With the fresh reinforcements everywhere, the tide of indignation and dissatisfaction spread over the United Kingdom. For two months nearly, each day saw some expression of the feeling which had taken possession of the telegraph service, and some of the papers discerned all the preparations for an early strike among telegraphists everywhere. It became not a question of Cardiff particularly, but one in which the whole telegraph service was involved and identified with. From Land’s End to John o’ Groats there was an eruptive unrest; and the whole press of the country—Liberal and Tory, Radical and Independent—was kept busy in recording the utterances and commenting on the doings of telegraphists in meeting assembled everywhere. The Postmaster-General was inundated with a steady flow of petitions from every quarter; and besides being heckled from within the service and without, in the press and on the platform, Mr. Raikes experienced a very lively time of it in the House of Commons. There can be little doubt that during this busy and exciting period, with newspaper censure hurled at him from everywhere, and threats and prognostications of direful postal strikes filling the air, the Postmaster-General must have been far more severely punished than the victims of his mistake, the martyrs of Cardiff. This kind of thing lasted unceasingly till April 15, 1890, when the whole question of telegraphists’ grievances was ventilated in the House of Commons by Earl Compton. Earl Compton minutely traversed the ground of their grievances, and was ably supported; but Mr. Raikes defended his administration to the satisfaction of the House, and the motion was in due course lost by thirty-nine votes.
But although the telegraphists’ case was defeated, it was manifest that the matter could not long rest where it was. The feeling by this time was too strained and too acute to be allayed by an official refusal. All the dormant energies of the telegraphists were put forth, and grievances which had remained quiescent and unexpressed for years now loudly demanded redress and readjustment.
Immediately after the defeat of Earl Compton’s motion in the House, Mr. Raikes promulgated a new order restricting the right of public meeting outside the Post-Office. The acute stage at which the telegraphists’ agitation had now arrived was contemporaneous with the trouble among the postmen. The growing aggressiveness of the two postal bodies, the telegraphists and the postmen, and the free use they were making of public meeting, induced the Postmaster-General to restrict their freedom in this respect by reviving Lord Stanley’s order of 1866. What, however, was a restriction in the case of the telegraphists was a distinct concession to the postal branches of the service, and the sorters especially, who had hitherto been compelled to meet inside Post-Office buildings, greatly appreciated the wider liberty. What in the circumstances was regarded by the sorters as a boon and a concession was, after the wider liberty enjoyed by the telegraphists, regarded by them as a direct attempt on personal rights, and the introduction of terrorism and espionage. And after the assertion of the right of outside public meeting by the postmen, this view was fully shared by them. Indeed, it was the introduction of this restrictive rule that afforded a further excuse for the Postmen’s Union resorting to extreme methods. In so regarding it, the postmen and the telegraphists were at the time greatly upheld by the press, and the Postmaster-General was subjected to a deal of sharp criticism for his action.