The Stamp of Innocence
by Aled Gwyn Jôb
Published by Troubador
rrp £11.99 at Bookbuster
review by Tim Barton
The ‘Post Office scandal’ has dominated the news for a few weeks now, yet it goes back a quarter of a century! That incredibly long-running series of injustices is one of the reasons it is so scandalous. I imagine most of those reading this will know the gist of the sorry tale. Amongst the salient details are the facts that well over 900 sub-postpersons were prosecuted for stealing from their employer; that although ‘privatised’, the sole shareholder is the state; that a significant proportion of those accused were jailed; that many more had their lives and standing in their communities wrecked; that a few committed suicide; that the problem was an IT bug that was denied despite negative feedback from day one.
The software issue involved a program called ‘Horizon’, from one of the largest contractors, Fujitsu. In November 2021, Karl Flinders wrote in Computer Weekly that “the behaviour of Post Office senior management during the Horizon scandal was so egregious that the supplier of the faulty software that triggered it has escaped a large financial penalty,” clearly implying they deserved one, and that “the case is a warning shot to IT suppliers that they should ensure that their systems are not misused by corporate customers”.
Nick Wallis, author of The Great Post Office Scandal, regularly hears from people caught up in the mess caused by the dodgy software, its lack of security, and the horrendously high-handed way the PO has treated it’s workers. This week, his email newsletter includes this sorry tale:
“Hi, I was a Subpostmaster 2002-06. I was taken for £5,000 on the day the office closed. The previous day had balanced, then overnight it was £5k down. The closing audit showed it as stamps, though no delivery of the said stamps were on record, and the office only held a stock of a few hundred pounds worth at any time. The Post Office auditor told me the system was wrong, but I was lucky it was only £5k. He said he knew of far worse cases. He tried to talk to the two Post Office officials who had turned up demanding the £5k before the audit had even started, but he told me they would not listen, I was to pay up or I was going to be arrested for fraud.”
It is this kind of personal testimony that gives the greatest insight into how awful the PO has behaved, and that has engendered the high level of anger we feel. Aled Jôb’s book is subtitled ‘the inspirational story of Noel and Sian Thomas’ and features on its cover a post office style stamp with the words ‘surviving the post office travesty’. Noel was sub-postmaster on Anglesey, and was jailed for purportedly stealing money. His daughter led a decades-long campaign to get justice for Noel, seeing legal success, finally, only in April 2021, and fighting since to receive compensation. This detailed personal history of this case is a great and necessary insight into the tragedy of this astonishing affront to justice, and a warning to all who trust the security and integrity of the IT systems we rely upon every day, from social media to banking, as well as a warning to distrust anonymous corporate entities and unaccountable state bodies.
The hasty scrabble to do something now the story has finally broken into the public consciousness is, after 25 years, itself slightly scandalous. My view of our inglorious PM’s high-profile ‘doing something’ is quite cynical, he is doing badly in the polls, and an election is coming this year, so naturally this is a factor in his way of dealing with the issue. But, too, I think his promise to address the accused postal workers legal cases in bulk is not simply a way to speed up the terribly long and apparently ineffectual CPS case-by-case approach – one which has seen only 93 convictions overturned as of the third week in January 2024 – but also yet another Tory assault on the independence of the judiciary. This follows on from Johnson’s attempts to prorogue Parliament and the subsequent backlash from our highest courts who properly deferred to our Bill of Rights, which last spring saw him enter a Bill that included amendments to our constitution that in effect makes Britain an ‘executive sovereignty’. It has also led, with added momentum as fallout from the benighted ‘Rwanda’ scheme, to a Tory assault on the Supreme Court and the Human Rights Act, once again aided by the propagandist right-wing press.
Nevertheless, we would all like to see appropriate action and compensation for those caught up in the scandal. All the more so, after hearing the moving personal testimonies of victims such as Noel, their families, and communities. Many have had an even worse time of it. Not all families held together, not all communities backed their members: what would yours do for you?
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