THE PROVINCIAL SORTING CLERKS—THEIR POSITION—THE RIDLEY COMMISSION, AND EVIDENCE PREPARED—THE FORMATION OF AN ORGANISATION—THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING.
THE PROVINCIAL SORTING CLERKS—THEIR POSITION—THE RIDLEY COMMISSION, AND EVIDENCE PREPARED—THE FORMATION OF AN ORGANISATION—THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING.
Through a long course of years the postmen, the letter-sorters, and the telegraphists had cultivated each their fertile patch of ground, and produced a plentiful crop of the thistles of discontent. But there was one other widely-distributed and important section of the postal community who, while feeling most of the grievances of which the others complained, yet took no combined action. While the letter-carriers and the telegraphists especially assumed a more or less aggressive attitude in the maintenance and furtherance of their rights and privileges in the service, the provincial postal clerks, as important a body as either of these, remained passive till the year 1886. Through the whole of the stormy and exciting periods, the strike of the telegraphists in 1870, the upheaval of the postmen and sorters two or three years later, and the recurrence of fierce agitation among all other postal bodies during the few years following, the postal clerks, undisturbed, pursued the even tenor of their way. That they had grievances goes without saying; but there were influences that held them in check; and they did not realise the grievances they suffered from so acutely as a body that they could be drawn easily into the vortex of agitation. They agitated more or less for the removal of restrictions and the redress of local grievances, but their efforts were too tentative and sporadic in their character to be of permanent value or make any lasting impression. It was not till 1886 that an awakening was to come. The postal clerks as a collective body were content to sow their wild oatson the Ridley Commission of 1886-87. That commission, on which had been centred the hopes of many thousands of men in the postal service, proved abortive. In spite of the distinct promise held out and express invitations made to prepare and tender evidence before it, the Ridley Commission on Civil Establishments dashed every hope to the ground by prematurely disbanding. The effect of this on other postal bodies has already been seen. The abortive Ridley Commission has had much to answer for, and became in itself the most fruitful source of that discontent it was originally intended to allay. When it became evident that it would not after all reach the doors of the Post-Office, a groan of disappointment went up from the overworked and underpaid multitudinous army of malcontents which made up the rank and file of the postal service; and that groan of disappointment presently deepened into cries of execration at what seemed so like a wilful betrayal. That deep disappointment was shared by the postal clerks everywhere throughout the kingdom; and in common with other bodies similarly duped, they came to recognise that the very cause of their disappointment might be turned to advantage. After all, the Ridley Commission came as a blessing in disguise. It had provided an opportunity and an excuse for collecting evidence and preparing the strongest possible indictment against the department. The evidence thus so laboriously gathered and industriously prepared was not to be wasted now. The investigation and the experience had taught them many things; it had familiarised them with bodies and branches which had hitherto been held apart, it brought about an affinitive and friendly cohesion of particles; and small bodies which had revolved in their own distinct circumscribed orbit were now given a place and a relationship in a more or less orderly system. In point of fact it was the means of introducing among them one cardinal principle, a law, that of combination.
Previous to the Ridley Commission the postal clerks had been little heard of as a combined body, but now on this occasion, with a unanimity that was as commendable as it was remarkable, they showed the necessity by setting the example of forming an association. It has to be borne in mind thatthe telegraphists were already combined, but their combination proceeded from a different origin, though the effect of the failure of the Ridley Commission was to strengthen their already existing organisation considerably. It was on the purely postal side of the service, however, that the most marked effect was to be produced. In response to the call for evidence of grievances, men hitherto unheard of leapt into the breach, and took up the duties of representatives and collectors of the required evidence most cheerfully. The disappointment that ensued produced the inevitable result where no combination had previously existed, and the ruins of the Ridley Commission were to become the training-ground for a new army of agitation. The same influence operated everywhere. The same effect exactly was produced among the London sorters and the provincial postal clerks. These two uncombined classes had no intercourse with each other; and though there was a kinship between them it had never been recognised. They were like two tribes of one nation, but divided by seas and continents, and with no telegraphic communication between them. For all practical purposes they were almost ignorant of each other’s existence. Yet the London sorters and the provincial sorting clerks without any preconcerted signal, and unknown to each other, spontaneously gravitated towards combination, where no combination existed before. The provincial postal clerks, however, took the initiative, and it was not till some few months afterwards that the Metropolitan letter-sorters, almost unconsciously following the example of their country cousins, formed the Fawcett Association on similar lines. The formation of the Postal Clerks’ Association was preceded by the familiar secret gatherings and more or less successful attempts at belling the cat at the various offices. To engage in such forbidden enterprises in those days was, to say the least, risky; and the promoters stood to pay the penalty of their rashness at any time they might be called on.
As Liverpool had taken a prominent, if not the leading part in the first telegraphists’ agitation, and again in 1881, so once more, in the case of the postal clerks, was Liverpool to produce the man and show the way. The deplorable conditioninto which the postal service had fallen, so far as their working environments, their prospects and pay were concerned, roused one or two individuals among the postal clerks here to seek about for a remedy. The cries of discontent, and the calls for redress from other distant places, came to their ears like inarticulate voices in the night. From various sources it was conveyed to them that the same injustices and the same hardships they suffered from, also afflicted thousands of others of their own widely-distributed class throughout the country. The invitation to lay before the Ridley Commission evidence as to conditions and prospects immediately produced a thrill of expectancy among postal servants everywhere. From Liverpool the threads of sympathetic communication were carried to the different centres of existing discontent all over the United Kingdom, and the threads were gradually strengthened each day till they vibrated in unison.
Telegraphic communication did much, and circular letters did much towards establishing an understanding as to their aims and desire. Much of the groundwork for their plan of future action was thus roughly prepared, and it was in these circumstances that four or five of the Liverpool postal clerks one day met to discuss the situation, and decide on the methods of collecting evidence. With the object of fully ascertaining the feelings of the Liverpool men themselves, and to judge whether the future movement would be likely to be led from there, and Liverpool sustain its character for leading the van, a notice was put up in one of the retiring-rooms calling a meeting of the postal clerks to more openly discuss the matter. A meeting was held December 5, 1886, thirty only attending, however; but it was decided to form a committee of thirteen. George Lascelles, one of their number, who had actually set the little movement afoot, was elected secretary. More meetings followed in the usual course of things, and the new combination gradually became fixed and determined in its principles, shape, and character. Its dimensions and its name were from this time the only things that remained to be decided. Circulars were speedily got out inviting the co-operation of other offices, sixty-three of the larger towns being thus circularised at first. But so unknown were they to eachother that these circulars had to be posted blindly, and addressed simply to the “Sorting Clerks at ⸺.” Gradually the responses came in, the identity of men willing to work in the new mission was revealed, and a human sympathy and a relationship as between new-found brothers all at once sprang into existence. Truly the Ridley Commission had not been called in vain. The men thus newly brought into touch with each other, like inhabitants suddenly coming out from the dim unknown, were invited to send a representative from each of their offices to a general conference. The conference was to be held at Liverpool, January 21. The strangers came out from the darkness; and those who at first were but names now met face to face in flesh and blood reality, the hopeful pioneers of a movement.
The conference was held, and proved an unqualified success. There was an interchange of views, and a mutual understanding of their wants, on which they were enabled to formulate a series of resolutions; and on the lines of these resolutions George Lascelles, the secretary, was authorised to draw up a general statement of evidence for the Commission then sitting.
It was decided to band themselves together in the form of an association for mutual support and benefit, to be known as the “United Kingdom Postal Clerks’ Association.” Like a gathering snowball the new postal organisation increased in dimensions, and rolling onward from Liverpool, presently included Manchester, Birmingham, and similar towns of importance, picking up the smaller places like crumbs by the way.
Within a year the Postal Clerks’ Association had gone over the whole length and breadth of the land, and extended from the north to the south, and from the west to the east. Besides this their association was now represented in four or five of the most important towns in Ireland. The only parallel to this extraordinary response to the call for combination was that among their fellow-servants, the telegraphists, when the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association was formed in 1881.
The hardships suffered by the postal clerks at this periodwere as real and as acute as any that beset either of the other bodies of the service. Their grievances were general and particular. The hardship of compulsory Sunday labour pressed on them severely. This question of enforced labour on the Sabbath had been one which affected the service throughout, and had been made the grounds of the first agitation and the first public protest against postal administration. Postmen, telegraphists, and sorting clerks alike were the victims to this compulsory system; but with the sorting clerks, especially in some districts, the evil had grown to exaggerated proportions. In some offices, for example—Limerick, Cork, Aberdeen, Norwich, Worcester, and many other places—the clerks, in very large numbers, were regularly employed on duty every Sunday, and without receiving any remuneration. In a great many offices they were kept on duty three weeks out of every four, and only in a few instances were they off duty more than two Sundays in every month. It was a grievance with them that they were compelled to relinquish their day of rest, but it was doubly a grievance that they were denied payment for the time and work given. In many of the leading provincial offices the evil became accentuated, and at Manchester, Leeds, Exeter, York, and numerous other places where the staff of postal clerks represented in the aggregate 400 or more, they were graciously permitted, if the duty allowed, to take a Sunday off once in every four weeks. When it is remembered that these men, whatever their religious convictions or conscientious objections, were compelled to give this time for absolutely no remuneration, it certainly seemed monstrous in a Christian land.
This grievance of Sunday duty, however, was only one among a long catalogue, which had lengthened still with the progress of time. The system of promotion created a feeling of irritation and discontent throughout their ranks, though this was by no means a grievance peculiar to them. As with other branches of the service also, the gravest discontent prevailed among them in regard to the scales of pay, but as aggravating this there was the unequal system of classification, whereby a clerk in one office might be, and very often was, placed at a disadvantage in respect to pay and promotion, as comparedwith another at a similar office. The wages of a second-class sorting or postal clerk were 22s. 8d. a week; but in many instances their work involved the very highest responsibilities, including the care and despatch of money-orders, stamps, registered correspondence, besides payment of pensions, Savings-Bank accounts, and similar duties. Superior in point of grade and responsibilities, they were yet, in monetary respects, inferior to postmen. Not only this anomaly, but junior clerks having, as was often the case, to perform the duties of others above them in grade, had no allowance of any description for so acting; and thus it frequently happened that juniors were constantly kept, on the shallowest pretext, on more responsible duties than their poor salaries would justify.
At this time it was the general practice to deduct one-half of salary when away on sick-leave; and this was regarded as a distinct hardship, as in no other section of the service, so far as was known, was so large a proportion of salary forfeited through enforced absence from causes of illness. They very justly claimed that a deduction of one-third only would more adequately meet the case of unavoidable sickness. Another cause of annoyance to them was the extremely slow rate of promotion, ten and twenty years being a fair average of the period of waiting for dead men’s shoes. The analogous question of superannuation affected them very keenly. The Playfair Commission of a few years before had recommended that when a man had given thirty consecutive years of service and wished to retire, ten years might be added to his time in calculating the allowance due to him, and that he should be allowed to resign without either being sixty years of age or wholly incapable from infirmity. But among the sorting or postal clerks there had occurred many cases of infirm men being harshly treated in this respect, and not allowed to retire either through passing the age limit of sixty years of age, or being broken down in health. They were in a position to allege that men had been compelled to attend to their duties when in truth they were physically incapable of properly attending to them. Another sore point with the postal clerks was that a very large proportion of them were unestablished, though they were compelled to perform all the dutiesof permanent officers better paid, and while they had no guarantee that their years of service would not be peremptorily dispensed with by the whim or caprice of an individual supervisor. Those who were established further complained that promotions to postmasterships which more rightly belonged to them as postal servants were unfairly distributed to telegraphists, this practice seriously diminishing their legitimate outlet of promotion. These were the principal and salient features of their indictment against the department at this period. But there were many other points, such as proper remuneration for Christmas duty, Bank holidays, Queen’s Birthday, &c.; the inadequate period of annual leave; “split” duties, or duties being spread over a large proportion of the day and necessitating several attendances; the severity of night duty; and other things quite as familiar to the telegraphists, the postmen, and sorters elsewhere.
It was to find a remedy for this state of things as they affected them that the United Kingdom Postal Clerks’ Association was inaugurated.
Then like a thunderclap came the announcement that the Ridley Commission, whose approach they had so confidently looked forward to, did not intend to visit the Post-Office at all. It was a staggering blow to the postal clerks, as it was to every other body in the service. But so far from demoralising them, it put them on their mettle the more. Their organisation, which the illusive Ridley Commission had been the means of calling into existence, they still had; and they determined to stand by it, and use it for purposes of defence and the furtherance of their claims.
For a few years longer the Postal Clerks’ Association, still growing and consolidating, pushed its claims in the many various ways known to men who want their wrongs redressed. But they never departed from strictly constitutional lines; a few members of Parliament were induced to now and again take up their case as included in the common postal cause; they had their conferences, their meetings, their joint petitions, and their memorials to the Postmaster-General, just as did the telegraphists, the postmen, and others at this period; still, as an association, they remained an exemplar to the rest of thepostal service. Their pursuing such strictly constitutional methods, and their attitude as a combination being practically beyond reproach, was in no small measure due to the personality of their secretary, George Lascelles, who was the real leader.
There was an enormous amount of work done one way and another; but their efforts towards obtaining any real material benefit were as fruitless as were those of the other organisations.
Soon after Mr. Raikes became Postmaster-General, as has already been described, a crusade of agitation beset him from all quarters, growing fiercer every day. But the Postal Clerks’ Association was not formed for purposes of agitation as agitation; and it contented itself with remaining as an interested and perhaps a sympathetic spectator. The great wave of industrial agitation following in the wake of improvement in trade everywhere at the beginning of 1890, aroused the telegraphists, the postmen, and the Metropolitan letter-sorters to further exertion in their various ways. And when Mr. Raikes reintroduced the old regulation of 1866, limiting the freedom of public meeting, the postal clerks were not behind in lodging their indignant protest, in common with most other combined bodies. They emphasised the indignation they shared in holding a mass meeting at Liverpool, their head centre. Their good manners had so far not been corrupted by evil communication; but adversity makes strange bedfellows. There were partial jealousies between the sorting clerks and the telegraphists, and both to an extent felt themselves superior to postmen; but in this they were as one. The Cardiff case gave them no good opinion of Mr. Raikes; while their minor difference with the telegraphists was forgotten in their sympathy with them. And, added to this, about this time they were given an axe of their own to grind, and the telegraphists in turn looked on with a sympathetic eye. At the Liverpool Conference of Postal Clerks, held April 1890, the shadow of the official reporter obtruded itself across their threshold. He was introduced to the chairman of the meeting by an official letter, which contained what was tantamount to a demand in the name of the Postmaster-General. The official reporter had to be admittedto take notes, or they had to disband the conference. They were as helpless as was the official reporter himself, who was also a paid servant of the department. The chairman of the meeting, in his opening statement, referred to the fact that for the first time in their history a meeting of officials called for a praiseworthy object were compelled to receive in their midst an unwelcome intruder sent in the name of discipline. Though there was nothing in the constitution of their society that was antagonistic to departmental authority, they had to accept this humiliating and Russianising condition, or forfeit altogether their right of free speech as Englishmen and Britons. This new restrictive rule became particularly hard of digestion to the postal clerks, who had hitherto prided themselves on the absolutely-constitutional lines on which their organisation was run. The introduction of avowed trades unionism could no longer be regarded as a crime in the Post-Office, since Sir Arthur Blackwood, the Permanent Secretary, himself some little time before had publicly stated that there was a growing spirit of this trades unionism which must be made allowance for and taken into account. The postal clerks had so long remained loyally constitutional in their attitude, that the application of the restrictive rule to them they regarded as supererogatory and unnecessary. However, justified or otherwise, they were compelled to accept it in common with the rest of the service.
Only a few days after this the postal clerks were given a still more serious cause for complaint by the manner in which some of the officials of their organisation were slighted in the matter of promotion ordinarily due to them. Mr. Henry Labouchere put forward the question in the House of Commons, April 25. The chairman and secretary of the Liverpool branch of the Postal Clerks’ Association, Messrs. Thompson and Lucas, were, it appears, unjustly superseded in promotion by junior men. The fact in itself was not so unheard of in the service as to call for public comment; but the circumstances suggested that these officers had been so treated because of their connection with the association of their class. The Postmaster-General in the previous March had given an undertaking in the House of Commons that connection withan association or union should not detrimentally affect any officer’s official career; yet in face of that assurance this seemed as clear a case of intimidation as that of Cardiff. The Postmaster-General denied that their being officers of that union had anything to do with their treatment, and maintained that their position in this respect was neither known to himself nor taken into account. Possibly it was so, so far as he himself was concerned, for at this period, with the bewildering number of claims and counter-claims put forward from a thousand points at once, the Postmaster-General had necessarily to trust very largely to the permanent advisers for information, and doubtless even for guidance to a ruling in some cases.
Although at this time represented by two distinct associations, there appeared to be much in common between the Metropolitan sorters and the provincial sorting clerks. Their entrance into the service, the similarity of their pay prospects, and the character of their duties, entitled the London sorters to class themselves with their provincial brethren. They had urged that they were in reality sorting clerks, and were referred to as such by Mr. Fawcett in his 1881 scheme. But it was just on this point that the “Luminous Committee” settled the whole matter against them. The equality that existed between the provincial sorting clerks and the provincial telegraphists, it was thought, should find an analogue in the Metropolitan telegraphists and sorters, and that was the whole ground of the difference, as already reviewed. Still if there were not equality in one case, there was in another, for except in title the pay and prospects and conditions of sorting clerks and sorters were almost identical; while their grievances were, except on the enforced Sunday duty question, also similar. Seeing there was so much in common between these two bodies, it would therefore not have been surprising had they made common cause for the purpose of getting their grievances redressed on a similar basis. It was not so, however, and the connection between them never went beyond a friendly intercourse, and the ordinary amenities of unionism. There was, however, a journal started at this period in Birmingham, intended mainly for circulation among sorting clerks, but towhich Metropolitan men were invited to contribute. The sorters already had thePost, which had now become the property of the association; but the newPostal Reviewwas taken up with some enthusiasm among them. ThePostal Reviewmight have become a permanent link of friendly connection, and a handy vehicle for the intercommunication of ideas leading to more important results perhaps, but for a slip that occurred. At the inaugural meeting of the Fawcett Association, 10th February 1890, a leaflet was distributed having for its object the promotion of the sale of this monthly journal, and two of the sorters were advertised as its wholesale and retail agents for the London postal service. The leaflet, after announcing that thePostal Reviewhad over 300 contributors in different parts of the country, representing so many distinct offices, referred to many of these contributors as “being in confidential positions, and having access to the most important and valuable information, which,” the leaflet went on to say, “when occasion arises or exigencies demand, will be laid before the readers of thePostal Review.” The leaflet in question, so far from carrying out its purpose, was the means of abruptly breaking off negotiations with the provinces; for there was an immediate official inquiry, and the two sorters whose names were mentioned as agents were promptly called on to repudiate all connection with its publication. The matter became the subject for special reference in the Post-Office Circular, and the two innocent men who had inadvertently allowed their names to be printed on the incriminating leaflet, were made to thus publicly renounce connection with it and to disavow all implication in the heinous design set forth.
After that the two organisations went their separate ways, and they were not to meet again for some years afterwards. But though they went their separate ways it was always in the same direction and along almost parallel roads, and often so near to each other that they could occasionally catch the glimpse of their raised banners as they marched towards the common goal.