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Postmaster-General’s salary, but the motion was withdrawn on a promise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 his time 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 influence of 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 examples of 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
their body 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 the
_Post_ was 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 of official 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 foundation on 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 the _Daily Chronicle_ described 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 by Mr. 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 the _Daily
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 friends of 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 new comradeship, 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 numerous other 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
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