WE all knew something terrible had happened at the Post Office.
We knew there had been a computer failure that led to hundreds of innocent people being prosecuted for alleged fraud.
We’d read that it was the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice.
But it has taken a television dramatisation to make me – and I’ve no doubt millions of others – fully appreciate the callous disregard for justice by senior figures at the Post Office, and the impact the scandal had on those poor people who were wrongly accused.
Around 700 were prosecuted for alleged theft, fraud and false accounting – 230 of them imprisoned. Four took their own lives.
All because Post Office investigators, backed by their managers, refused to believe the word of human beings – not a couple, but hundreds – over supposedly infallible technology. Just like the Titanic couldn’t sink, the Horizon IT system was fool-proof.
But how could it be allowed to go on for so long in view of the numbers coming before the courts? And why, 24 years after those wrongful convictions, are so many still awaiting compensation? Indeed, more than 60 have passed away without receiving a penny.
This country was quick to conclude they were guilty but unforgivably slow to compensate them for their shattered lives. That needs sorting out now, before it’s too late for any more victims.
Remember, the Post Office is owned by our Government, with the scandal exacerbated by our criminal justice system, and it is the Government – the country – that has to put this right without further delay.
There should also be fresh criminal investigations into the actions of those who perverted the court of justice, for that is surely what they did.
So, well done to ITV, the writers and the cast for giving us Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, and brilliantly telling a hugely important story that has stark lessons for us all at the dawn of the age of Artificial Intelligence. It is a reminder that blind faith in technology over people is extremely dangerous.
Haven’t we all worked for those who insist the computer must be right?. The computer knows best. It’s the users – “the dinosaurs” – who are to blame. I certainly have in the world of newspapers.
Of course, we must embrace technology, but not blindly, because what makes us human is our ability to be moral, to have empathy, and to know right from wrong.