NATIONAL SHAME OF SUB-POSTMASTERS WRECKAGE
“Would it not be possible now for example for Government to declare in legislation that the sub-postmasters are presumed innocent and victims of the Post Office’s errors?” said Sherbhert in its first article on this subject in May 2021 The Post Office Criminal Scandal.
It has taken a TV programme, Alan Bates v The Post Office, for the scandal of injustice finally to move the establishment inhuman machine into real action. It aroused national disgust with the 20 years of destruction of lives enacted by Post Office personnel and Fujitsu, aided and abetted by a legal system, asleep at its wheel – judges, prosecutors and lawyers involved do not come out well. Even if Government should have acted much earlier, perhaps 20 years ago, at least Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seeking, in an unprecedented way through legislation, to overrule that foolish judiciary and exonerate at least those sub-postmasters convicted of crimes they did not commit. They are victims of at the very least moral and perhaps criminal wrongdoing of Post Office personnel and Fujitsu.
The Original Sherbhert Article questioned the lack of urgency in government and why the media were not chasing down this so obvious disgrace. Even now the strongest media focus has moved to identifying politicians, various ministers throughout this century who perhaps can be tainted with inaction or myopia – media more interested in soiling reputations than the real issues perhaps. But is it really ministers they should go after? Maybe one or two may be culpable but this is a saga spanning decades and ministers come and go after a year or two. The real continuity, the real knowledge of what was going on within the bureaucratic establishment was with the executive, senior civil servants involved with the case, who could have pressed hard for injustices to be dealt with perhaps?
Even now too the primary focus for recompense is on the convicted – around 700 – and that is important. But some 2400 sub-postmasters had their lives ruined or turned upside down. The story of Martin Griffiths who paid the Post Office £100,000 to get immunity, who was maligned and fired and committed suicide is referred to in the Original Sherbhert Article and epitomises the torture: he is one of the 1700 others. Will they get help? And even more astonishing facts are still emerging: Post Office investigators it is reported received a bonus for every conviction they achieved, illustrating a warped moral compass among senior management at least.
The UK taxpayer now has to do its duty by the sub-postmasters, and all down to cowardly people at the Post Office and Fujitsu who made mistakes but were afraid to admit them, rather destroying lives of hard-working people who ran sub-post offices to eke out a decent living. And the amount of taxpayer money required surely is substantially more than would have been the case had officials had the gumption and morality to stop the witch-hunt years ago. But why is there not a raging media demand that Fujitsu, who, according to the Courts, knew of the “bugs” in the Horizon system, be brought to book. See Sherbhert Sub-postmasters:the ongoing injustice. A wise Fujitsu management would voluntarily set aside a substantial fund to do the right thing and Government should demand they do. Or do we have to wait for the end of another Inquiry? At least Rishi Sunak is not hiding behind an Inquiry, the pathetic British way of delaying accountability for serious error. Will the senior management responsible at the relevant times at the Post Office at least have to stand up and be counted?
Is not courage to do the right thing, even if there are legal risks, what we want to see in Government? That might inspire younger generations that there is some fairness after all. Are we at last seeing some with the proposed legislation, even if decades late? Money aside, the victims need from all sources genuine remorse as well. A roll call of victims needs recording so that the shame is not forgotten, and such disgraceful injustice never repeated. This scandal needs a quick and just finale.
