How a TV Drama Helped Shine a Light on One of the Biggest Injustices in Modern British History

By Kayleigh Donaldson | TV | January 10, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | TV | January 10, 2024 |

Great Britain started off 2024 with a TV drama that gripped the nation. Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a miniseries airing on ITV that brought to life a disgrace that ruined lives and left a stain across one of the country’s sturdiest institutions. The drama, which aired over four nights and starred Toby Jones in the title role, dramatized what is now euphemistically referred to as the Post Office Scandal.

Over the course of several years, hundreds of postmasters working under the banner of Post Office Limited were arrested and charged with fraud and theft. They were accused of stealing from their own communities, lining their pockets with the hard-earned cash of the poor and elderly. Some went to jail. Over 700 subpostmasters (the self-employed business operators of each local branch) were wrongly convicted between 1999 and 2015. But they were all innocent. The company’s software, known as Horizon, was faulty and had been since the beginning. Almost immediately, some subpostmasters noticed the new system reporting false shortfalls, but the Post Office insisted their system was fine. Many who brought the problems to light were accused of theft themselves.

The Post Office then proceeded to take legal action against hundreds of its subpostmasters. Because they had the ability to act as a private prosecutor, they could not only avoid the culpability that comes with being represented by the state, but they were able to withhold evidence from defendants that they knew the Horizon system wasn’t working. They were able to do this despite being wholly owned by the British government. Time and time again, they got convictions and were able to seize the assets of the wrongly accused. Dozens of people lost their jobs. Many had to declare bankruptcy. Their reputations were ruined and many were shunned from their own communities. Some died by suicide.

In 2009, amid the scandal and with the Post Office still claiming their computing system was sound, Computer Weekly broke the story about problems with the Horizon software. They diligently reported on the case even as much of the mainstream media did not. Horizon, developed by British hardware company ICL Pathway and owned by the Japanese brand Fujitsu, was a mess from the beginning. The goal to computerize the payment of benefits at post offices and replace paper with swipe cards was intended to reduce benefit fraud (a forever common battering ram against the poor by the Conservative Party.) Nick Wallis, who wrote a book about the scandal, interviewed a former Fujitsu employee who claimed that ‘Everybody in the building by the time I got there knew it [Horizon] was a bag of shit. Everybody. It was a prototype that had been bloated and hacked together afterwards for several years, and then pushed screaming and kicking out of the door. It should never have seen the light of day. Never.’

Alan Bates, a former subpostmaster who had noted the issues with Horizon before the Post Office terminated his contract, set up Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) in 2009 to seek retribution for what had happened under the company’s watch. It took until 2017 for Bates and his community to get their day in court. It was an expensive fight, as High Court battles are some of the costliest in the British legal system (and dragging the case out to run up costs is a common tactic against the poorer side of the battle — see anyone trying to sue the tabloids for phone hacking.) The Post Office fought tooth and nail to defend themselves, with some even accusing the Government of trying to lend them a helping hand on the matter. Bates eventually won, paving the way for other victims to have their voices heard and get their convictions overturned.

It’s not that this case was necessarily unknown to most Brits by the time that Mr. Bates vs the Post Office aired. It had been covered by a number of journalists and on shows like Panorama, a major news programme on the BBC. Yet the best reporting came from Computer Weekly of all places, and the sheer extent of the problem wasn’t fully understood by many. Again, we’re talking over 700 workers who were accused of fraud and theft, and those people were all told that they were the problem. They weren’t made aware of how many others across the UK had issues.

What this drama has done, however, is drive home the palpable trauma of being falsely accused of a crime. Toby Jones, one of our finest character actors, has the perfect face for conveying the burden of such claims, of the Kafka-esque nightmare of trying to find a human voice amid an inescapable cycle of bureaucratic apathy. These subpostmasters were all normal people, many of them working class and some immigrants who thought the Post Office would be a good route to personal and communal success. In one scene, one worker watches as the financial deficit that the Post Office claims is her fault doubles on-screen before her eyes. The sheer inhuman scale of it would feel right at home in a Black Mirror episode, and not just because of the faulty computers. Honestly, it ends up being difficult to watch because the problem is so obvious yet nobody in power listens. They just prosecute and move on.

Since the miniseries concluded, the government has been forced into action. Today, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans to submit a bill that would overturn wrongful convictions of subpostmasters. The Scottish government says it will discuss its ongoing contracts with Fujitsu, which remains a powerful player among governmental tech contracts. More than 100 new potential victims came forward and sought legal action following the series. Paula Vennell, the former head of the Post Office who pushed for these many convictions, recently gave back her CBE, although questions remain as to how she was even rewarded one in 2019 while the likes of Bates had fully exposed her ineptitude.

The British Post Office scandal is the kind of miscarriage of justice that will leave a permanent stain on an already shredded nation. It’s a case of a multi-headed hydra of power and influence covering its own tracks to attack hundreds of vulnerable, primarily working-class people and wreck countless communities across the country. That so much of the press overlooked the story until it became impossible to do so is another dark mark against their name. ITV’s drama did what great entertainment does and reminded everyone that the pain felt by perfectly normal and familiar human beings is not something that a court case or compensation, as well-deserved as it would be, can truly repair. The series and the subpostmasters’ tireless campaigning bring to mind a quote from Decca Mitford: You may not be able to change the world but you can at least embarrass the guilty.