A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day. H. G. Swift
to this time petition after petition had been laboriously drawn up by committees and meekly presented by the men, only to be ignored by the authorities, or returned as informal. Months had been wasted in this manner, till the aggrieved men, letter-carriers and sorters alike, got weary of waiting. They wanted to be on the march, but none knew whither. It was now that William Booth came to the front. The forces of discontent were not to dwindle away for want of a man. There was work to be done; there was a road to be made, and here were the willing hands and the implements ready. Booth sprang out of the ranks, and put himself at the head of them, and facing them addressed them.
His first word of command was short and decisive. “To the House of Commons!” said he. The very audacity of the proposal for a moment almost unnerved them, but the fact itself went a long way to convince them that their leader had come at last. Too long had they wasted their energies and their time on fruitless effort, and too long had they contented themselves with standing still, or progressing slowly over the same beaten track provided by officialdom. “To the House of Commons!” There was something original in the idea, and its very daring after a while recommended it. From the armoury of the franchise they had been provided with a new and efficient weapon; and St. Stephen’s should provide them with a shooting-range.
Forthwith, under the recognised leadership of Booth, they set themselves in this direction. The first difficulty that presented itself was the discovery that Parliament was guarded by the skirts of the department, and that therefore it was necessary to first obtain permission of the magnates of St. Martin’s-le-Grand to draw up a petition to Parliament at all. The liberty of the individual was more restricted than they imagined. The franchise had been extended to them; a weapon had been put into their hands by the Constitution; but the authorities reserved to themselves the right to overlook their powder and shot, and fix the firing distance for them. There was no help for it; not even the originality of their leader could circumvent the department in this respect. The House of Commons, free of approach to every working-man in the kingdom, was as yet barred to postal officials by an inquisitive and mistrustful bureaucracy to prevent their being too rash in their importunities. They might think themselves very fortunate in having obtained the liberty to use their vote; but to dare approach openly the sacred persons of those who represented them, without first submitting their intention, was not to be thought of.
Accordingly the necessary petition to the Controller of the London postal service, asking the liberty and the indulgence of being allowed to draw up and present a humble petition to the people’s representatives in Parliament assembled, was prepared and sent in. The humble petitioners waited with bated breath, and wondered what would become of Booth when it was realised that he was the moving spirit of the daring enterprise. With more than usual discretion, too, they obtained this official permission to hold a meeting to consider and discuss the terms of the proposed petition to the House of Commons. After some little delay, and a few further inquiries, thought more or less appropriate and necessary, the permission sought for was granted. But there was to be no outside public meeting this time. Whatever they had to say must be said within hearing of the officials and under the official roof. And there were to be no strangers present; and journalists and newspaper reporters were so strictly prohibited that any one might have shot them on sight as interlopers without incurring departmental displeasure.
The meeting was interesting, if only from the fact that it was the first meeting of this nature ever known to have been held in the Post-Office. It was quite a new departure, and the men halted between satisfaction and suspicion. They felt that whatever the advantage in other respects, they were muzzled to an extent. They felt that the department was treating them like children who could not be trusted beyond the playground for fear of throwing stones in the street. Still, they determined to accept the situation, and to make the best of it.
The meeting was called for the 28th June 1873, to be held after the duty, at eight o’clock in the evening, and the Newspaper Branch at the top of the building was placed at their disposal. For in those days, in this particular branch at least, there was a cessation of duty after this hour. The conditions were bad; but the Post-Office was not always at work during the whole round of the clock; it was not exactly the ever-panting, ever-working, never-ceasing, never-sleeping monster it is at the present day. The floor of the branch would be capable of accommodating over two thousand men; but it was necessary to make some preparation. A platform was extemporised from two or three of the facing or stamping tables, each almost of the dimensions of a respectable platform in itself, and round this a number of chairs and seats were ranged. The seating accommodation was, however, principally made up of bundles of disused mail-bags and baskets, while a considerable number, perhaps the majority, stood. The success of the meeting from the first moment was beyond all expectation. If any had fears that the men would be too suspicious of attending a gathering of this kind within the precincts of the building, and under the shadow of the department, they were mistaken. Almost directly the despatches were finished, and the duty done with for the night, they swarmed in from every part. From every other branch in the building—for the General Post-Office is a nest of branches, like a Chinese puzzle-box—and from outside offices they swarmed up the stairs and through every means of entry. The men from the districts showed up in full strength, and provided a few spectators for the platform. The branch in its structure was admirably suited to such a meeting; it was lofty, and there was a plentiful supply of gas-jets, depending in a long regiment from the ceiling. By half-past eight, the time for opening the meeting, the vast room was crowded. Every one was expectant and curious; this was an auspicious occasion, and there was something of novelty in the circumstance and the local surroundings. It was pretty well conjectured that spies would be present, as they were generally to be looked for at all their open deliberations. They were pretty well known, but it would have been impolitic, if not impossible, to exclude them. Those who were among the crowd could not very well on the spot take notes of what they heard and saw without betraying the real reason of their presence there. But if it was suspected there were official spies there, it was more than suspected, it was known almost for a certainty they had on their side a newspaper reporter, who had been quietly smuggled in with the crowd of district men. Thus was the prohibition of the officials evaded; and it was said that the Standard reporter avoided the scrutiny at the entrance by borrowing a portion of a letter-carrier’s uniform. It was afterwards said that the enterprising reporter found concealment in a recess beneath the great gallery clock, which overlooked the whole of the branch. However this may be, that there was an officially proscribed “chiel amang them takin’ notes” was sufficiently evidenced a few hours later, when the morning Standard came out with a report of the night’s proceedings.
The floor of the branch, which when empty was like the interior of an enormous barn, by half-past eight was black with men. Not only did they completely cover the floor in a dense, solidly-packed mass, but they perched themselves on the tops of the sorting-tables; they swarmed up the tall slim iron columns which support the roof, and clung there, thirty feet above those below. Others more venturesome, by the same means, found a resting-place on the higher ledges of the over-stretching girders, smothered in dust, their heads in contact with the shelving ceiling. Hundreds more had to content themselves with catching an occasional glimpse of the platform and its occupants through the tiers of empty pigeon-holes, rising from the middles of the sorting-tables into which the newspapers were sorted. For every one came to see as much as to hear. A very large number from distant districts had only heard of him, and wanted to see Booth. They wanted to see what kind of man it was whose audacity and whose organising resource had so far overcome official objections as to make this meeting possible, who had thus enabled them to beard the official lion in his very den. The rostrum on the platform was contrived of big square mail-baskets and some wooden boxes covered over with mail-bags, touched up with a piece of green baize in the middle; and by this there were sitting a few postmen and others. Some one rose to speak, but the tumultuous outbreak of applause kept him silent on his feet for fully a minute. This, then, was Booth; and eyes and ears were strained to better take his measurement, and to catch his words—a rather short, sturdy man, with a full head and somewhat Gladstonian features. He spoke for half-an-hour or more, and if at first there were any waverers in the crowd, there were none when he finished. They would have stormed the Treasury benches that very night. Other speakers followed, and emphasised the necessity of laying their plaint before Parliament; and in the end a provisional