DISSATISFACTION AMONG TELEGRAPHISTS—STARTING A NEW ORGANISATION—CONFERENCE AT LIVERPOOL—THREATENED TELEGRAPH STRIKE—THE FAWCETT SCHEME AND THE TELEGRAPHISTS.
DISSATISFACTION AMONG TELEGRAPHISTS—STARTING A NEW ORGANISATION—CONFERENCE AT LIVERPOOL—THREATENED TELEGRAPH STRIKE—THE FAWCETT SCHEME AND THE TELEGRAPHISTS.
Electrical influences had been in the air for some years since the Manchester outburst, but a feeling partly of timidity partly of apathy had prevented section joining with section until some time after the Scudamore scheme. Nothing seemingly was done by the department to attempt to check the wholesale exodus from the service. One consequence of this “great retreat,” as it was called, was that those who remained to supply their places were worked the harder. Nominally the hours were eight, but fourteen, fifteen, and even seventeen hours were commonly worked in a single day when the exigencies of the service demanded it.
The Scudamore scheme of classification, which should have stood self-condemned by this time even from a departmental point of view, was nevertheless tenaciously clung to by the officials as a parent clings to its child. Yet opposed as they were to all modification towards bettering the condition of the telegraphists, it was at length driven home to the authorities that something was needed to allay the daily growing discontent caused mainly by this detested scheme. But only a slight modification was made, and that with timidity and reluctance. The Scudamore system had egregiously failed of its purpose, but its authors were yet slow to see it. Not even the patent fact that it was false economy and a waste of public profits to spend large sums in training telegraph operators who, one out of every three, ultimately took their knowledge and experience elsewhere, was sufficient to convince them. The improvementthat they were at last compelled to make consisted of a sixpence increase in the year—an eighteenpence increment instead of a shilling—and one or two barriers to promotion were removed. But tinkering and botching of this kind were of no avail in mitigating the real sterner hardships and injustices for which “Scudamore’s Folly” was responsible.
When it was seen that the department were bent on doing nothing further, the most cautious became indifferent to consequences, and their loyalty to the public service was put to the severest strain. Men who before had held back, with no stomach for agitation in any shape or form, now began to feel that it was their duty to take up arms in the common cause; the most conservative felt that what they were risking was scarcely worth preserving.
The dissatisfaction became so general and so acute towards the beginning of 1880 that it was evident it could no longer be kept within bounds.
That the Post-Office had persistently ignored what was averred to be a direct instruction of the Legislature as signified in the particular clause of the Telegraph Act of 1868, was the mainspring of the agitation of this period. On that clause the hopes of the telegraph service were centred, and the renewed agitation which was now to commence was mainly to be directed towards the attainment of this object and the fulfilment of this clause. Great uneasiness had existed among telegraph clerks for some time with regard to their position and future prospects; but it was not till the beginning of December 1880 that their grievances found open expression; and only then in isolated petitions from various offices, which failed to secure attention. The third-class clerks of Birmingham had endeavoured, by means of correspondence in theCivil Service Gazetteand communication with other towns, to establish an understanding as to a plan of future action among telegraph clerks throughout the country. These efforts were, however, only partly successful, few towns responding to the call to co-operate.
The seed had so far fallen on stony ground, but not so at Liverpool. An article from theCivil Service Gazettebeing received there from Birmingham on 26th November, thequestion of co-operation was placed before the staff for consideration. A meeting was held the following evening, and after a lengthy discussion it was unanimously decided to enter upon vigorous action and rally to the assistance of Birmingham. A committee and officers were appointed, and a correspondence at once opened with other large towns to ascertain what steps had already been taken towards united action. These inquiries this time elicited a ready and hearty response, which far exceeded the most sanguine expectation, and it was safe to conjecture that a plan of campaign was now really possible. The movement, if such it might be called, had up to that moment been purely a third-class one, and it was now established on a broader and more comprehensive basis. TheCivil Service Gazettewas more than ever used for ventilating their grievances. But confusion ensued from the many and multifarious schemes proposed; and this only forced home the conviction which had been slowly growing, that the ranks should be brought into proper line, and that a few should assume a recognised command, and that they should have a workable base at one of the large town offices, from whence proposals might be put forward for general adoption. Liverpool, being in the first line of importance and convenient as a centre, in conformity with a generally-expressed desire, therefore consented to take up the position of premier and pioneer. After mature deliberations on all available suggestions cognate to the work before them, Liverpool issued a circular to every office in the kingdom, and branches were instituted everywhere. Fresh offices flocked to the new standard every day, and the movement developed with astonishing rapidity. Not an important office, with the exception of two, held aloof. The metropolitan offices added new columns of support to the rapidly-increasing structure; London and the provinces were at last welded into one.
Their progress had, however, been not altogether unchecked, for in some quarters the authorities, looking askance on the strongly-advancing tide, in a futile manner tried to resist it by bringing pressure to bear on particular prominent men. But the feeling had gained ground too rapidly; the fire was alight, and had taken hold of the entire service by this time, and asfast as the official foot sought to stamp it out in one quarter it reappeared in another. At Sheffield and Cardiff there was some little trouble, and a few were made the sufferers for their progressive efforts; but the telegraphists everywhere else proved equal to all the coercion that was brought to bear on them.
By this time they were not wanting for public friends, and many members of Parliament, who had expressed their surprise at the low wages and poor prospects held out to telegraphists, some thirty or forty of them, had voluntarily offered to do what was possible for them in the House of Commons when the time came. Prominent among those members of Parliament who had guaranteed their support were Mr. Monk—who years before had obtained for postal servants the enjoyment of the franchise—Mr. Macliver, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Mr. Joseph Cowen, Mr. Jacob Bright, Lord Sandown, Lord Charles Hamilton, and Mr. (afterwards Sir) Stafford Northcote; while Mr. John Bright and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain had also expressed sympathy and were interesting themselves on behalf of their Birmingham constituents. Added to this phalanx of Parliamentary support, the press had warmly taken up the telegraphists’ cause; and there was scarcely a paper of importance that had not from time to time some reference to the agitation, and commented on the moderation and reasonableness of the claims put forward by the men. There was also a petition from the members of the London Stock Exchange on behalf of the men to the Postmaster-General, which bore 2000 signatures.
Professor Henry Fawcett himself, who had now become Postmaster-General, had led them to believe, in a speech at Manchester in January, that they might expect the fullest justice at his hands, and had promised to carefully consider their petitions. But one and all felt that it was necessary to strengthen the hands of the Postmaster-General, however liberal his intentions might be. They knew, and their public friends knew, that there was a power behind the throne which would have to be reckoned with.
The flowing tide of discontent, swollen by numberless tributaries from all over the United Kingdom, emptied itself intoLiverpool on the 15th and 16th January 1881. On those two days the first conference of telegraph clerks was held, and from then was to date the progress of the real telegraph movement.
The success, so far, of the telegraphists’ agitation, and its being brought so rapidly to this important stage, was due for the most part to one man, Norman, now a telegraphist of Bristol, transferred from Liverpool in 1871.
Norman was a distinct personality, and from the first moment in 1871, when discontent became rife, he had been an influence. He, in conjunction with Ashden, Mulholland, Ryan, and others, it was who brought about the earlier agitation. Originally himself a Liverpudlian, he had been made to suffer for the part he took on that occasion by being transported to Bristol. In Liverpool he was on his native heath once more, and he was destined to take the lead for some time henceforth. He had had no difficulty with a few others, Kellamay, Brighton, and Alvine, in setting fire to Bristol. He could not be classed as an eloquent speaker, yet he nearly always convinced; his well-measured tones always carried their point. His organising capacity was that of a general. He was a character eminently trusted, and easily begot a feeling of security among his followers. At Bristol there had been some doubts among the juniors that if this agitation were entered on the “pre-transfer” men might try only for a satisfactory settlement of their own case to the detriment of the juniors, and some little friction seemed likely; but Norman simply gave one word of assurance, and all had such faith in him that perfect unanimity was restored.
This conference at Liverpool, which he had been so instrumental in bringing about, was to shape their future, and Norman was to point the way. A common programme was decided on; a permanent Telegraphists’ Association was decided on, and the work of formulating a national petition was put into the hands of the Liverpool committee. A permanent association was agreed on as the outcome of this first conference of telegraph clerks; but it is a little curious to note that even Norman, whose original proposal it was, displayed some hesitation in the open adoption of the trades-union principle.It might be called an association for mutual benefit, or anything they chose, said Norman, “but whatever shape it might take, it must be as broad as possible, so that the department could not say, ‘You have a trades union.’” Even Heald of Manchester, one of the strike agitators, and a man who had suffered for his temerity on that occasion, took the view that to form a trades union of telegraphists would be to forfeit the support of the public, whose interests were so closely allied to those of the department. In this year of 1881, when trades unionism recognised as such reared its head among every class of labour and was not ashamed, they as Government servants did not deem it wise to inscribe so much as its name on their banner. Bound as they were, almost, to accept it in spirit and essence, such was their conception of the public’s requirements in the matter, and such their inclination to make concession to this old-fashioned sentiment indulged in by so many of their Parliamentary supporters, that they felt it would be imprudent to distinguish their movement by any label likely to offend such a prejudice. They were progressive enough in principle. They had men among them who had suffered in the cause of progress, and who were willing to do so again; but they were not yet prepared to go the length of the postal agitators of a past decade, who had openly proclaimed themselves by joining with the London Trades Council. There were some among them who, indeed, had doubts about the legality of Government servants doing so in any case. So far as any such doubt was entertained, it was possibly a survival of that feeling which had caused the telegraphists of 1871 to refuse the offer of a sum of £1000 for the prosecution of Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore for suspending men for forming an association.
Again, it had to be remembered that they were claiming to be classed as Lower Division clerks of the Civil Service as embraced by the terms of the Playfair scheme, and, as they conceived it, confirmed by an Order in Council in 1876. The arguments in support of this claim seemed most valid, and they had the authority of eminent counsel in support of their ambitious though, after all, reasonable claim. It was, therefore very natural, perhaps, that while they endorsed andaccepted the principle, they should hesitate to weaken their case by avowedly adopting its ritual and its garb. Whether they were fully justified in so thinking is another matter, and it is the fact that has to be recorded.
It was not that Norman and those associated with him had not sufficient sympathy with the principle or the necessary courage to proclaim the fact. It was only that they were not as yet certain of their followers, who were made up of men of every shade of opinion, or of the advisability of calling a spade a spade. Yet they were to have their trades union just the same; and from the first moment of its being launched some few months later, in December 1881, the whole organisation was to be run on trades-union lines. But up to the present they had done no more than agree as to the necessity of a permanent society; its actual formation must wait a little longer.
The one immediate outcome of the first Liverpool conference was the drawing up of a united petition, setting forth for the first time concisely and clearly their various claims. There were five principal grievances enumerated, together with the reasons for their removal. The first grievance complained of was the inadequate salary, and the hindrance to promotion given by classification. The second was as to the irregular as well as inadequate mode of payment for overtime; the third complained of was that there was no special payment made for Sunday, Good Friday, or Christmas Day duties; and it was therefore asked that these holidays be paid for as overtime. The fourth complained of was the insufficient annual leave of absence; and the fifth complained of the insufficient subsistence allowance to clerks employed away from home on special or relief duties. This petition was signed by every office of importance in the kingdom, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham taking the lead in the number of signatures; and it was then presented in the beginning of February. With far greater expedition than they had hoped for, the Postmaster-General, Mr. Fawcett, intimated his willingness to discuss the points with a deputation of telegraphists. Accordingly, on the 15th March 1881, a deputation of telegraph clerks, including their leading man,Norman, was received by Mr. Fawcett. It was on this occasion that the real strength of Norman was well displayed. The accredited orator of the telegraphists’ movement, Michael O’Toole, was present; but it does no injustice to him to say that Norman’s closely-reasoned statement, made up principally of facts and figures which were incontrovertible, must have been more convincing to Mr. Fawcett than were O’Toole’s more brilliant pyrotechnics. Instead of being allowed to state their grievances unreservedly, however, they found that the supporters and advisers of the Postmaster-General would allow them only to answer questions. Even the brilliant O’Toole was told that he was “not answering questions, but making a speech.”
The interview from which so much had been expected was therefore not deemed satisfactory. The deputation found that they had to impress and convince not only Mr. Fawcett, but the permanent officials, who were numerously represented, and who considerably hampered freedom of discussion by their insisting that certain questions only be answered. The men desired to plead their own case in their own fashion as they had been invited to, but it was seen that Mr. Fawcett’s honourable desire was being quietly and firmly overruled, so that the interview terminated without many of the very necessary explanatory statements being introduced as was intended.
The disaffection grew apace, and a consciousness of their strength and the justice of their demands rendered them reliant. The agitation was renewed with increased activity. Mr. Macliver and other M.P.’s rallied to their support. Numerous meetings were held all over the country, while the sympathy of the press and the public gave a character and an importance to their movement that could not much longer be ignored by the Government. The service was swept from end to end by a hurricane of discontent that had had no parallel even in the postmen’s agitation of a few years before. The telegraphists were angered, and anger was becoming defiance. It was becoming a question as to how much longer they could be kept within bounds.
Mr. Fawcett, true to his democratic instinct, felt the greatest reluctance in imposing restrictions on the right of free publicmeeting among postal servants. His attention had been drawn, both by the officials and in the House of Commons, to reports of public meetings of postal and telegraph employés, and he expressed himself cognisant of these proceedings, at the same time intimating that it was not his intention to interfere or to visit any official punishment on those who had taken a prominent part. Undoubtedly some of the platform utterances of this period were rather extreme, and the distinguished Postmaster-General was not kept in ignorance of the fact. His forbearance was that of a strong and courageous man, and he probably felt that the best reply he could give to all the far-fetched assertions of the impatient army under his control was to presently offer them the scheme which he was then so busily preparing.
But meeting followed meeting and protest followed protest, till the blind, badgered Postmaster-General felt that he was at last face to face with the stern reality of a threatened strike. Then for the first time he uttered a cry of resentment. They ought to have learnt by this time that the delay was not due to any neglect of his; they ought to have known by this time that he who had allowed the utmost freedom both in petitioning and public meeting, who lost no opportunity of finding out for himself what was wrong, was in reality an enemy of the official fetishism of which they most complained. In a Post-Office Circular issued March 30, 1881, he strongly animadverted on the extreme course they were pursuing, and the manner in which the facts of the recent interview had been distorted by several members of the deputation. He maintained that he had never made any intimation that he would receive them alone without the presence of the permanent officials; that it would have been contrary to all practice in the public service had the principal officers of the department not been present; and, as he had stated elsewhere, the object of the interview was simply to furnish him with such additional information as he might desire to receive. He expressed his strong disapprobation of their impatience and their method of showing it, but at the same time he conveyed a promise that nothing would prevent him from “doing full justice to the case of the telegraphists generally.”
The very severe rebuke contained in Mr. Fawcett’s circular to the postal telegraphists was by many among them felt to be in nowise undeserved, and being administered publicly did not tend to enhance the movement at the time, alienating as it did some amount of public sympathy. The honesty of purpose of the Postmaster-General was generally recognised, and his rebuke, coupled with an unequivocal promise to do them justice within reasonable time, somewhat restrained the more ardent among the agitators. The reflection that this blind philosopher and statesman was grappling with an immense difficulty and a complicated problem, affecting thousands of others besides telegraphists, demanding time, patience, insight, and judgment, at last sobered their impatience. For the most part they came to acknowledge they had been too impetuous, though a number regarded the reproof as unmerited.
Mr. Fawcett kept his promise honourably, and on June 18, 1881, his scheme for improved pay and revised classification, covering both the telegraph and postal sides of the service, was issued. It was then seen how stupendous must have been his task. While a threatening and angry crowd without were demanding immediate redress, he was now patiently and busily preparing proposals for their contentment, and now battling with the Treasury on their behalf, and to get those proposals accepted. He had accomplished a great task, and in the circumstances the telegraphists felt that deep gratitude was due to him. As he had been the very first to deal with the postal side of the question from a truly statesmanlike point of view, so he had been the first to approach the telegraphist difficulty in the same manner. The application of the Fawcett scheme to the telegraphists brought them immediate and material benefits, and gave them a status and a better-defined position as Government servants. The defects of the late Scudamore scheme were greatly diminished, but, needless to say, the improved scale of pay was even better appreciated than the improved prospects of promotion, while a more equitable rate of payment for overtime, and a reduction of night attendance to seven hours, payment for Christmas Day and Good Friday, constituted the more acceptable features of Mr. Fawcett’s measure for the telegraphists.
The concessions brought to them by the Fawcett scheme were evidently the result of much hard work and strong endeavour on Mr. Fawcett’s part. Every one felt that he had been animated by an honest desire to fairly meet them, and for such endeavours and such desire on his part they expressed their gratitude and thanks. But at the same time it was universally felt that he had to a great extent been balked in his intention to accord them full justice. They were sincerely grateful to him for his manly and honest treatment of their demands; but they knew that Mr. Fawcett’s hands were tied, that his liberty of action was circumscribed, and that what he had obtained for them had been strenuously contended for and grudgingly conceded. In high quarters the scheme was regarded as a generous one all round, and it is perhaps doubtful that the recommendations of Mr. Fawcett, if made by a lesser man and other than a Professor of Political Economy, would have been entertained and accepted. So that, in so far as it fell short of meeting their demands, they blamed Mr. Fawcettless than an unkind fate and the permanent officialdom in league with a suspicious and parsimonious Treasury.
As it was, however, they might have been prepared to accept the few flies in the ointment but for their discerning a disposition on the part of the authorities to whittle down at every opportunity the most acceptable and valued concessions contained in the scheme. Next to the improved wage-scales, perhaps one of the most highly-prized boons it gave them was that of reducing the night duty from eight to seven hours. But it had scarcely been conceded ere it was filched back from them with the declaration that “night” only meant from 10P.M.to 5A.M.The ungenerous spirit in which the benefits of the Fawcett scheme were applied to the telegraphists taught them to examine into their bargain a little more closely. The result was they found many things wanting, and the absence of which convinced them that they were justified in continuing the agitation. It was acknowledged that Mr. Fawcett intended to place them on an equality with the postal staff in the matter of preferment, but it was contended that it was not done. It was pointed out that there was an apparent similarity of wages, but that it was more apparent than real. While it was admitted that Mr. Fawcett’s evident intention was to confer lasting benefits on both branches of the service, events would show that his retention of the discredited system of classification meant leaving to his successors a legacy of strife between them and their subordinates. Failing as the Fawcett scheme did to entirely eradicate the malignant growth of classification introduced by Mr. Scudamore, this scheme could not be accepted as a permanent remedy. By its operation, it was maintained, their rightful increments towards the maximum would be artificially arrested by class barriers. The effect would be to bar them from attaining a reasonable wage within a reasonable time, and they declared that they better required a present living wage than the far-off prospect of reaching £400 a year at the moment of being forced through old age to retire from the service. Such a “prospect” was nothing more than a cruelignis fatuuswhile this delusive system of classification was sustained.
One curious result of the Fawcett scheme was that the telegraphistsdeclared that they were not placed on an equality with the postal side, as was intended by the spirit and letter of it, while the postal agitators a little later adopted similar arguments to prove that they had not been placed on an equality with the telegraphists, as was also intended.
Dissatisfaction with their position in the service, despite the late scheme, gradually became acute once more among the telegraphists. On July 17, 1881, one month from the issuing of Mr. Fawcett’s intended remedy and stop-gap for further agitation, a conference held at Liverpool resolved that a permanent organisation covering the whole of the United Kingdom was an absolute necessity to prevent further encroachments upon them and to preserve what little they had already gained. December 3, 1881, saw the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association launched into existence. Immediately from all over the country support was forthcoming, the greater part of the provincial offices rallying round the standard set up at Liverpool.
Mr. Fawcett, as may be imagined, was not pleased at the manner in which his well-intended scheme was received by the telegraphists, but he met all criticism and all opposition with that unflinching courage of the philosopher which was his chiefest trait. An utterance made by him at this period, when speaking at Hackney, November 2, 1881, affords an interesting glimpse into his mind on this question. On that occasion he said, “All experience shows that the sense of wrong remains long after a grievance has been redressed and an injustice remedied.”
Whether or not the grievances had been redressed and the injustices remedied, as he honestly intended they should be so far as lay in his power, certainly the original sense of wrong was to remain long afterwards. This surviving sense of wrong, Mr. Fawcett probably hoped, would gradually die out as his remedy applied its healing balm. But it was to survive longer than he anticipated, and to be fostered till it developed into almost a passionate outburst which, in a few years to come, another equally great and strong man, Mr. Raikes, had eventually to calm and temporarily check by yet another measure of relief.