⁶I am the way and the truth and the life’

John 14:6 – The Keys of the Kingdom Holy Bible

In the last few days, I’ve been watching the ITV series about the Post Office Horizon scandal: ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’. I rarely watch TV programmes, but made an exception for this one. This was partly because I remember being concerned about the issue, when I first heard about it, several years ago.

But I was mainly drawn to watch, because of the many moral, ethical and theological issues that have been raised by this issue.

For my overseas readers who don’t know about this story, ‘The Post Office Ltd’ is wholly owned by the UK government; it’s a publicly-owned corporation. Since 1999, a total of over 900 prosecutions have been brought, mostly by the organisation itself, against those who ran Post Offices (‘The Sub-Postmasters’). They were accused of stealing money, on the strength of financial reports produced by a new Fujitsu computer system. No other evidence was ever provided, but this didn’t stop the courts from finding many guilty. Some of these people served time in jail and some, tragically, took their own lives. Almost all had their lives and their personal finances wrecked, some of them over a period of more than 20 years. Ministers from all three main political parties and under every Prime Minister since Tony Blair have been involved and have vehemently denied responsibility. During this extended period, the Chairman of the Post Office (a man whom I have met several times and who used to live in my community) decided to withhold a government-initiated review of the case, from his own Board, apparently on the advice of Post Office lawyers. Much later, in 2021 an appeal was brought by over 500 of the accused. The Court of Appeal overturned the previous decisions and judged that the computer system was faulty and was capable of being manipulated, despite numerous claims to the contrary over many years. The issue of compensation has still not been completed, other than in about 10% of the cases.

The reason the case is back in the public eye is, amazingly, because of the TV programme.

Those who are interested in more detail, can read this excellent summary by a barrister, which was written in the middle of 2022:

http://www.legalfutures.co.uk/blog/the-post-office-smoke-and-mirrors-and-its-all-just-got-a-bit-worse

I’m of course well aware that the TV series is a dramatization. But what should we say, for example, about the real fact that one of those involved, Noel Thomas from the island of Anglesey (hardly the epicentre of UK financial fraud and mismanagement) was convicted in 2006 but had to wait fifteen years to have his conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal? He was fought to a standstill by a rapacious Post Office for all those years. Maybe the TV programmes have struck a chord because so few of us feel we could withstand a relentless foe trying to deprive us of everything that we had ever owned, including our personal reputation and over such an extended period of time? I’m certain I wouldn’t be mentally strong enough to deal with this.

We have to admit that we don’t know all the truth about these cases; the complexity of the detail is huge. But the following are some of the wider moral issues that I think are raised by the cases brought against these people:

• When and why did we decide to abandon the longstanding legal principle (in England and Wales) that those charged in criminal cases are ‘innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt’?

• During the course of my lifetime, the drift has become inexorable towards organisations feeling that the only thing that matters is that the organisation itself survives and that this is more important than the well-being of the people employed by it, or those it’s supposed to serve?

•  When and how did we adopt a position where so many of us are smugly certain that we’re right and others are not just wrong, but plain evil, if they disagree with us?

•  Why is there a tendency to believe that technology is always right, and people are always wrong? And what message does this send us about our future in the brave new world of AI?

• Why does no-one care about the truth any longer? Why are we so comfortable with (it sometimes seems to me) everyone lying about everything? What persuaded us to sacrifice the truth on the altar of our own self-interest?

• What does this saga tell us about the ‘gravy-train’ that ensures that once you have a job at the highest level, however badly things turn out, you can always guarantee being picked up by another large organisation on yet another eye-watering salary? And why are the guilty never properly pursued?

These issues are important enough to be given more than a cursory examination, which is why I’ve decided to cover them in two blogs over the next few weeks. They challenge us about the moral degradation of our society and our public life. And although this is a British story, I regret having to say that most, if not all, countries are now afflicted in a similar way.

And we surely need to reflect on the fact that this massive moral degradation has taken place at the same time that we’ve abandoned all Christian values?

Merciful Father, look down on us with compassion and forgive us for the fact that we seem to have lost any ability to look at others with the same compassion. Amen