In the 1930s the Post Office was one of the world's biggest organisations, employing more than a quarter of a million people. In the cities, staff filled the telephone exchanges and sorting halls. In the country, sub-postmasters sat at the heart of the community and postmen brought the mail. On the railways, mailbags and parcels were loaded and sorting took place on the move, while at sea, engineers built the oceanic cables connecting the continents. The workforce encompassed all types of occupations who joined to form unions and societies, football teams and choirs. Above all, a job at the Post Office meant security, stature and the chance of a career in one of the great, self-confident institutions of public service of its day.

The benefits were easy to see. There was a huge variety of occupations and the promise of a uniform, good conditions and a firm but fair disciplinary code. Pay was often better compared with other industries and a pension was assured when you retired at 60. The Post Office also had a reputation for thorough training and placed many staff on educational programmes outside of work. For many, sport was an integral part of the weekly routine, enabling employees to compete on the football pitch, the rifle range and the swimming pool. Cultural pursuits, too, were encouraged. Huge numbers of poems and essays were submitted to the weekly journals of the staff associations, where the politics and pay of every grade and occupation was also discussed.

This episode of The People's Post asked what life was like "on the establishment" in the 1930s. Many familiar moments in the Post Office career are brought to life, including the nervousness of the first day, the demands of training and the handling of disciplinary matters. Captured here is the public spirit ethos and the sense of purpose people felt when they went to work for the Post Office in interwar Britain.

Further Reading

For further reading see Alan Clinton, Post Office Workers: A Trade Union and Social History (1984). Available in the BPMA library at the Royal Mail Archive is the GPO produced book The Post Office: A Review of the Activities of the Post Office, 1934. The Post Office Magazine is a rich source of information for this period which can be found in POST 92. There are also many bound volumes of staff association journals in POST 115. Alison Bean's blog Job in a Million gives further information on this topic.

Illustrations

Messengers' despatch room

Messenger boys exercise class

Messengers on motorcycles

Businessman sending a telegram

Telegraph Boy with bandaged hand

Video

A Job in a Million - extract