Rural rides

More thoughts on Royal Mail, prompted by my time as a postie in the 1970s. I worked in Malton doing urban walks and rural rounds. Apart from having to get up very early in the morning it was the cushiest job one could wish for. On rural delivery runs one would be offered full cooked breakfasts in farmers’ houses or alternatively one could create a little bed out of mail sacks in the back of the van and have a little restorative kip for an hour or two, after reading some farmer’s Yorkshire Post (taking care to reinsert it in its wrapper). It was an all weather job of course and on some occasions after a couple of hours on my urban round the beard would be completely frozen. On urban rounds the target was to have completed the delivery by 9.30 and get back to the office for a relaxing break before the second delivery. It was quite possible in those days for someone with a local first class letter to drop it into the Malton Post Office box by 11am and see it delivered the same day. On his morning break one of my colleagues would go into his locker for his treat of chocolate cake and mustard. It’s something one can’t forget. This was a time when change was ever pressing on old certainties. It wasn’t that long before I joined that posties were still classed as civil servants and we had to sign the Official Secrets Act. Technically I wasn’t able to tell anyone where the nearest telephone box was. That of course is a joke, but you could learn a great deal about people just by delivering their mail. Where had it come from? What was it? Official or personal? Regular or infrequent? And wearing that uniform you gained almost invisible man status—country houses would leave their back doors (tradesmens’ entrances) open to let you collect their private afternoon mail left on their kitchen tables. As a humble servant on my pushbike I was once asked by a huntswoman which way the hunt had gone. ‘Ooh arr, I think they went that way’ I said and off she galloped in the wrong direction. After a couple of years I realised I wasn’t fully engaging with how things worked, and it dawned on me that you could take 13 days sick leave a year without question. This was welcome particularly on those very nasty wet and cold mornings when you just didn’t want to get up, but it was also good for colleagues who would be called in for some welcome overtime. I got involved in the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) and in my final year I spent two weeks (in 1976, a wonderful dry summer) at Ruskin College on union training courses. I must have been very political—the only question I could think of asking Tom Jackson, our moustachioed general secretary was what was it like being on the Morecambe and Wise show?  Having said that, judging by the response it was the question that everyone wanted to ask. I took my duties as branch secretary seriously. When management announced that they wanted to ‘restructure’ our rounds (i.e. make them more demanding) I consulted with the members. They were all up in arms, and I spent hours pouring over their suggestions and concocting counter proposals. I met with Cyril, our Postmaster in what must have been an unprecedented encounter on such a difficult subject. It didn’t work well. He took the afternoon off sick and when my comrades heard what happened they all backed off. I realised that swear words uttered at 6am on the sorting tables don’t necessarily translate into solid industrial action. It hadn’t been long since the last national postal strike, and most of the lads (they were all men) had gone back to work after a couple of weeks, leaving only two who stayed out. There were still people who wouldn't talk to each other.
 
Yes, this is a picture of an organisation that was in need of change. That change was already happening—it was when postcodes were being introduced, foreshadowing mechanisation (and a lot more). I wonder now who profits from postcodes. Who could have imagined in the 1970s that postcodes would be so essential to GPS? No longer do you need a local postie to know that a farm with such an unusual name as Manor Farm is not the same Manor Farm up another nearby lane?  Technology has replaced local knowledge. In a curious way I wonder if the introduction of postcodes actually signalled the death knell for the Royal Mail? As the OFCOM proposals suggest, the business seems to have lost its purpose, for the less it does the better its profitability might become, they suggest. Who I wonder checks whether OFCOM itself could turn a profit? (Point being it doesn’t need to.)