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 oats on 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 that the 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 condition into 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 each other 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 period were 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 compared with 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 duties of
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 the postal 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 admitted to 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 with an 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 to which Metropolitan men were invited to
contribute. The sorters already had the _Post_, which had now become the
property of the association; but the new _Postal Review_ was taken up
with some enthusiasm among them. The _Postal Review_ might 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 the _Postal Review_
had 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
the _Postal 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.