“The only way of settling this dispute is by sitting round the negotiating table.London is an international city with a world-class postal service, but it is funded by paying our members third-world wages,” he said.A spokesman for the Royal Mail said that the organisation’s existing offer – which would give employees in inner London £3,784 and their colleagues in the suburbs £2,667 – was “final” He said: “Further industrial action will achieve nothing … Only one in 20 postmen and women walked through picket lines in Royal Mail offices in London.Post office managers calculated that the strike by staff over London weighting cost the organisation £10m. Management said a week might be needed to clear the backlog.Billy Hayes, general secretary of the CWU, said yesterday’s stoppage by 20,000 postal workers was well supported, and that his members would take further action if necessary. Leaders of a postal strike in London yesterday are expected to stage further 24-hour walkouts to coincide with stoppages by tens of thousands of council workers.
Representatives of the Communications Workers Union (CWU) and the public service union Unison, who are campaigning for a £4,000 London weighting for their members, are likely to co-ordinate further industrial action, including a walkout on 17 October, to put pressure on employers.

Mr Hamill said: “The ceremonial aspect of what we do is still regarded as being private.”. All we ask our members is that they believe in a Supreme Being.”In that case, surely it would not be a problem for The Independent to witness proceedings? Nothing doing. Despite the preponderance of white middle-class males outside the Albert Hall, organisers also believe that their level of ethnic membership is in line with the general population – 7.5 per cent – although no accurate figures are collected.John Hamill, the United Grand Lodge’s head of communications, said: “We are diverse and open organisation with members from across the community. Ten of Britain’s 43 police forces refused to take part.A Home Office spokesman said: “There are no current plans for compulsory disclosure. October 1st 2003.”The largest gathering of Britain’s freemasons in more than a decade was a suitably discrete affair. To the untrained eye it looked like a convention of dry cleaners – thousands of middle-aged men in dark suits milling around outside a London landmark all carrying identical plastic suit carriers.
The only clue to the true identity of the 5,000 individuals who squeezed into the Royal Albert Hall yesterday was the gold lettering printed on the side of each of the dry cleaning-style blue bags: “Metropolitan Grand Lodge and Metropolitan Grand Chapter of London. “Similar exercises should be done for other ethnic groups,” he said.

In total these groups made up 3.2 per cent of the UK population. But significant black populations have existed in Britain for 400 years and among those proposed for the top 100 are the 19th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the 18th- century author and former slave Olaudah Equiano and the Chartist William Cuffay.Cynics might regard the exercise as an attempt by Mr Livingstone to gain the support of black voters, but Muhammad Anwar, of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick, backed the initiative. “I think it’s important for people to know that my ancestors were more than just slaves,” he said.According to the 2001 census, there were 565,876 people who described themselves as black Caribbean, 485,227 black Africans and 97,585 black other A further 677,117 defined themselves as “mixed”. “I would be very hesitant about claiming him as a black Briton,” he said. In some respects, the advisory top 100 – which includes the Hot Chocolate singer Errol Brown and Floella Benjamin, who presented the BBC’sPlay School – is an indication of how few black Britons have held positions of real influence.But the Mayor’s adviser on race, Lee Jasper, (who is also on the proposed list) said the project would be an important resource for schools in recognising the contribution to society of black communities.Michael Eboda, editor of the New Nation newspaper, said the contest (in which the public can cast votes on the internet) would help to change the perceptions of both black and white people.