Do you think if the sub-Post Masters/Mistresses had a Mumsnet they could have fought back?

[disappearingfish]

Like everyone I'm heartbroken and furious for the way the Post Office treated those poor women and men. A lot of the stories describe their sense of shame, how they thought they must be stupid and therefore they kept the problems secret from family and friends.

It struck me that lots of women come to Mumsnet to talk about embarrassing or shameful or difficult problems that they feel they can't discuss IRL, only to find that they are not alone. It made me wonder that if a similar forum had connected the SPMs where they could have shared the problems they were having they could have challenged the PO with more evidence earlier on.

I hope they get the compensation they deserve very, very soon.

I bet some of them were/are on MN. The issue is isolation. You can imagine if there was a post MN casing I’ve been arrested/convicted of stealing from the post office but I’m innocent. No one would have believed them other people would have been afraid to post.

Information is power.
The internet has been awful for many things - but it is so good for bringing people together and to provide information.

Of course, it depends on if people are getting the right information and not living in an echo chamber - but I think in this case, it would have been so good.

Social media would have helped as well.

Yes, agree that people with convictions are always treated with suspicion, but if they shared details about their balances being wrong, or the terrible helpline advice then it might have sparked some responses.

Especially if it was anonymous.

I can imagine the legal threats that would have been made if they contributed to any forum.

Agree @LlynTegid the PO were ferocious in their dealings with them.

Just the internet/social media would've made the outcome very different. They'd have been posting on fb/twitter about it.

I thought during the dramatisation on ITV, Alan Bates had tried or even managed to set up a website for SPM to join and use (he went on a course to learn how to build a website) and I thought one of the smaller story lines (and I realise it was a dramatisation and didn't have to stick to the facts 100% of the time) was that he had to shut it down and the email address used to communicate between the SPM with these issues caused by Horizon.

I don't think it would have worked knowing just how much power the Post Office had and still has. I mean how they are able to bring charges and bring people to court without the assistance of the police force is crazy. I don't think I know of any other business where they can be judge, jury and executioner.

It's truly shocking how it took an ITV drama over Christmas to put a rocket under those involved in so many miscarriages of justice. Over 20 years these people who are just like you and me have had fingers pointed at them and they hadn't done a single thing wrong.

It's fucking disgraceful that the money that these SPM had to pay for the assumed losses in their accounts cannot be traced. The money cannot be traced. They believe that it's gone into the general accounts of the Post Office but they simply do not know. This is a business that deals in money. I don't know why more people aren't outraged by that.

It's the biggest pile of stinking manure I've ever learned about. Stinks to high heaven. I hope every single SPM gets proper compensation. They absolutely deserve it.

@LookItsMeAgain hear, hear.

But MN is anonymous, and we know that certain people have tried to sue posters but they are good at hiding their identity on here.

No one on here would believe them sadly

The internet would have meant that people would connect and talk to each other a lot easier, so action and a resolution could have happened quicker. People wouldn’t be suffering alone.

Private Eye, Computer Weekly and The Register have covered this for well over a decade.

It's not that it wasn't reported. It's that no one was listening.

People need to remember that Lord Denning - the UKs top judge - once rejected an appeal from the Birmingham 6, as it risked the police being found guilty of criminal behaviour, which could not happen.

https://www.mactheknife.org/Quotations/Appalling_Vista.html

So that's the establishment mindset - the state, the government and the courts can do no wrong. Now shutup and say thank you for your gruel.

That no one listened is a really important but slightly separate point. If each SPM could discuss in-depth the problems they were having with other SPMs who were having the same problems they might have been able to push back against the Post Office a bit more effectively.

I'm thinking of threads on here where parents of children with special needs, or people with elderly relatives have tapped into really expert knowledge from others who have gone through the same and know the magic words to say to schools or local authorities to unlock the help they need.

The issues started from horizons roll out in 1999. A quick Google tells me MN started in 2000. So the forum was available.
Private eye started reporting on the story in 2009. In 2009 Alan Bates set up the justice for postmasters for sub masters from all around the country. MPs started campaigning in 2012. The post office just didn't care.

All the top brass at the PO should be paraded through the streets in tumbrills while an angry mob throws rotten cabbages and excrement at them.

They knew. They absolutely knew. They fucking knew all along. All of it. They knew while they watched innocent post masters went to prison. They knew when they read the reports that innocent post masters had committed suicide in despair.

How could they look themselves in the mirror? How could they tuck their children in bed knowing they had stood by and let innocent people go to prison? How could they enjoy a meal, drink a glass of wine, celebrate a birthday, go on holiday knowing they had looked away when innocent people killed themselves?

They knew. They are culpable. They are guilty. They should be charged with corporate manslaughter.

Did anyone see "QI" last week.

Apparently "Dundee United" is an insult towards the less bright in Nigeria. (Who knew).

If "Fujitsuing it up" enters the lexicon of the UK - to be defined down the decades in dictionaries referring to this despicable company, it would be some cosmic justice.

I would have said the same of the Post Office. However a friend has pointed out they hardly had a reputation to lose.

This.

Also, Mumsnet would have taken it all down and deleted the postmistresses’ accounts anyway. Mumsnet don’t like people saying impolite things about the litigious…

No comment

I don't think it would have helped to share here regarding legal aspects as a lot of the advice on here is erroneous.

I do think that it would have helped immensely had they known that they weren't the only ones experiencing problems with Horizon. Being told repeatedly by the Post Office that they were the only sub-postmaster to have had problems was key to prosecutions.

I don't think it would have helped to share here regarding legal aspects as a lot of the advice on here is erroneous.

You misspelled "utter bollocks"

Even if no threats of legal action by the legal team representing the Post Office, I can imagine many people would not have believed them. The decline of the service provided by the Royal Mail and Post Office (for a long time one organisation and seen as that) was beginning, and people would have taken it out on those sub-postmasters remaining. A third of the branch network was closed in a short time.

If only the PO had created an internal user forum when the system went live, the course of history could have been very different.

This.

I think they'd have all found out about each other - and found each other - sooner if it happened in a time where social media was more widely used.

But why in the name of all that is holy would you create a forum for a system that was perfect ? That's peoples bonuses you are using up for nothing.

Remember, the starting point (and salaries of the executive team) was the position Horizon was flawless.

I will pay you £100,000 a year, as long as you refuse to accept the world is not flat and follow that as a fact in your life. You would be amazed how quickly you can come around to a flat earth. (All puns intended).

This is what trade unions are for. Theirs was a pseudo union funded by thePO.

Maybe if the employment advice was a million times better.

Some of the responses on here to employment issues are baffling. How someone can write so much nonsense with such confidence really is something.

Theres a good Reddit sub for legal questions, including employment queries.

I think this issue is far, far bigger than that too and it’s possibly a bit insulting to some of those who have been deeply impacted to suggest posting on a forum could have sorted it all.