Hastings Helps Kathleen Get Justice
HIP reports on the hard won justice for a local victim of the Post Office scandal.
Kathleen Crane, 69, a widowed, former Sub-Postmaster caught up in the Post Office Scandal, has thanked people in Hastings for helping to start the process which ended in her victory at the Appeal Court in London last month (25 January), when her conviction was overturned. Lord Justice Holroyde put it emphatically, “her conviction was an abuse of process”. But who was doing the abuse?
Katy Crane onstage at the Pig with Nick Wallis
This was the first such appeal since the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office gripped the nation on New Year’s day. It is not widely known, however, that it was a meeting in a Hastings pub that started Kathleen on her road to justice.
THE FIGHT BACK
In a sold-out event last May, organised by Rosie Brocklehurst, at ‘The Pig’ on Hastings seafront – provided free by manager Solomon and also attended by Nick Wallis, journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal – Kathy’s daughter Katy Crane, (who trained as a children’s nurse at the Conquest) spoke about her family’s fourteen-year anguish. That evening, Nick Wallis put her in touch with a campaigning barrister, Flora Page, who worked pro bono for seven months. The fight back had begun.
Kathleen Crane who, with her sadly now deceased husband Bob, invested life savings to run the Old Town Post Office in Eastbourne, was shamed and cowed by the wrongful conviction in 2010 at Lewes Crown Court. She never spoke about it. She was obliged to work in a care home to support her two daughters and regularly had to suffer humiliation in admitting to being a convicted felon in enhanced disclosure checks. With no remaining money for a lawyer – after paying £20,000 in fines and repayment to the Post Office, for an entirely bogus ‘shortfall’ – Kathleen could see no way out. With apparent almost casual indifference, the Post Office had wrecked one woman’s life. It was, of course, as we now know, only a small part of a much wider systematic pattern of legal destruction of so many lives.
Nick Wallis sent out a newsletter to many thousands of supporters recently saying how moved he had been when listening to Kathleen’s case at the Appeal Court. He praised local campaigner and “ force of nature” Rosie Brocklehurst for organising the event in the Hastings pub which had put Kathleen on the route to redemption.
MIXED EMOTIONS
Clearly the whole scandal has left the family with mixed emotions. Kathleen wept in court, but outside she raised her arms in defiant triumph. Her daughter captured some of the anger they feel towards the upper hierarchy of the Post Office: with regard to those highly paid and as yet unpunished people she had this to say: “Someone should serve jail time.”
But, she was also full of praise for local people who have rallied round. Reflecting on the way the Hastings meeting kick-started something she commented, “That night our family began a journey which ended up changing our lives. We are so grateful to all the Hastings people who supported us that magical, hopeful night.”
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