CONTINUANCE OF AGITATION—ANOTHER THREATENED STRIKE OF TELEGRAPHISTS—THE NORFOLK-HANBURY CONFERENCE—THE “HARDY ANNUAL” OF THE POST-OFFICE—POSTAL FEDERATION—THE JUBILEE OF POSTAL AGITATION—CONCLUSION.
CONTINUANCE OF AGITATION—ANOTHER THREATENED STRIKE OF TELEGRAPHISTS—THE NORFOLK-HANBURY CONFERENCE—THE “HARDY ANNUAL” OF THE POST-OFFICE—POSTAL FEDERATION—THE JUBILEE OF POSTAL AGITATION—CONCLUSION.
During the deliberations of the Tweedmouth Committee, the attitude of the service had necessarily for the most part been one of waiting and expectancy. But it was not without its record of work in the interim. The vexed question of civil rights and the reinstatement of Clery and Cheesman was urged in Parliament and on the attention of the Postmaster-General whenever there was an opportunity. In the previous session of Parliament, Sir Albert Rollit raised the matter in the House of Commons for the twentieth time, on a motion to reduce the Postmaster-General’s salary, but the motion was withdrawn on a promise of a reconsideration of the question. Parliamentary policy was, however, almost of necessity during this while in a passive state, though a hold was still kept on the numerous Parliamentary friends of the movement. The connection between the postal organisations and the general labour movement outside had by this time become more intimate than ever. The sorters’ organisation, the Fawcett Association had through its chairman, W. E. Clery, been mainly instrumental in bringing into existence; the Government Workers’ Federation started with the ambitious project of ultimately embracing all classes of Government workers. Moving along the lines on which it was originally started, it bid fair to become an important and formidable factor in domestic politics; but differences arose among the leaders on points of policy, and Clery having so many demands upon histime in connection with postal agitation proper, relinquished the leadership of it, though the sorters’ organisation still continued affiliated to it. The chairmanship of the Government Workers’ Federation was then filled successively by G. E. Raby, then organising secretary of the Fawcett Association, and by W. B. Cheesman, general secretary of the same body, and under the latter especially continued to exert some amount of political influence. The postal movement particularly, as represented by the sorters’ organisation, discharged its due share of work and responsibility in connection with the general crusade of labour, sending delegates to the Trades Union Congress each year, holding a respected position in the London Trades Council, and rendering assistance both moral and pecuniary in most of the functions of trades union and labour politics.
Then came the announcement on March 10, 1897, of the recommendations of the Tweedmouth Committee, and the consequent disappointment of the whole of the postal service. That disappointment became the stronger the more they realised that their confidence and patience, so sorely tried, had been so ill repaid. The voice of discontent broke out with renewed vigour, and found expression in public meetings all over the country once more. There was a general demand that the whole thing should be thrown into the melting-pot and recast. Fiercely-enthusiastic and crowded meetings of postmen and telegraphists were held in London, and among the latter particularly there were growing warnings of a renewed disposition to adopt a strike policy.
Certainly among the postmen and the telegraphists the application of the scheme threatened only to make confusion worse confounded. Considering the amount of discontent it had revived, and the manner in which it bid fair to strain the loyalty of postal servants to the uttermost, it seemed the Treasury and the Government were by no means to be congratulated on their bargain, costing, as it was supposed to, the enormous sum of £275,000 a year. So far from effecting its purpose, it appeared rather to be producing a spirit of open and unveiled revolt among the very classes it was supposed to pacify. A recognition of this circumstance and the influenceof pressure brought by members of Parliament at last induced the Postmaster-General, the Duke of Norfolk, who had now succeeded Mr. Arnold Morley, and Mr. Hanbury, Secretary to the Treasury, to consider the advisability of a further inquiry, presumably with a view to some revision of the scheme so strongly objected to. The fault of the situation lay not so much with the malcontents, or any proneness to agitation on their part, as to the innate defects and anomalies of this costly and cumbrously ineffective scheme; and members of Parliament, and a considerable section of the press, held to that view in calling on the Postmaster-General to institute a further inquiry. It had been urged from every postal platform throughout the United Kingdom that the scheme, that all servants of the Post-Office had looked to to bless them, had produced quite the opposite effect. From the postal servants’ point of view, the Tweedmouth Committee had acted the part of Balaam reversed. The scheme, instead of proving the plentiful cornucopia they had hoped for, and felt they merited, had turned out a Pandora’s box, full of evils, but with not even hope at the bottom.
The tide of indignation quickly gained in strength, till among the London telegraphists their inclination to strike became scarcely any longer disguised. The threatened strike was, it was understood, to take the form of a general refusal to perform overtime, a contingency which, in view of the already undermanned condition of the staff, was likely to give rise to serious complications for both the department and the public, especially with the approach of the busy summer season. Some of the press in their comments on the situation were ill-advised enough to assure the telegraphists of their support and sympathy in the event of their adopting this course, but there is no reason to think that such assurances influenced the telegraphists in their decision. They boasted of being able to fight the battle on its merits, and with confidence as to the result if they did so decide. There had already been telegraph strikes, and all had ended with more or less success for the men concerned. The first was that of 1871 in England, the second was in France in 1881, and the third was in Spain in 1892. All three were conspicuous examplesof what inconvenience to the public could be caused by a stoppage and dislocation of the telegraph service, and in each case the struggle was brief. But that was before the general adoption of telephones. Possibly the telegraphists who at first contemplated striking against overtime recollected this in conjunction with other considerations. While they were making a show of preparation, and subscribing to an emergency fund started in Liverpool, the authorities were not slow to take advantage of the warnings, and, none too secretly, were providing against the emergency accordingly.
On June 15 the Duke of Norfolk granted an interview to the aggrieved telegraphists, and by a deputation of the London men was made personally acquainted with the full text of their grievances. The Postmaster-General promised to give full consideration to the facts laid before him, and to acquaint them with his decision at an early date. After waiting for five weeks for the promised answer, the telegraphists gave vent to their further impatience by deciding to take a ballot of their members on the question of ceasing to work overtime. The result of this ballot showed practically a unanimous vote in favour of a refusal to obey overtime summonses, the proportion of the whole country being 83 per cent. in favour, or fully 70 per cent. of the whole male staff. In London the vote showed 94 per cent., in Liverpool 85 per cent., and other provincial towns gave similar results. The ballot showed that the men were getting angry; but in view of a promise given in the House by Mr. Hanbury as representing the Postmaster-General, the executive of the telegraphists announced their intention to recommend their members to delay for a while before carrying the intention into effect. There was an excited mass meeting of London telegraphists, male and female, and it is probable that only the intervention of Sir Albert Rollit averted a threatened strike.
The platform utterances in public meeting during this exciting period were in some cases none too guarded, and, as a result, two Newcastle telegraphists, and Garland, the secretary of the London branch, one of the ablest of the leading agitators, were called on officially to explain certain expressions used by them in reference to the avowed intention of theirbody to “walk out” from the operating-rooms when the signal came to be given. Their explanations were, however, accepted a little later on as more or less satisfactory; and this was done with a tactful exhibition of leniency in a trying emergency that at the time was favourably commented on in the press, and possibly did much towards conciliating the telegraphists as a body and turning them from their intention; though it must be noted that some little indignation was expressed among them owing to their two comrades at Newcastle having their salaries reduced.
Meanwhile petitions and memorials were being numerously signed and sent in from almost every class of postal servants pleading for interviews with heads of departments, and urging the authorities in various ways to remedy the newly-discovered defects of the Tweedmouth scheme, or to see that its more favourable recommendations were interpreted and applied more equitably; for during this time it was observable that the department showed a marked reluctance to give postal servants the full benefits the scheme entitled them to, though every advantage on its own side was almost at once rigidly exacted.
Little or no satisfaction resulted from these appeals, and on July 16, 1897, the report of the Tweedmouth Committee being brought on for discussion in the House of Commons, the opportunity was taken to raise most of the knotty points afresh. Sir Albert Rollit was again to the fore, and well vindicated the claims of the postmen, the telegraphists, and sorters, and, to promote discussion on the matter, moved the reduction of the Post-Office vote by £1000. He was ably supported by Captain Norton, Mr. Hudson Kearley, Mr. William Allen, Mr. Pickersgill, and a number of other influential members, the whole ground of the established forces and the rural and auxiliary postmen being once more gone into.
As the indirect result of this debate, a conference was arranged between members of Parliament and the Postmaster-General and Mr. Hanbury, as Secretary to the Treasury; and to this conference members of the still aggrieved classes in the service were invited to give supplementary evidence.The Norfolk-Hanbury Conference, as it came to be known, occupied several sittings during July, representatives of the numerous classes affected giving further evidence. What was at first hailed as a Committee of Arbitration was, however, found to be presided over and dominated almost entirely by the Postmaster-General, members of Parliament being reduced to the position of witnesses and having no voice in the decisions to be arrived at. Sir Albert Rollit, as the principal advocate of the postal case, strove earnestly and strenuously to convince the Duke of Norfolk and Mr. Hanbury that the Tweedmouth scheme was inadequate; that where it had not actually introduced fresh grievances it had but imperfectly met the just demands of the service; and that the shortcomings of the scheme were aggravated by the niggardly manner in which the few favourable recommendations were being applied.
An additional volume of evidence on fresh points was put forward by various witnesses called from among the men; and in many respects it was sought to be shown that the conditions of the service were far from being bettered by the scheme, and that many unfair advantages were being taken by the authorities. At an early stage of the proceedings one more effort was made to discuss the questions of civil rights and the notorious dismissals; but it was as promptly ruled out of order as before. There was a deal of ammunition expended by the various postal bodies on the Norfolk-Hanbury Conference, but from certain indications in the Postmaster-General they were led to believe that he was not wholly unsympathetic. They had, however, to wait for a period of seven months for the second instalment of their great disappointment.
During this seven months of waiting for the Postmaster-General’s final decision on the points raised, there were several interesting happenings.
For the first time in the history of postal journalism, a writer in thePostwas called on by the department to explain a certain paragraph to which his name was attached. The whole thing was innocent enough and was proved so, but the spirit that inspired the interference was thought to savour ofofficial censorship, and being promptly resisted, the Permanent Secretary, seeing the absurdity of pressing the point against the writer, very sensibly allowed the matter to drop. This ended as a comedy; but a rather more serious matter was the further trespass on the right of combination on the part of the officials in compelling Groves, the treasurer of the Fawcett Association, to resign from his position as a paid officer of the organisation. He had received a small appointment as a supervisor, and he was given the alternative of resigning his appointment as an overseer or ceasing to be a paid officer of the organisation. Groves had been identified with the movement from its inception, and was regarded as one of the pillars of postal combination. He had either to resign his position as treasurer or be reduced to the ranks. That was the Postmaster-General’s decision. Groves put himself in the hands of his constituents, and as it was decided that it would be impolitic and unnecessary for him to martyr himself he resigned his position as treasurer of the association.
The all-important question of civil rights for postal servants, and the outrage on the principle of combination involved in the dismissals of Messrs. Clery and Cheesman, was once more brought before the attention of the House, this time by Mr. Sam Woods, M.P., who on February 18, 1898, moved an amendment to the address. The reinstatement question had now come to be known as the “hardy annual” of the Post-Office. Sir Albert Rollit ably supported the amendment. Mr. Hanbury, as representing the Postmaster-General, replied to the strictures on postal administration, and in dealing with the particular matter of the dismissals and the question of reinstatement, made some very pointed allusions to the two dismissed officials of the sorters’ trades union, Messrs. Clery and Cheesman. After recapitulating the facts of the dismissals, as interpreted by the Post-Office, he went on to speak of Clery at some length, quoting a memorable speech made by Clery at Newcastle in 1892. He justified the dismissals, and maintained that postal servants had nothing to complain of in the matter of civil rights, and, while paying a high tribute to the loyalty that distinguished the service, urged that nothing should be done by the House to break down the foundationon which the service rested. The amendment was lost by a majority of seventy-seven.
At length, on March 15, 1898, the long-waited-for decision of the Postmaster-General to the various questions laid before him as the outcome of objections to the Tweedmouth scheme was announced. This decision on the numerous points was nearly as disappointing as the report of the Tweedmouth Committee itself. There were a few very minor concessions, which affected only a few, but which were said to involve an additional cost of £80,000 per annum; but the greater number of the questions raised were unceremoniously dismissed in a simple paragraph as “the various other matters which are not mentioned in this paper.” After all the solemn pretence of rehearing the case, and admitting evidence that seemed well-nigh irrefutable, postal servants expected something more satisfactory. Indignation meetings were once more held among the various postal bodies, and disappointment and disagreement again found vent in strongly-worded resolutions calling on the Postmaster-General for yet another revision, on the ground that the reply did not adequately deal with the facts submitted, and that in the main the representations had been ignored.
The expenditure of the additional sum of £80,000 on the further concessions did not go very far when spread over such a vast area of postal service, and it was far from satisfying.
The numerous representations made to the Postmaster-General as the result of this renewal of disappointment called forth some months afterwards, in September, what theDaily Chronicledescribed as a “stern message,” to be shared equally among the discontented. This “stern message” was conveyed in the Postmaster-General’s annual report, issued September 1898. Dealing with the Tweedmouth Committee and the grievances of sections of the postal staff covered by that inquiry, and the manifold representations that had since been made, the Postmaster-General stated that further concessions had already been made to the amount of £50,000; and he added, “Since that time I have declined, and I shall continue to decline, to allow decisions which have been considered by the Tweedmouth Committee, and which have been revised byMr. Hanbury and myself, to be reopened. It is my belief that these decisions have been liberal, but whether they are liberal or not, it is for the interests of all parties that it should be understood that they are final.”
The word “finality” was written across the decisions of the Postmaster-General, and the postal service was given to understand that nothing more was to be expected. This did not tend to allay the feeling of disappointment that had taken possession of all bodies of postal servants. There were still more meetings, and still more protests; but to no effect so far as the department was concerned. The conviction that their claims had not been adequately met, however, obtained a strong hold everywhere, and helped to still further promote that spirit of federation which for some two or three years had been at work among the various associations. It was not so much the little they had gained by the Tweedmouth inquiry, as what they had actually lost, and the parsimonious manner in which many of the more favourable recommendations were being applied by the authorities, and even in some cases, as was alleged, wholly withheld.
The question of civil rights for postal servants and cognate matters occupied the attention of the Trades Union Congress at Bristol; and two resolutions were passed urging the matter once more on the attention of the Postmaster-General. The first of the two resolutions in question protested against the persistent refusal of the Postmaster-General to allow the legitimate right of combination and civil liberty to postal employés, and strongly condemned “the repeated attempts to break up the postal organisations by intimidating their officers.” The second resolution protested against “the failure of the Postmaster-General to carry into effect the recommendations of the Tweedmouth Committee in regard to split duties (emphatically condemned by the official medical officers as highly injurious to health), and the insanitary condition of Post-Office buildings, which were admitted to be in a most dangerous condition, and a standing menace to the life and health of the workers.” These two resolutions were forwarded by the Parliamentary Committee, through Mr. Sam Woods, M.P., to the Postmaster-General. The Postmaster-General, Nov. 15,replied to this impeachment of the Trades Union Congress; and, admitting much of its truth, pledged himself that “every effort was being made” in regard to the objectionable working conditions, and at the same time repeated his assurance that he had “no wish to curtail the privilege of combination in the Post-Office,” but he wished it to be distinctly understood that he was “unable to condone insubordination in any rank of the service, merely because it is disguised under the cloak of civil liberty.” The reply of the Postmaster-General was regarded with some slight satisfaction by postal servants, though it was not accepted as covering all the facts alleged.
The long-standing hostility of one of the higher officials towards the principle of combination again manifested itself in an unexpected manner not long afterwards. In the following month of December some severe animadversions on postal servants and postal combination from Mr. Lewin Hill, the lately-retired Assistant Secretary, reported in theDaily Graphic, provoked strong resentment generally, which, however, gradually subsided in amusement on the attacks becoming several times repeated, and as often replied to in other organs of the press.
In the prosecution of Parliamentary policy the postal movement had gained strong reinforcements, both in the service and in the House of Commons. Members of Parliament had come and gone, but the number of their advocates had not fallen away. Among the new adherents to their cause was Mr. W. C. Steadman, M.P., whose return for Stepney had been secured by the turning balance of the postal vote there. Among all the members of the House who had beaten their brains against the granite walls of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Mr. Steadman from the first moment of his election proved the most persistent and the most pushful in his advocacy of postal claims. On the opening of the February session, 1899, he moved an amendment to the Address, and once more recapitulated the sins of omission and commission for which the Tweedmouth Inquiry was responsible, and strenuously urged for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry to complete the work left undone, being ably supported by other friendsof the postal cause. Mr. Hanbury, as representing the Postmaster-General, resisted further inquiry by the adoption of the official arguments which had served their purpose so well on former occasions. As strengthening his argument, the Postmaster-General’s representative took the opportunity of importing into the discussion a personal attack on W. E. Clery, who had, since his dismissal for furthering the right of combination, become notorious as the arch agitator of the postal movement. Mr. Hanbury made the damaging assertion that “the battle rages round Mr. Clery, the man who is responsible for the agitation.” Yet very illogically, as it seems, he tried to prove that the agitator round whom this battle was raging had not the confidence of trades unionists, inasmuch, as he averred, he was refused admission to the Trades Union Congress, “because he was neither a working member of the trade he represented nor a paid permanent official.” It was an absurd misstatement, as the chairman of the Sorters’ Association had never been refused admission at any Trades Union Congress, but had represented his society there for several successive years. If he was not literally and actually a working member of the craft he represented, he was so in the meaning of the Congress rules, and in any case it was a weak and unworthy argument. In conclusion, the Postmaster-General’s advocate, in paying an unintentional tribute to the postal agitator by allowing that Clery was the pivot on which the whole agitation turned, and that but for him there would be no organised discontent, used an argument which was most calculated to strengthen the hands of the agitator whom it was desired to efface. This speech for the defence on the part of Mr. Hanbury on this occasion was also rendered a cause for remembrance to the telegraphists, whose work he contemptuously described as only “superior type-writing.” The insult thus levelled at the telegraphists was pointed with a comparison with the sorters’ duties, which were described as requiring “more skill than telegraphic work.”
But neither the attack on Clery in the House of Commons nor the compliment to postal work at the expense of the telegraphists availed beyond the momentary triumph. The interests of postal servants were wedded and welded in a newcomradeship, which neither insult nor flattery were likely to dissolve. The best answer to these strictures was the successful institution of postal federation throughout the service. The federation of postal associations was already an accomplished fact, and at last telegraphists, postmen, sorting clerks, sorters, and nearly all classes were united in one homogeneous whole for the furtherance of common interests. There had been several tentative attempts at this in the years gone by, but misunderstandings had forbidden its culmination till now. One result of the universal disappointment following on the Tweedmouth Inquiry and the Norfolk-Hanbury Conference was the burying by mutual consent of all class feeling, and the cementing of classes and sections which till now never fully realised that they had so much in common to strive for. The aim of the federated associations was to be at once simple and comprehensive. Unitedly they were to set about it as their first and primary duty to obtain an unofficial, impartial, and disinterested, yet authoritative, Committee of Inquiry into the remaining grievances of postal servants. This they apprehended would comprehend, if not all things, yet most. The vindication of full rights of combination, which could never bring its logical benefit to the men or to the department until it was coupled with official recognition, was another important matter which was to be accepted as a foremost plank in their platform. Of equal importance to every postal servant, whatever his grade, was the claim to full recognition of the liberty of the individual in his leisure time, and the abolition of paltry and unnecessary restrictions on a postal servant’s freedom to engage in any enterprise or undertaking of an honourable nature, according to his fitness or desire to better his prospects outside the service. Related to and closely following on this was to be the claim for citizen rights and all that it involved, including the reinstatement of the unjustly-dismissed officials of the Fawcett Association. They were to insist on more humane treatment as servants of the State, and all those better conditions of hours and work which even the Tweedmouth scheme had left them unprovided with. A better minimum wage for the juniors, the question of deferred pay and pensions, promotion, favouritism, harsh medical restrictions, and numerousother matters were to be included in the programme which should facilitate their hopeful journeyings in search of the postal land of promise and a contented service flowing with milk and honey. The general adoption of this programme by the combined associations at the first Congress, held at Derby, September 1899, marked an epoch in postal history. It was a fitting celebration of the jubilee of postal agitation. Now, with the purpose of achieving these ideals by the way, they steadfastly set their faces towards the time-point when the State should in very truth become the model employer and the great exemplar to the labour market of the world.
Such concisely supplies, so far as it has gone, the history of a remarkable agitation. Whatever its lesson, and whatever the ultimate verdict upon it from a strictly impartial standpoint, postal agitation is a fact that bears recording in the general history of organised labour. Whether it may be deemed wholly justified or not, it has its value as an episode.
Agitation in the Post-Office may not always have been studiously correct in attitude and demeanour, but perhaps it has committed no more and no greater mistakes than have the officials in their dealings with it in the past. It might almost be said that it represents, if only in miniature, the people’s fight for freedom and the gradual extension of popular liberty; for the Post-Office has seen its pre-Chartist days, when to dare openly organise discontent would have been to make men amenable to the Law of Conspiracy. It has represented a continuous conflict between the spirit of exaction on one side, and the natural desire for betterment in pay and conditions, in just accordance with the improving value of labour everywhere, on the other. It has, indeed, been but a reflection and an analogue of the earlier struggles between capital and labour outside, and generally a protest against that fixed and fossilised scale of pay and that Procrustean standard of conditions for all time which have been shown to be no more possible here than in the broader arena of the labour market. Right or wrong, but always sustained by the conviction of right nevertheless,with the self-same tenacity with which their efforts have been repelled, the men who have from time to time engaged in this movement have persisted till they have beaten down the barriers, and gained some proportion of those advantages they laid claim to as their just dues.
Perhaps in a manner it may be accepted as a faint tribute to our Constitution and a self-compliment to our freedom-asserting and freedom-loving character as a people to say that only in England could a history of postal agitation have been possible. It is in itself a small consequence, perhaps, but it is significant as a consequence and an outcome of that free, powerful, and independent public opinion which safeguards and promotes our liberties; it is only one of the natural results of that dominating spirit of democracy which has so broadened our boundaries morally and materially as a nation.
THE END
Printed byBallantyne, Hanson & Co.Edinburgh & London