No Hiding Place

Further to my post of a couple of days ago, I thought I'd just amplify my point regarding the crime(s) committed by agents of Post Office Ltd., Fujitsu and the Government, and the appropriate, commensurate action that needs to be taken at the earliest hour. Andrew Rawnsley, in his excellent piece in last week's Observer, uses the nicety 'condign' to describe the necessary punishment for those crimes, for crimes they be. Oxford Languages defines the word thus: Condign: (of punishment or retribution) appropriate to the crime or wrongdoing; fitting and deserved. “…condign punishment was rare when the criminal was a man of high social standing…”

That last rider of a quote adequately sums up the nub of the whole affair, and others like it that are currently matters of public concern, such as Hillsborough, Windrush and the infected blood scandal. The urgency to act against the "great and the good" - a term which should always be used advisedly, now more than ever before - is almost always lacking in the establishment and their authorities, until irrefutable public evidence is placed in seventy-two point headlines across every newspaper in the land, giving them no place to hide. That evidence is now writ large and the genie is out of the bottle. It is time for the people "of high social standing" to be brought forth and tried by juries of their peers in courts of law.

That the postmasters were defrauded of reputation, standing and money is now a matter of public record. That the agents of Post Office Ltd., Fujitsu and various UK governments over the last twenty-five years - no party is exempt from blame here, either through sins either of commission or wilful neglect - is now plain, publicly-known fact, and no weasel words or any amount of public enquiry squirming can hide it. Defrauded. And the agents of that fraud knowingly and wilfully colluded in its execution, ergo a conspiracy to defraud has to be the only way to frame the collective wrongdoings of the actors involved. 

The standard definition of conspiracy is accepted as that given in a judgement by Lord Dilhorne in Scott vs Metropolitan Police Commissioner, 1975, stating that: "...it is clearly the law that an agreement by two or more by dishonesty to deprive a person of something which is his or to which he is or would be entitled and an agreement by two or more by dishonesty to injure some proprietary right of his, suffices to constitute the offence of conspiracy to defraud...", a definition fitting the Post Office scandal like a glove. Many, many people were actors in this affair, from the very apex of the organisations involved, down to operatives in more mundane echelons. Who shoulders the bulk of the blame is a matter for the courts, judge and jury to decide, but one thing is for certain, as Rawnsley said in closing his piece: "...justice will not be properly done until there is condign punishment of all those responsible for inflicting devastating cruelty and hardship on so many innocent people."

Arrests need to be made of those suspected of having any part in the intentions or actions of this conspiracy, regardless of rank or status, and whether past or present. Nothing less would right or proper, and would yet again smack of the "great and the good" closing ranks on the hoi polloi. Condign punishment for the perpetrators of this heinous affront to justice and decency should include lengthy jail terms and hefty fines; which would set, just for once, a decent precedent we can all work to, and maybe, just maybe, make a start on repairing the trust of the public in government, politics and power in this archipelago.