather than by the House itself through the agency of the Party Whips. The Prime Minister said: “There was a great deal of force in what the Right Honorable Gentleman [Sir A. Acland-Hood] had said as to the fears that were entertained in many quarters of the effect on the Committee if appointed under pressure and insistence, and the retroactive effect of old promises extracted in moments of agony from candidates at the General Election.”[248]