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 stupendous load 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 official advisers. 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 of
_pro rata_ introduced 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 their _confrères_ at 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 not easily 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
overlooked in 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. The two 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 the _Telegraph_ the 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.