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Making culture tell the truth about our class-divided society
The remarkable, campaigning and politically potent drama Mr Bates v the Post Office was a rare glimpse of what we could have if the working class punches its weight in cultural production, argue RON BROWN and MIKE QUILLE
REAL-LIFE STARS: (Left to right) Christopher Stonehouse, Pauline Stonehouse, Gillian Harding and Gregory Harding outside the the Royal Courts of Justice, London. The story of the wrongly convicted postmasters was turned into a four-part British drama series by ITV

“HAVE you seen Mr Bates v the Post Office,” people ask me. “Yes, I have,” I say. And if you haven’t watched it yet — go and watch it.

The scandal, long exposed but brought forcefully to the country’s TV screens at the start of the year, shows no sign of going away. The government stands accused of trying to slow down compensation payments, the former Post Office boss Paula Vennells was stripped of her CBE this week, and the very future of the Post Office as a state agency is now up for debate.

The four-part series, first broadcast in January on ITV, is a dramatisation of a gross injustice. Hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft, false accounting and fraud, due to a faulty computer system called Horizon. It’s also about the long collective struggle that its victims waged for justice, led by subpostmaster Alan Bates.

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