Have you ever peeled an unstamped stamp from an envelope and reused it? Then the Post Office has a word for you: fraudster.
Royal Mail, which ran the post office until 2012, warns on its website: 'Anyone who knowingly reuses stamps for stamps is committing fraud.' This is a criminal offense subject to prosecution.
But 25 years ago, when the Post Office's computer system began to fail so badly that many sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses went bankrupt, Royal Mail – so strict in penalizing the smallest rule breaches by customers – refused to listen or investigate. honestly.
As a defiant sub-postmaster running a shop in Llandudno, North Wales, Toby Jones summed it up in a testy speech at the start of Mr Bates vs The Post Office: 'They don't call me a thief. They wouldn't dare. They say somehow money has disappeared from this branch, which it hasn't, and I have to pay it back, which I won't do.'
This major new four-part drama, which airs nightly and follows a documentary on Friday, highlights just three stories out of hundreds
A stunned young officer, caught between an irate Alan Bates and an unsympathetic auditor, asked if a crime had actually been committed.
“Well,” the man behind the counter said angrily, “Post Office Limited is stealing my livelihood, my shop, my job, my house, my savings and my good name.”
He wasn't the only one. Between 2000 and 2014, an average of one sub-postmaster or sub-postmistress per week was prosecuted by the post office for theft, false accounting and other violations. Of the total 736, some were imprisoned, many went bankrupt and all suffered terrible stress and public shame.
Yet Royal Mail and computer partner Horizon – a system developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu – maintained for years that these were isolated cases. In an era before social media, many of those accused had no idea that other stores were experiencing the same problems and assumed that they were somehow to blame.
This major new four-part drama, which airs nightly and follows a documentary on Friday, highlights just three stories of those hundreds. In Hampshire, Jo Hamilton (Monica Dolan) spent hours on the Horizon helpline, patiently following instructions and watching the imaginary discrepancies pile up.
She called to say that the computer expected her to put in $2,032.67 more than she had received last week. She re-entered the numbers as she was told and saw the deficit double on the screen to over €4,000.
“It'll work out,” the voice on the helpline told her. But that didn't happen, and soon Jo had depleted her savings and maxed out her credit cards, trying to bridge the gap. She only dared to tell her husband and her mother when they were confronted with a new mortgage on the house.
In Bridlington, Yorkshire, Lee Castleton (Will Mellor) made the mistake of thinking that if he called in the auditors they would realize that the £25,858.95 he was accused of embezzling was the result of computer errors. Instead, Royal Mail banned him from his own store and sued him for the money. His children were bullied at school and taunted that their father was a common thief.
“You just have to trust the British legal system,” Lee told himself. “Tell the truth and everything will be fine.” However, that was not the case: he lost the case and had to pay £321,000 in costs.
The Ny Breaking waged a long campaign to win justice for the suspects, something this series has so far failed to acknowledge. What's also not mentioned is that Adam Crozier, CEO of Royal Mail Group between 2003 and 2010, later became CEO of ITV.
However, this Gwyneth Hughes screenplay conveys the overwhelming fear of facing a bureaucratic juggernaut that refuses to acknowledge the possibility of being wrong about something. With unlimited legal tools at its disposal to silence almost any individual (with the heroic exception of Mr Bates), Royal Mail was all-powerful, ruthless and heartless.
That inhuman power was symbolized by the convoy of black sedans that stopped in front of every national sub-post office at the start of each audit.
“When I first got legal advice,” says Mr Bates, “I was warned that if I tried to take them to court, even if I won, the Post Office would keep appealing until my money ran out .' That's horrifying, cruel and all too believable. But the drama also reflects the decency of Britain's sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, the quintessential shopkeepers who once formed the core of so many communities.
They are now a rare breed and may soon be extinct, as Royal Mail does. If any of them had tampered with the books, it would have seemed shocking and unlikely. That 736 is being prosecuted defies all rational belief.
Because the victims were so well-known and beloved, the three in this retelling win our immediate sympathy. After Jo Hamilton is dragged into the dock and harassed into pleading guilty to an offense that wasn't her fault, half the town turns out to cheer her on. The local pastor declares from the witness stand: 'We all love her. People confide in her. We trust her, and we just can't believe this was all on purpose.”
Watching that scene, with a lump in our throats as the judge let Jo walk free, every Mail reader must have cheered too.