A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day. H. G. Swift
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13, 1866, Lord Stanley issued a minute dealing with the practice of holding meetings in public, and the privilege was withdrawn.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.
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