'Mr Bates v The Post Office triggered public rage - and it cannot end here'

11 January 2024 , 17:51

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Cast of Mr Bates v The Post Office

People power humbled the Establishment – the state, the law and big business – over the Post Office injustice scandal.

Tory ministers were compelled to announce new laws to exonerate and compensate wrongly convicted sub-postmasters and mistresses. Good, but it will take longer to restore public trust in the Post Office, the judicial system and the ability of politics to deliver justice.

This scandal goes to the very heart of relations between the citizen and the state, and the people with power in Whitehall and Westminster have been found wanting. It took public rage triggered by a brilliant TV drama to force them to act, but things cannot end there. Mr Bates vs The Post Office lit a bonfire under official complacency and refusal to listen to ordinary people.

The mood was already tinder-dry. It’s been building for years, manifested in the fight for truth over the Hillsborough tragedy, the mood for action over public service pay, and the popular revolt over the shutdown of railway booking offices. I believe it also fed resentment against being ignored that fuelled Brexit, especially in the Red Wall working-class areas.

And I see it today in the hundreds of thousands signing a demand for a general election now, to show the metropolitan Establishment what we think of them. Let’s make it a million! Britain is seething, and the Post Office scandal has given vent to our rage. It won’t be assuaged just by giving legal redress to the wronged victims, vital though that is.

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There has to be a reckoning, because they just don’t bloody care what we think. They shut down our banks, force us to use robot tills and drive us online to do virtually everything. Earth is fast becoming the Planet of the Apps, a computer-coercion society. The bullying has to stop. We need a revolt for the ­sub-postmasters in every walk of life.

Paul Routledge