GROWING DISCONTENT AMONG LETTER-CARRIERS—PROHIBITION OF PUBLIC
MEETING—THE FRANCHISE AMONG POSTAL SERVANTS AND ITS HISTORY
For another ten years practically the authorities allowed the malcontents
to stew in their own juice.
There was, however, some slight attempt on the part of the
letter-carriers to again bring their grievances under notice in 1858
by holding another public meeting in the south-western district of
London. This meeting, in the newspaper reports of which the names of
the speakers were concealed, for that reason principally, incurred the
serious disapprobation of the authorities, and it was honoured with
special reference in the Fifth Annual Report of the Postmaster-General.
Therein the letter-carriers were severely rebuked for not adopting the
same regular course which had hitherto failed to bring them satisfaction.
One or two passages are instructive. Instead of the proceedings being
“conducted in an open, manly, and respectful manner, the meeting referred
to was held away from the ordinary place of employment, and speeches
were made containing statements which the men who uttered them must have
known to be false, but from the consequences of which they endeavoured
to screen themselves by concealing their names.” Lord Colchester, the
then Postmaster-General, took the opportunity to warn the letter-carriers
“against the machinations of discarded officers who, reckless of the
ruin they may bring upon others, strive to spread disaffection in the
department from which they themselves have been removed.” Coupled with
this warning there was a half promise that, though their position was, as
was maintained, a very enviable one, their grievances would be further
looked into—providing they complained no further and held no more
meetings.
A year or so later, in 1860, owing to the persistent representations
made by the various bodies comprising the circulating department, in
which they complained of insufficient remuneration and other grievances,
an Inter-departmental Committee of Inquiry was held, composed of the
principal authorities, assisted by the Assistant-Secretary of the
Treasury. This committee occupied itself with the subject matter of the
memorials which had been presented. The result was a report in which they
recommended a slight increase of force, and a small increase in wages.
Whatever the increase of force that was recommended, it was not before it
was needed. As for the increase of wages it was not only insignificant,
but the manner of its application betrayed it at once as only a temporary
stop-gap hesitatingly offered by a parsimonious department anxious to
obtain the most credit out of the transaction. Before the public the
letter-carriers were represented as coming in for another departmental
legacy, but the microscopic benefit was still further diminished by being
confined to the “men now in the service,” so that “men newly appointed
to the minor establishment would come in on the old and lesser rates of
pay.” Even this slight improvement in the conditions of the service was
to be confined to the men who had agitated and put the department and its
Inter-departmental Committee to some little trouble and expense.
In the year 1866 Lord Stanley of Alderley, then Postmaster-General,
felt constrained to prohibit all outside public meetings which were
called for purposes of promoting agitation among discontented postal
officials. Lord Stanley issued an order prohibiting such open meetings
on pain of dismissal. However it may have been justified at the
period of its introduction, it is interesting to note that successive
Postmasters-General allowed it to remain practically in abeyance for the
next twenty-five years. Either Lord Stanley’s order was forgotten, even
in the most stormy periods between 1871 and 1874, or the different public
heads of the department felt a reluctance to reintroduce it. It was not
till 1890 that a definite prohibition of the right of public meeting
based on this order was issued by Mr. Raikes.
The London letter-carriers at this period of 1866 were in a
highly-dissatisfied state, notwithstanding that on March 22, 1865, there
had been a slight revision in the scales of pay for sorters, stampers,
letter-carriers, and supplementary letter-carriers. The latter were in
receipt of eighteen shillings, while two classes of letter-carriers went
from twenty shillings to twenty-five, and from twenty-six to thirty
shillings a week. In introducing this improved scale of pay in a circular
memorandum, the Postmaster-General did not forget to impress on the lucky
recipients that “the benefit of their places is by no means confined
to their bare wages, and that this is especially so in the case of the
letter-carriers.” They were also once more reminded of the amounts they
received from the public “in gratuities at Christmas—a sum which, if
divided equally and spread over the whole year, would produce on an
average 5s. a week to each man.”
Yet though a beneficent and paternal department gave sanction to
the indirect taxation of the public to bring up the wages of the
letter-carriers, the letter-carriers themselves still found cause for
complaint. On March 1, 1866, a small meeting was held in a public hall
to decide on the best means of letting the public and the authorities
know of the chronic discontent prevailing, and the adoption of the most
effectual means of agitating for the purpose of obtaining a higher
wage. The prime mover of this was a letter-carrier named Padfield, in
receipt of twenty-five shillings a week, and his principal coadjutors
were Sinfield and Booth. Some strong comments were made regarding
the decisions of the Postmaster-General and upon the replies of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, which utterances,
as reported, were objected to by the authorities as exceeding the bounds
of official license. Padfield, who called the meeting and filled the
chair on this occasion, had been an active agitator for some years, and
the fact was remembered to his detriment when this particular meeting
was taken into account. The Postmaster-General thought it would be
against the interests of discipline to retain such a man in the service,
and directed that he be dismissed, in the hope that this single
example would serve as a sufficient warning to the others. Padfield
was accordingly dismissed in the thirteenth year of his service, his
defence that he merely took the chair to enable the meeting to express an
opinion, which he in no way directed, being of no avail. The two minor
sinners, Booth and Sinfield, were dealt with more leniently, and escaped
with a severe admonition and a warning as to their future conduct. Booth,
however, was to reappear as a more important character later on.
It was this meeting called by Padfield which induced the
Postmaster-General, Lord Stanley, to put down with a strong hand these
public expressions of discontent among postal servants. He had already
expressed disapprobation of such meetings, and could no longer think that
there remained any grievances unredressed.
On March 13, 1866, Lord Stanley issued a minute dealing with the practice
of holding meetings in public, and the privilege was withdrawn. The
decision come to by Lord Stanley was that he was “determined no longer
to tolerate a system of agitation which is got up by a few turbulent
men, and which tends to create a spirit of discontent and restlessness
among the whole of the lower body of the Post-Office servants. With this
view he forbids, on pain of dismissal, the holding by officers of the
department of any meeting beyond the walls of the Post-Office building
for the discussion of official questions.”
The department by this time had whetted its appetite for economy; it had
at last wholly committed itself to a policy of save-at-any-price. Had not
the great oracle of reform, Rowland Hill himself, shown the way? It was
easy to effect this by reducing postal servants’ pay in proportion as
their work became harder, and their responsibilities increased. It was
also easy of accomplishment by compelling those employed and paid for
performing inferior duties to take up those of their immediate superiors
who had been in receipt of nearly double their wages. Not that this was
altogether a new shuffle in the game of economy, but it had never been
so effectively applied. The stampers, therefore, who were regarded as
an inferior grade of letter-sorters, were forthwith made to take up
despatching duties, those same duties practically for which only a
few years before clerks at £200, £300, and even £400 a year had been
almost exclusively employed. Thus was the dignity and responsibility
of postal duties depreciated still further; thus were the men given
fresh causes for complaint; and thus were the seeds of future agitation
further sown. The stampers resented it in the only way possible, by
petition, verbal and written, and by every means of respectful protest
that remained to them. The department had not yet even learnt how to be
diplomatic—it practically left them without an answer; not even one of
those characteristic replies which have so often protracted the struggle,
by referring it to their successors for interpretation. They thought
that appealing to the men’s vanity would remove their discontent; that
by giving them a new designation they would feel they were not so hardly
worked after all. They thought that by calling a man something else he
would consent to regard himself as less of a white slave than he was in
reality. They very magnanimously altered his official description from
that of a stamper to sub-sorter, but without the smallest difference in
point of pay or prospects in return for the newly-fixed responsibilities.
The malcontents were still ungrateful enough to remain unconverted to
the department’s point of view. They did not mind being called anything
that would befit them; a rose by any name would smell as sweet; but
if they had to do more work of a higher responsibility, they wanted
correspondingly better pay. If anything, the discontented ones were even
more sordid in those days than those who followed later.
The department had yet a deal to learn, but it played the game with a
sublime indifference to the rules of fairness, and wondered when it was
detected cheating. It had not yet learned how to cheat with grace, and
by means of forced cards, without the subterfuge being exposed on the
instant. That was to come later. They had been so used to submissiveness
on the part of the force that they could not think the men would have
the courage to persist in their objections now. So they thought to
compromise the difference by giving the men yet another title, that of
“assistant-sorter,” and putting them on the sorters’ scale, but with a
reduced maximum when they should reach the top. Now the only advantage
they could afford the men as a solatium in their disappointment was to
offer them a maximum more easily attained to by being reduced by five
shillings. This was the result of a “revision” made in September 1867.
The highest wage a man could now receive was 45s. a week instead of 50s.,
and the only compensation offered for his deprivation of prospect was an
increase of 6d. in the yearly rise, and a very slight increase on the
lower scale. So that instead of taking nearly half a lifetime to reach
50s. by twenty-seven yearly instalments, it now took sixteen years to
reach 45s.
Then after a while they were given the option of remaining on the 50s.
maximum at 1s. increments, or the 45s. at 1s. 6d. annual increments.
In either case it was like the promise of a copyhold in the moon; at
least so the men regarded it, especially as the immediate outlay to the
department meant only a dozen shillings or so. But they were compelled to
accept the conditions and to take up the duties none the less.
Even with an unblemished character, it took perhaps half a lifetime to
reach a respectable salary. Consequently many—the stampers, sub-sorters,
postmen, and others—had to eke out their meagre income by working at an
alternative trade, such as bootmaking, watchmaking, or other odd jobs
in the intervals which should ordinarily have been given to sleep and
leisure. One man who used to engage in “moving jobs,” he having a little
greengrocers business, was constantly late for the afternoon duty. When
called on to explain, he gave as his reason that the Post-Office gave him
his bread, and he had to employ his spare time elsewhere looking for his
cheese. It is a trifling incident, but the reply would have equally well
fitted hundreds of others in similar positions.
As has already been pointed out, the bond of relationship between the
letter-carrier and the stampers and sorters was becoming a most intimate
one, and one body scarcely moved without the other. The letter-carriers
complained of poor pay in proportion to the value of their work, and bad
treatment generally. The stampers and the sorters had their own distinct
grievances, but there was to an extent a common ground of action between
them. They had as yet no right of public meeting; indeed that right,
conceded as such, did not come till twenty-five years after, when it
was granted expressly by Mr. Gladstone. There appeared to be a total
absence of instruction on the matter, but it was generally taken for
granted that postal servants who were debarred the simple privilege of
recording their votes at election times, except under most dreadful pains
and penalties, most certainly would not be allowed to convene meetings
or to hire halls for purposes of agitation. It had always been thought
that postal officials courted official outlawry by attempting to do so.
The withholding of the franchise from them encouraged the belief, even
among themselves, that they were not fit and proper persons to engage
in anything but their own business, which was that of serving the State
and the public as faithfully as they knew how on their scanty pay. Yet
it was not till 1866 that there was any direct official pronouncement
on the matter, and it is probable that nothing but the events happening
previously provided the warranty for it.
The greater portion of the Civil Service at this period were up in
arms to claim their right to the franchise, and the Post-Office, as
represented by the clerical staff, particularly played its part. The
Post-Office clerks took the lead, and joined with the rest of civil
servants in the general demand to be treated as loyal and intelligent
citizens. Many meetings were held, at which M.P.’s and influential
speakers attended. Postal servants of the lower grades gave sympathetic
support, but it must be confessed that they were as a body less impressed
with the importance of the principle than were their superiors in the
service. With them it was more a question of more bread and butter than
votes; and only a proportion of the more discerning saw how the exercise
of the franchise would directly affect them and their position.
On the whole, the credit for agitating for the franchise for postal
servants must be given to the clerical staff of that period. It is not,
however, to be supposed that they were animated by any democratic desire
to extend political privileges to such people as letter-carriers and
letter-sorters. They, as was only natural in the circumstances, played
principally for their own hand; but they helped to win the game, and the
thanks of those who afterwards shared in the spoils were due to them.
And here it is perhaps allowable to point out as a noteworthy fact that
it was the clerks of the Civil Service themselves who originally were
responsible for the withholding of the franchise from all Government
servants. They it was who relinquished their birthright, and were the
indirect means of depriving future generations of it. This happened
so far back as 1782, and it was actually done at their own request
and petition. Nor was there anything particularly reprehensible or
blameworthy in their taking up such a position, as it was done entirely
for their own protection. The possession of a vote in those days had
proved more of a curse than a blessing; and an election period meant a
time of coercion and anxiety about the security of their position under
Government. In an election they could not please both parties, and their
votes being solicited by rival factions, woe to them if they did not vote
on the lucky side. At this time the existing Government, through the
votes of public servants, controlled no less than seventy seats in the
House of Commons. Just before a General Election, Lord North, who had
been in power for twelve years, took a high hand by sending notices to
those constituencies where the votes of Government servants were likely
to turn the scale, that unless they voted for his party, it would go very
hard with them in the event of his being returned to power. This was a
threat and a warning serious enough in itself, but it was rendered more
so by the opposite party retaliating in a like fashion by also sending
out notices to the effect that there was a likelihood of their coming
into office, and that if they did not give their vote, such Government
servants would find themselves in a very awkward predicament.
A strong petition was sent up pleading for disfranchisement, and a
bill was introduced shortly after the formation of Lord Rockingham’s
administration, which was to deliver ministers from temptation to tamper
with civil servants, and the better to secure the freedom of election. It
is a somewhat surprising fact, looked at in these days, that this bill
was warmly contested in all its stages through the House of Commons.
But it was eventually passed by considerable majorities, though in no
division were more than 110 members present. At that time it was regarded
as a very necessary precaution to have passed this Act (22 Geo. III. c.
41), as it was computed that the Revenue officers formed nearly twenty
per cent. of the whole electorate. While the Government of the day
wielded such power over the destinies of civil servants because of the
possession of these votes, and that in point of fact they could by this
means influence no less than 140 votes in the House of Commons, it was
perhaps far better that civil servants should be disfranchised. But the
natural consequence was that all Post-Office servants, whatever their
rank, high or low, were excluded from the use of their votes; and this in
course of time gave rise to a very grave injustice.
While citizen liberty was everywhere expanding, and the greater majority
of the artisan and labouring classes were being gathered into the
widening folds of the British electorate, those who happened to serve the
Crown in any capacity had to pay for the privilege by the sacrifice of
their vote. From allowing too much liberty to Revenue officers and those
serving under the Crown, the Government rushed to the other extreme, and
an Act was passed in the pre-Reform days (7 & 8 Geo. III. c. 53, s. 9)
by which the provisions of former Acts were amended and extended still
further by increasing the penalty to be inflicted on any Revenue officer
(including postal officials) for voting at election times while still in
his Majesty’s service, and for two months subsequent to leaving it. The
penalty was increased from £100 to £500. An officer in the Post-Office
was not merely liable to this heavy penalty for recording his vote, which
in the ordinary course was allowed him as a citizen by the law, but on
conviction was declared to be for ever disabled and incapable of holding
or executing any office of trust under the Crown, if he committed the
heinous crime of voting at Parliamentary elections. The great Reform Act
of 1831, which came to be hailed with such joyous satisfaction by the
whole community, afforded no relief to the Post-Office official, and it
was not till a quarter of a century later that they were thought worthy
of being entrusted with a vote. However this deprival of the franchise
may have been justified in Lord Rockingham’s time in 1782, times and
circumstances had materially changed when the middle of the nineteenth
century arrived.
Such was the paradoxical position taken up with regard to postal servants
and all those who served the Revenue, that while they were invariably men
of selected character and selected intelligence and education, generally
introduced into the public service through the highest influence to
vouch for their integrity, they were not thought trustworthy enough
to use a vote with common honesty and discretion. The absurdity and
injustice of the position could not fail to arouse in course of time
the opposition of those affected. In those days the future brilliant
critic and fighting editor of the _World_, Edmund Yates, and Anthony
Trollope, the future novelist, were in the Post-Office; and these, in
co-operation with Messrs. Frank Ives Scudamore, Chetwynd, and Ashurst,
threw themselves into a movement for the removal of such electoral
disabilities. The Inland Revenue was represented by Messrs. Dalbiac,
Jacobs, and Alaric A. Watts, and the Customs by Messrs. Dobell and Hamel.
These, the representatives of the Post-Office, the Inland Revenue, and
the Customs, resolved themselves into a committee. A circular was issued
to the members of the service, and the support of members of Parliament
was obtained, and among these were included Mr. Charles Buxton, Sir
Harry Verney, and Mr. Charles J. Monk. The discontent with the existing
political restraint placed upon them in a short time pervaded all ranks
and sections of the Civil Service; and, feeling that the retention of
the present disabilities was a slur on their intelligence, and a stigma
on their character for loyalty, the agitation for their removal was
entered into with earnestness. This was the first organised attempt to
obtain the removal of the disabilities in respect of voting and taking
part in Parliamentary elections, which invidiously differentiated all
Revenue officers from all other civil servants of the Crown. But it was
to prove nearly a nine years’ hard fight before they were to take back
what had been so hastily thrown away by a previous generation of civil
servants. Beyond a few private members no minister could be induced to
give countenance to what had almost come to be regarded as an impossible
demand.
When the Reform Bill of 1867 was passing through the House of
Commons, Sir Harry Verney, who had warmly espoused the cause of the
disenfranchised civil servants, proposed a clause enabling Revenue
officials (who were otherwise qualified) to vote at elections, but, on
the recommendations of both Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, this clause
was negatived without a division. Yet this part of the proposal, at any
rate, vehemently opposed though it was by the Government of the day
and the leaders of the Opposition, was to be within two years embodied
in a statute of the realm. Each forward step taken by the friends of
enfranchisement was contested by the occupants of both sides of the
House; and every argument that could be devised for and against was
imported into the discussion.
It was due to Mr. Charles J. Monk, the member for Gloucester, that the
first breach in the Opposition was made. From the very first he had
been struck with the unfairness of excluding educated and selected men
in the Post-Office, Customs, and Inland Revenue from the exercise of
the franchise, while their brethren in all the other departments of
the State could freely vote and take part in elections. The principal
high official argument, used in its many variations, was that it would
be an unsafe weapon to place in the hands of men who might use it for
furthering excessive demands, and for general purposes of agitation. Mr.
Monk’s reply was in most cases to the effect that “if these officers have
just cause of complaint it is far better that the grievance should be
brought before the House by their Parliamentary representatives than that
it should be left to seethe below the surface, or be brought to light
through irregular channels.” It was early in the session of 1868 that Mr.
Monk introduced his Revenue Officers’ Disabilities Removal Bill. Slowly
and inch by inch it was carried through all its stages in the House of
Commons, defeating the Tory Government of Mr. Disraeli, on the motion
for going into committee on the bill, by a majority of thirty-two. This
was certainly a triumph for the friends of Reform, considering that the
Government had the support of the Leader of the Opposition in opposing
the measure. Lord Abinger took charge of the bill in the House of Lords,
when the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns, much to the astonishment of the
peers themselves and many others in the Lower House, supported the
measure most strongly. This was sufficient to ensure its success, and it
speedily passed into law (31 & 32 Vict. c. 73).
During the subsequent Parliament, 1868-1874, Mr. Monk made several
attempts to complete the measure of enfranchisement by enabling officers
engaged in the collection and management of her Majesty’s revenues to
take part unreservedly in the election of members to serve in Parliament.
But he was invariably opposed most strenuously by the then Prime
Minister, Mr. Gladstone, and it was not till another Parliament had
been elected, in 1874, that he was enabled to accomplish that object by
passing one other measure (37 & 38 Vict c. 22) through Parliament, with
the concurrence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the new Government,
Sir Stafford Northcote.
The services of Mr. Monk in getting passed the measure of 1868 were still
appreciated by the newly-emancipated postal servants and others; and Mr.
Frank Ives Scudamore, Assistant-Secretary to the Post-Office, on behalf
of the Revenue Offices generally, presented him with an illuminated
address, expressive of their gratitude to him for his skill and ability
in carrying their “Bill of Rights” successfully through Parliament, “in
despite of formidable opposition.”
If it was the higher grade of civil servants who for their own protection
threw away their right to the franchise, it was the same class who
recovered it, and who were instrumental in procuring it even for their
humbler subordinates in the postal service and elsewhere.
During the progress of the agitation among nearly all Civil Service
bodies to obtain the franchise, discontent was becoming all the more
acute in the Post-Office. Doubtless the contemplation of practically the
whole Civil Service engaged in furthering a united demand, in no small
degree gave an impetus to the growing postal movement, and helped to
develop the forces of discontent within.