Stopping first-class post would prove we’ve become a second-class nation
FOR those of us who care about the survival of Britain’s great institutions, the decline of Royal Mail has been one of the saddest stories of recent times.
The Royal Mail was once a vital artery of our national infrastructure, playing a central role in building a modern, industrial society. Cheap, reliable and efficient, it was the envy of the world.
How times have changed. Indeed, nothing better captures its decline than yesterday’s shameful news that Ofcom, the industry regulator, is pressing for the abolition of first-class post.
Under Ofcom’s proposals, the first- class stamp, which usually means next- day delivery, would simply disappear. Instead, there would be just one class of stamps — and letters would take two days to arrive.
Tragedy
It may sound like a small change, but I think Ofcom’s proposal sums up the tragedy of one of the venerable pillars of British society, betrayed by more than a decade of government meddling.
Indeed, given that the regulators are considering scrapping next-day delivery, it is worth reminding ourselves what kind of service our predecessors took for granted.
As a public institution, Royal Mail effectively dates from the 1630s, when a Staffordshire merchant called Thomas Witherings persuaded Charles I to let him run a state postal monopoly, open to ordinary people as well as the rich and powerful.
As demand grew, the postal service boomed. ‘ Letters are now delivered at the remotest corner of the Town almost as soon as they can be sent by messenger, and that four, five, six or eight times a day,’ wrote one astonished foreign visitor to London. ‘We see nothing of this at Paris, at Amsterdam, at Hamburg or any other city.’
The thought of having four or five deliveries a day — let alone eight — might sound like a fantasy today. But to postal bosses 300 years ago, it seemed eminently sensible.
What our predecessors recognised was that a fast, reliable and efficient postal service was crucial to the success of B r i t a i n’ s commercial economy.
As one early postal pioneer remarked: ‘ There is nothing tends more to the increase of trade and business than a speedy, cheap and safe way of intelligence.
‘For as money, like the blood in natural bodies, gives life to trade by its circulation; so correspondence like the vital spirits, gives it sense and motion.’
So it was that during the 18th and 19th centuries, when Britain’s economy became the envy of the world, the Post Office provided the sinews for the expansion of commerce.
Even in sleepy provincial towns, there were deliveries three or four times a day.
Having opened a letter from a customer one morning, a businessman could be sure that his reply would be on the client’s desk at breakfast the next day.
And carrying letters was only part of the Royal Mail’s mission. Not content with taking over the telegraph network, its Victorian bosses also introduced Parcel Post, sparking a boom in mail order catalogues that sold everything from insect repellent powder to wax for gentlemen’s moustaches.
The postcard boom of the Edwardian era, meanwhile, offers a perfect illustration of how far standards have fallen.
Lost
In those long-lost days, daytrippers to Blackpool and Bognor used to send cards home before lunch, confident that their news would be back before they were.
One Saturday in 1911, James Haigh sent a postcard from Blackpool to Manchester.
‘Dear Mother,’ he wrote, ‘I am very glad to say I shall be coming home in the morning (Sunday) before dinner.’
He knew that even though he was writing on Saturday morning, his card would be delivered that afternoon. Today, of course, it would take at least a day or two.
Living as they did in an age of extraordinary technological progress, people like James Haigh could never have imagined that a century later, next-day deliveries — let alone same- day deliveries — would become a thing of the past. Some readers may wonder whether this really matters. Indeed, one of the great canards about the postal service, shamelessly peddled by politicians of all parties, is that it has become irrelevant in a world dominated by emails, Twitter and mobile phones.
But this is nonsense. A fast, dependable postal service remains crucial in a fully functioning economy.
Should you need to sign a form or send crucial hardcopy documents, only the post will do.
The volume of letters may have fallen since the turn of this century, but tens of millions of people still send handwritten letters, birthday cards and Christmas presents.
Last year, the British people sent a staggering 16 billion letters or parcels. And with more and more people choosing to shop online, there is every reason to imagine we will soon send more packages, not fewer.
The grim irony, though, is that despite the boom in online shopping and mailorder deliveries, Royal Mail has not succeeded in taking advantage.
Instead, the big winners have been private courier companies, most of them foreignowned, such as the Americanbased FedEx and the Dutch firm TNT.
The truth is that for the past two decades, Royal Mail has been stuck in a kind of limbo, neither public nor private.
It is telling that during the Eighties, Margaret Thatcher never privatised it. She saw it as one of the essential services of a civilised society, like the Armed Forces or the police.
Under New Labour, however, the market was opened up to foreign competitors.
Unfortunately, Royal Mail was effectively forced to compete with one hand tied behind its back, hamstrung by government interference and state regulation.
Tony Blair’s ministers often claimed that the postal service was inefficient. Yet it is a myth that the Royal Mail represents some terrible drain on the national exchequer. Only three months ago, it reported annual profits of £211 million.
Perhaps if Blair had properly privatised it, Royal Mail — or its successor — would be even more successful today, and we would not have to endure the indignity of seeing first- class post abolished.
No doubt private competition would benefit those of us who live in towns and cities, especially in the South.
But would it benefit those people in remote rural settlements: the elderly lady in a Dartmoor village, the retired gentleman on a Scottish island, the widowed grandmother in her Welsh cottage, who might end up paying more and waiting longer? I doubt it.
After all, the story of Yodel, the much- loathed delivery company ditched by John Lewis, Mothercare and Matalan because of its sheer incompetence, is a reminder that private carriers are no strangers to making a mess of things.
Deluded
In any case, like Margaret Thatcher, I cannot help thinking that a publicly owned, properly funded, cheap, quick and reliable postal service is one of the basic foundations of a self-respecting commercial society.
For too long Mrs Thatcher’s successors have treated this vital public service as a glorified cash cow.
Indifferent to its proud history, they have indulged foreign businesses at the expense of an institution that made Britain great.
Above all, it strikes me as fundamentally embarrassing that in the Britain of tomorrow, we may not be able to send a letter with our national carrier to arrive the next day.
If Ofcom think this represents a decent service, they must be even more deluded than I thought.
As a nation of shopkeepers, we once relied on the Royal Mail. It was one of the most trusted institutions in the land, a symbol of British ingenuity, reliability and enterprise.
Just as its strengths once reflected the virtues of our predecessors, so its current plight tells you how far we have fallen.
What would the first postal pioneers make of us? I fear they would conclude that we really have become second-class.