To the widely voiced reasons to admire Alan Bates, the heroically dogged leader of the campaign to achieve justice for the victims of the Post Office scandal, let me add another. The man is the master of understatement. When the government was finally impelled to announce that it will legislate to quash hundreds of wrongful convictions, he remarked: “It’s about time.” After the wicked things that were inflicted on the casualties of this scandal, most of us would have inserted at least a “bloody” into that response.
This swamp of malignancy has been devouring innocent people for a quarter of a century. Twenty-five years have passed since the Post Office started its vicious persecution of branch managers by falsely accusing more than 3,000 of crimes that included fraud and theft. The Post Office was the real thief, and not just of the money extorted from those upon whom it preyed. It ruined reputations, livelihoods and health. Marriages were wrecked, family homes lost. Many were bankrupted and the Post Office stole the liberty of the 236 who were imprisoned. The term “miscarriage of justice” is much too tepid to describe this shocker. It was a perversion of justice.
