THE AFTER EFFECTS OF THE POSTMEN’S STRIKE—THE RAIKES SCHEME—FRESH DISSATISFACTION—AN ESTIMATE OF MR. RAIKES.
THE AFTER EFFECTS OF THE POSTMEN’S STRIKE—THE RAIKES SCHEME—FRESH DISSATISFACTION—AN ESTIMATE OF MR. RAIKES.
If Mr. Raikes’ cautious nature made him slow to convince, he nevertheless at last came to realise that the rampant discontent throughout his domain called for some effective remedy other than coercion. It was not only the continual heckling in the House, or the numerous public meetings of postal servants themselves; but, as Sir John Puleston, M.P., himself a personal friend of Mr. Raikes, pointed out to the telegraphists at the Foresters’ Hall meeting at which he presided, the Postmaster-General was himself inwardly convinced that there were defects in the postal service which called for a speedy and effective remedy. But while the continuance of postal agitation everywhere must have hastened the conviction that something was radically wrong, it somewhat retarded the application of the remedy.
In the case of the sorters’ agitation, an inter-departmental inquiry, known as the “Luminous Committee,” sat to decide on the merits of their claim, and in the case of the telegraphists particularly a committee of officials investigated and reported on their grievances. But it was impossible owing to the eruptive state of the service, and the enormous amount of responsibility and detail work involved, to settle all these conflicting claims spontaneously and immediately. The after effects of the postmen’s strike fully occupied Mr. Raikes for some months. Another man perhaps would have made lighter work of it, and allowed the regrettable incident to drop into oblivion. Not so Mr. Raikes. Physically run down as he was with the strain of his great responsibilities and the stupendousload of work this trying time brought him, even when he should have sought a holiday, he decided to do all that was consistent with his dignity as a minister to repair the losses to the penitent postmen. He early received a deputation of their body, and promised that he would carefully weigh every extenuating circumstance which could be urged on behalf of each individual of the strikers. This same assurance he gave to the House of Commons during the debate on the Post-Office Vote, July 23; and despite the warning of his medical adviser, immediately set to work to redeem a promise which meant so much to so many. He left England for a short holiday at Royat, but it was a holiday full of work for him; for the voluminous papers in connection with the postmen followed him daily. There is no reason to think that his inquiry into each painful case was not as conscientious as he promised it should be, but some doubt seems to have been raised by Mr. Pickersgill, M.P., and some correspondence was published between them. The Postmaster-General mentioned that he had devoted one whole week unceasingly to investigating and comparing all the appeal letters and reports bearing on each particular case, “with the earnest desire of finding grounds which might in any individual instance warrant a mitigation of the punishment which all the men had been warned must follow such an offence.” In the result somewhere about fifty were restored to duty shortly afterwards, and several others, by the further influence of members of Parliament, were one by one reinstated.
These were certainly the most serious but not the only matters occupying the Postmaster-General’s time and attention. For almost side by side with his investigations into these cases, and while he was meeting other troubles, he was preparing a scheme for revising the scales of pay of sorters, sorting clerks, and telegraphists, in accordance with his earlier promise. After the adverse decision of the “Luminous Committee” he had been prevailed to see another deputation of the sorting force in June, when once more the whole ground of their claims in regard to improved pay, holidays, compulsory extra duty, split attendance, &c., &c., was carefully gone over and considered point by point by himself and the officialadvisers. Partly as the result of those investigations, and partly as the result of evidence gathered from other quarters as to the position and prospects of sorting clerks and telegraphists, on November 11, 1890, the long-waited-for scheme appeared. It must, however, be mentioned that the telegraphists’ portion of the scheme had appeared in the previous July.
It came as a golden argosy that had braved many storms; and hopes beat high as they proceeded to unload the cargo. The sorters realised exceptional benefits, adding as it did a considerable number to the first class, which meant so many immediate promotions, and increasing the maximum to 56s. a week, while it also increased the maximum of the second class to 40s. a week, and the annual increment to 2s. A concession already personally made by Mr. Raikes, that of increasing the annual leave of the first class to three weeks instead of two, was now fixed and ratified, and the first class, with its additional benefits, was now extended to the districts which had hitherto had no such promotion to look forward to. The anomalies connected with the payment of extra duty were by this revision done away with, and an equitable system ofpro rataintroduced which could not fail in the long run to give satisfaction all round; while in addition it accorded Sunday pay for Christmas Day and Good Friday. Another concession which was much appreciated was full pay during sickness, “with restrictions.” These were the material benefits of the Raikes scheme so far as it covered the London sorters. They perhaps were the most benefited by it; but except for the material benefits they were not slow to discern certain disadvantages to which they were to take further exception later on.
The privileges of payment for Bank holidays, special pay for Christmas Day and Good Friday, and full payment for sick leave, were, it was understood, from this time to be applied with general impartiality throughout the postal and telegraph services. The sorting clerks generally shared in these advantages, while those of Dublin and Edinburgh were placed on an equal footing with theirconfrèresat Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow.
The application of the Raikes scheme to the London and provincial telegraphists, however, was not proportionately beneficial in point of pay, and fell far short of their demands. The maxima for provincial male telegraphists under the new revision were, according to the class of office employed in: 56s., 54s., 52s., 50s., 40s., 38s., 35s., and 32s. a week, as against 50s., 38s., 36s., 32s., and 30s. The maximum of the London men, which was £190 a year—enjoyed, however, only by a limited and exclusive class—was not affected; and the only benefit accruing to them was that the annual rise of £5 was increased to £6. But apart from the question of pay, the scheme left other considerations almost wholly untouched. Classification still remained to taunt and cheat them. The banality of winter holidays still oppressed them, while they complained they were not treated fairly in the matter of full pay in sickness.
And the curious irony of this mixed and complicated situation was that the sorters envied the telegraphists, and the telegraphists envied the sorters.
On the whole, however, considering the time and the circumstances in which it was drafted, it was a fairly good scheme; but it was far from a perfect one. Not even the sorters, who benefited most, could regard it as a perfect scheme, and the less so when they came to closely examine it. The consideration of the very kindly treatment they had received from Mr. Raikes, and the desire he had expressed to them to give them some pleasing souvenir by which to remember his term of office, took the edge off their criticism. They remembered, too, that he had strongly urged that their maximum should be raised to 58s. a week instead of only 56s., and that he had been supported in this by the then Controller; also that he had shown a desire to give them practical equality with the telegraphists. That the scheme did not meet with their entire approval, or cover all their just demands, Mr. Raikes was not wholly responsible for. All things considered, it was a good scheme, and a generous one for the sorters at any rate.
The telegraphists thought otherwise, and were not slow to express their deep sense of disappointment. They could noteasily forgive Mr. Raikes for what they regarded as a wanton and unnecessary interference with their right of public meeting, and perhaps a far more generous scheme would hardly have compensated and atoned for the imposition of the official reporter. The retention of compulsory overtime was a grievance in common between the telegraphists and the sorters; but the sorters, who were more satisfied on the whole with the scheme for what it had brought them, had, if anything, much stronger ground for dissatisfaction for what it had not. But when the many varied interests of a vast army of men had to be considered, perhaps it was well-nigh impossible to produce a remedy that should fit and satisfy all alike. It left many things untouched both sides of the service: but there is little doubt that Mr. Raikes did all that was then possible, and put himself to enormous pains to understand and find a final remedy for this well-nigh hopeless problem of chronic discontent. Having done perhaps all that it was possible for one Postmaster-General to do for the sorters and the telegraphists, he felt that something had yet to be done for the postmen. Almost simultaneously with the introduction of the scheme for the former, a deputation of postmen was received to take evidence from them with a view to constructing some remedial measure for their class. The postmen were not yet held to have purged their offence; but the Postmaster-General, after reinstating about fifty of the dismissed men, decided that apart from all considerations of the strike, there were grievances among them which as loudly called for redress as those of the sorters and telegraphists.
There was one other class, however, which at this time claimed to have been overlooked and neglected, the Savings-Bank sorters. There was some amount of combination among them, and they had joined in the general agitation. They complained of certain anomalies of classification; loss of prospect owing to departmental alterations; the fact of the introduction of female labour displacing them, and minimising the value of their work; females in receipt of better pay than men with more service, and engaged on the same class of work; the smallness of the minimum and maximum, and numerous other things. They had been altogether overlookedin the recent scheme, and while the other little Jack Horners of the service were more or less congratulating themselves on the plums they had each secured, the Savings-Bank sorters were left entirely in the cold. Added to this, they were experiencing in an acute degree the compulsory overtime grievance, having to supplement their wages with more or less extra duty—this extra duty being however forced upon them, whether they liked it or not, often at most inconvenient times. This grievance on the overtime question was, after their exclusion from the recent scheme, so strongly felt that at the beginning of 1891 there was an indignant outburst among them. They had tried every legitimate method of ventilating their grievance by petition, by requests for an interview, and through the House of Commons, but their plaint fell on deaf ears. The feeling rose so high that at last, as a concession to their demand, there was a slight addition to the staff to reduce the amount of compulsory overtime complained of. But it was by no means effective, and on February 2, two hundred and fifty of them declined to accept the summons for extra duty. The result was that nearly the whole of them were promptly suspended. But they were a small body and standing almost alone, so that the struggle was of short duration. The Postmaster-General did not take a very severe view of the case, the whole of them being allowed to take up their duties on expressing regret, and promising never again to offend in a similar manner. The fluctuations of their work, it seems, precluded the possibility of abolishing compulsory extra duty altogether; but in April some arrangement was made, with a further slight increase of staff, by which a number of permanent volunteers were enrolled to meet emergencies as they arose.
The position of the postmen had for some months after the strike been engaging the attention of Mr. Raikes, and on July 17 he announced in the House of Commons that he had at last found a means of doing something for them. The cost of his new proposal would be over £100,000 a year, but it was to cover a vast area, so that the benefits accruing would not amount to much in each case: but it was better than nothing, and more than many expected after recent happenings. Thetwo classes of London postmen were to be amalgamated in order to enable the men to progress without interruption from the lower to the higher scale. The maximum was raised by two shillings a week for the suburban divisions of postmen. The auxiliary postmen obtained a slight increase in pay per hour and a little more extra leave. In the country as in London the two classes were done away with, and the maximum raised by two shillings. Extra pay was allowed for Sunday work, and each hour was reckoned as one and a quarter. Perhaps the most appreciated concession of all was an allowance for boots, which till then had not been included in the uniform.
Some organs of the press regarded these concessions as all the more magnanimous in a Postmaster-General whose official path had been so strewn with thorns.
It was the last thing he was to do for the service. His career as Postmaster-General, so brief, yet so full of vicissitude and labour, was approaching its close. The enormous amount of work which the generally discontented state of the service entailed daily upon him was more than could be sustained by any one man for long. Even after the repeated warnings of impending breakdown, he had stuck to his work. He was now to pay the penalty, and the country was to lose a capable and a dutiful servant. Henry Cecil Raikes, Postmaster-General, passed peacefully away on August 24, 1891.
As Postmaster-General, he passed through an exceedingly trying time; and though it was by some said that he himself was largely responsible for the troubles in the service, if he committed some few human mistakes in administration he hastened to repair them manfully; his bearing as a minister throughout was dignified and correct. No Postmaster-General was ever subjected to such sharp criticisms from every side at once; but no other had ultimately proved such a benefactor on so large a scale. His remedy for prevailing discontent was not all-sufficient nor without flaws; but in the circumstances—and it is the circumstances which have to be considered particularly in this connection, considering the vast area it had to cover—it was judicious, and it was not his fault that it was not more generous. He lived just long enough to know that,despite previous estimates of his conduct and character, he was at last to some extent appreciated for the efforts he had made to do justice even at a time of trying and painful ordeal. The sorters especially were sad at his premature departure; and the secretary of the Fawcett Association, W. E. Clery, it was, who wrote the lengthy, touching tribute to his memory which appeared in theTelegraphthe day following the Postmaster-General’s death.
Henry Cecil Raikes was democratic enough in principle, though inclined to be autocratic in rule. He was a capable man, and a leader born; but the restrictions of his office kept many of his higher qualities in abeyance. If his administration could not always be considered strictly just, it was in part probably owing to influences over which he had little control. Being in the position he was, he was often compelled to identify himself with and take responsibility for the actions of others. Nor was this due to any weakness in the man so much as to the adamantine and tapebound rules of officialdom’s etiquette and to other causes and relations which may not here be mentioned. His son, in his “Life and Letters of Henry Cecil Raikes,” points out that, so weary of it all, the cares of his office and the curbs on his independence of action, did he become that he was strongly inclined to resign his position, till a higher sense of public duty restrained him.
The telegraphists and others, who felt they had so little cause to esteem him, could not at the time fully appreciate his difficulties; but they were to learn later that the Post-Office could be ruled by worse masters. In his lifetime it seemed his peculiar fate to fail to win full appreciation either from those above or below him. But if Henry Cecil Raikes had been a less honest man, a less conscientious and a less painstaking man, he might have lived long enough to secure his due share of that public recognition and reward which is too often bestowed less worthily.