First shown: 6 Oct 2015
Available for 29 days
Alan Johnson MP (and former postman) tells the story of
500 years of the Royal Mail, and discovers how the humble British postal
system changed the course of British history. Alan started out as a
postman in London when he was 18, in 1968. He would eventually rise to
become general secretary of the Communication Workers Union before being
elected as an MP. So the post office changed his life, and set him on
the path to parliament.
In this film, he explores the rich
history of this great institution, and reveals how it has been a force
for progress in British society. The British post office led the world
in creating a cheap, accessible mail system. This was the first true
revolution in mass-communication, and it changed society.
With
the invention of the stamp - the famous Penny Black - in 1840, ordinary
people could suddenly afford to write to each other. Businesses thrived
thanks to mail order. And the volumes of mail skyrocketed - creating a
postal system that would at its peak employ 250,000 people.
To
tell this story - and to find out how the Royal Mail is adapting to the
21st century - Alan travels back in time to his old rounds, and into the
future at a giant automated sorting office. He is given an exclusive
tour of the Queen's private stamp collection to see the most precious
Penny Blacks in the world. He takes a ride on a Travelling Post Office -
one of the mail-sorting trains that used to criss-cross the nation
through the night and that were immortalised in the film Night Mail.
He
ventures beneath the streets of London to see the remains of the Royal
Mail's secret underground railway, and he meets some 21st-century
postmen and women to find out how the job has changed since he was doing
it back in the 1960s.
Alan loved being a postman. But in the age of email, is there a future for the post?
BBC iPlayer
