JUSTICE demands that the hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses held to ransom by the Post Office be compensated and their convictions overthrown.
The failure of Post Office bosses to ensure that the Fujitsu corporation’s Horizon software system was fit for purpose — and its serial failure to take effective action when the evidence was that a serious problem existed — is an indictment of privatisation.
The human dimension to this crisis of capital accumulation and corporate malfeasance drew in the families of 700 people, saw the lives of thousands blighted by conviction, imprisonment and humiliation, the loss of huge amounts of their money sequestered by the Post Office, the loss of homes, livelihoods and reputations. For a few it ended their lives in tragedy.
Tainted evidence arising from the faulty computer system enabled Post Office bosses to prosecute the victims for the crimes of theft and fraud. For people whose livelihood depended on strict and accurate accounting, the mystifying disappearances of money nominally in their charge created an ocean of anxiety and depression.
The success of ITV’s programme in bringing out the human dimension to this drama has, at last, compelled our billionaire Premier to promise action. But even the most far-reaching action will not expunge from an aroused collective memory the years of delay and diversion that this permanent conspiracy of political power and corporate profits entails.
This is the defining characteristic of our political system and it cannot be tackled while every area of public provision — of utilities, energy, transport, health, housing and education — is infested with the drive for private profit.
The contrast between the complacency of the bosses and bureaucrats who presided over these prosecutions with the psychological damage inflicted on these victims of corporate power is a powerful indictment of the class domination that big business allied to government exercises over working people.
The present media narrative that insists on the importance of ministers, Post Office bosses and Fujitsu executives apologise is a diversion. Vince Cable, who as business minister in the Tory-Lib Dem government oversaw the privatisation of the Post Office, avoids offering a personal apology but generously advances the idea that all ministers involved could do so.
For politicians of his kind, words are cheap. Practical action to lift the convictions not honeyed words is needed to aid the victims — only 11 have so far been exonerated.
As a first step Fujitsu must compensate the victims. The Post Office bosses responsible must be held to account. Keir Starmer is right to demand that the Post Office be stripped of its role in prosecutions and the appeal process. The ministers in the various governments that failed to act over this scandal must be held to account and that includes the Liberal Democrat Ed Davey who was postal affairs minister in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government.
The call by the Lords Arbuthnot and Falconer for Fujitsu to pay out is buttressed by a call for a full statutory public inquiry.
Labour should move beyond its present position to draw the logical conclusions from this latest privatisation scandal. Private ownership that carries with it the drive for profit cannot be reconciled with the public interest.
Every pound of profit is a pound privately appropriated and diverted from public service provision. A Post Office and Royal Mail free from the profit imperative should be the foundation of a vital public service that serves every community throughout the land. As a bank it could provide a profitable public service where capitalist banks have abandoned communities.
As a natural monopoly its parcel distribution service could introduce economies of scale that would drive the big business behemoths out of existence.
Private ownership is as redundant at the royal appellation. Britain needs a People’s Mail and a popular Post Office.
