Downing Street Mailart Interview
Positively Postal(PP) was delighted to have the opportunity to interview Mr Tony Benn(TB) in relation to The Downing Street stamp/mailart and ask him about his time there while Postmaster General as well as find out his views on the postal system and stamps. Here is the interview and for further information about the mailart produced by artist Julia Elmore and endorsed by Tony Benn click here.
PP Can you tell me what were the highlights of your time while Postmaster General?
TB I think the most important thing I did while Postmaster General was to change the Post Office from being a government department to being a public corporation. In the old days it was ridiculous as The Treasury took every penny the Post Office got and then gave it back to the Post Office to run it, there being no connection between costs and income. I loved The Post Office very much and the thing I enjoyed most was the stamps question because I realised stamps are a form of art, miniscule art because they are seen all over the world and they speak for Britain, people who never come here get to see a little piece of it and getting that right was important. There was great conservatism in that field and nobody wanted to change anything.
PP Was that quite difficult to push forward?
TB Well it was in a way and this whole business about the Queen's Head, a whole block of design was taken up by her image and it impacted on the overall design.
PP Who put up the most resistance to having this aspect changed?
TB The Post Office and The Palace. The Post Office was able to mobilise a great deal of opposition. The man who made the change in the design possible was David Gentleman, a brilliant designer to whom I went to ask for his advice and I commissioned him to design some essays on what stamps could be like and they were beautiful. It then became apparent what needed to be changed and we ended up with The Sovereign's head in a smaller silhouette format.
PP Any other general postal points of note?
TB Rowland Hill was a formidable man who did for the 19th century what the internet is doing for us now, the penny post made it possible for people to communicate with each other. He invented postage stamps and ran it as a public service, introduced the printed paper rate, made it possible for people to get newspapers, a most extraordinary man and a most severe figure, very much a Victorian figure for whom I have great respect.
PP How much influence did the Government have over the postal system at the time?
TB In the old days the position of Postmaster General was very much titular, like being The Mayor. The Postmaster General would turn up and sign minutes and then go away again, the Post Office ran everything itself and The Postmaster was just a figure head. When I first arrived they had big long ministerial tables with various minutes on them for me to walk round and just sign. I would disappear and then everything was done in the name of the Postmaster General so they could cite me but I didn't really feel like I had much control.
I therefore set up a number of mechanisms to change that such as recalling The Post Office Board which hadn't convened for years so as to discuss things and I also made contact with the trade unions and discussed matters with them. I was the first Postmaster General to visit the UPW (Union of Postal Workers) offices which wouldn't have been previously considered as it really was a very titular appointment. When Atlee was Postmaster General back in 1931, he proposed the idea of nationalising the coal industry and came up with the idea of having a Coalmaster General! The only example of a Master General was with the Post Office so everything was modelled around that. The Postmaster General could take some interest in the actual running of the Post Office if he wanted to but it was effectively the Post Office which ran itself. The Postmaster just appeared on formal occasions and was almost being like an ambassador.
PP What inspired you to overhaul the stamp issuing policy of the time?
TB I had been thinking about the Post Office before the 1964 election and wrote an article in The Guardian about it and how it needed to be modernised, that it needed a better pricing system, I later introduced the 2 tier - 1st & 2nd class system and better stamps etc. Wilson saw this article and it was this that helped him decide to make me Postmaster General. He then did something rather unusual and said six months before, that if we won the 1964 General Election he would make me Postmaster General so I began working away in great detail as to what need to be done.
PP Why did you want to remove the Queen's head from GB stamps and what did she think of your idea to do so?
TB I wanted to change the design and went to David Gentleman to produce some stamp designs which he did and which I have here. I had an audience with The Queen and said to her that I understood she objected to me changing the stamps to which she replied not at all, looked at the essays and was most interested. However by the time I got back to my office which was twelve minutes away, Buckingham Palace had telephoned Downing Street and Downing Street had telephoned my office to say that there was to be no change of any kind. The mechanism in place at the time was difficult to change and the idea that The Postmaster General could change anything was not acceptable.
PP So when did that finally change?
TB You know how it is with change, it starts off gradually. When change occurs, to begin with you are ignored, continue and you are then considered mad, carry on, you are dangerous and then there is a pause until the time comes when you can't find anybody at the top who doesn't claim to have had the idea and The Queen came round to the idea eventually. The Queen was very interested in the designs; David Gentlemen showed recent designs to prove that the Queen's head at that time was taking up a large part of the design.
Churchill essay without the Queen's head.
I personally insisted that a stamp issue was produced for Winston Churchill which was a big deal since there had never been another stamp showing anybody else's face/head other than that of the reigning Monarch. We had multiple stamps with The Battle of Britain issue which was one step forward, David Gentleman's wife was very keen on horses so she designed a set featuring them, we had British figures, Concorde, railway engineering since Wilson was very keen on that. We tried to choose a theme which made it easier to get some change, architecture, regional stamps, birds, fungi, butterflies, trees, regional landscapes and get away from the formal side of it. It was too formal with rigid rules and there was no humanity involved.
There was then the question if the Queen's head was removed, what would you use in its place? Symbols were drawn up and then some stamps were created with said symbols included.
As they were so keen on royal heads, I thought why not have the Kings & Queens of Great Britain on stamps, although that did raise a few problems since Cromwell did rule Britain for a while and to have him on a stamp would be inappropriate and Edward VIII also caused concern due to his abdication.
PP Do you still think in light of the Royal Mail privatisation bill that there may well come a time when the reigning Monarch's head no longer appears on GB stamps?
TB This is interesting because for private postal systems there is no obligation for them to have the Queen's head on their stamps. Private companies who have their mail delivered by Royal Mail can use what they like to indicate postage paid and that commercial side of it has no interest in what appears on the stamps, just in making money by having the Post Office deliver their parcels.
PP Do you think that is a good thing?
TB No I don't, The Post Office is a very popular service, the postman/woman comes to the door every day, you get to know them and then if say a milk bottle is left outside for a while then s/he will bang on the door to see if you are all right, go to the local Post Office with Giro/benefits and they will advise you what to do so it is very much a social service and one carried out nationwide which is a key part of the whole service.
PP How do you support this financially?
TB Privatisation is not in the The Post Office's best interests. As the only public owned company left it should be maintained as a public service and there ought to be an act of policy to have a National Post Office, either subsidised depending on pricing policy or make it pay for itself.
PP What do you think of stamps issued nowadays?
TB I think they are really imaginative and I really like them. They are miniscule art and I'd never heard of miniscule art until I invited David Gentleman to take on the design of them and they are a very fine art form. Used on letters here and further afield they are a good representation of the country.
PP What are your favourite GB stamps and why?
TB Stamps about Parliament, The Battle of Britain stamps are very impressive, I also like regional stamps, trees and those which reflect the life of the nation.
PP When the Queen has passed away, what sort of stamps would you like to see next?
TB In the end all these things do depend on political decision making. If the minister in charge of posts was determined to carry on then I don't think there would be any change. I guess that there won't be any reversion and that they will just carry on featuring the next monarch.
PP What do you find positive about the Postal System?
TB It is a national system, it is conscientiously done and it is popular. People don't want to see it removed, they don't want to see local post offices closed, they don't want to see stamps become more expensive and they don't want to see the whole thing turned into a commercial venture.
PP Is the fact that local post offices in particular are closing not down to the fact that people are just not using them as much?
TB If the Post Office doesn't make a profit then you just run it as best you can and Post Office closures are a deliberate policy of privatisation.
PP What would you do if you were in charge of Royal Mail today?
TB I would persuade the government to only have one minister in charge, stop privatisation, build up the Post Office as an actual service, have a pricing system for stamps and other services that allowed for it to make a profit and set up new services for The Post Office Bank.
PP What does the future hold for the Post Office? Can it survive in the digital age?
TB That depends on what we do about it, there are no forecasts about what may happen, it depends on the people who are in charge of it. Nothing can replace the postal system. There has got to be the physical system for things to be able to move and while the internet obviously does reduce the number of letters written the basic service the Post Office provides needs to be maintained. It is very much dependent on public use and how often its services are used. I don't think the desire to write letters will ever be diminished amd maybe the internet will take over from that entirely but I think birthday cards, Christmas cards will continue to be sent and parcels also need to be sent especially by internet businesses who use these services and are dependent on them.
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