investigation


Sustained Private Eye work helped expose Post Office scandal, says Mark Fisher Exposing the scandal required three


things. Tere was the determination of Sir Alan Bates, the sub-postmaster whose dogged campaign to clear his name was celebrated in ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Tere was the probing of former Tory MP James Arbuthnot, one of the few to accept the allegations of workers more readily than the bland assurances of the Post Office. Ten there was the press. Computer


Above: Ian Hislop with Alan Bates and his wife Suzanne, and the book’s author Richard Brooks


First-class journalism


A


t the end of every chapter in Post Mortem, a compelling account of the Post Office Horizon IT


scandal, is a cartoon from Private Eye. One of the sharpest appears near the end, after author and NUJ member Richard Brooks has mapped out the sorry story of an organisation that prosecuted its frontline staff rather than admit to flaws in the software it forced them to use. Drawn by Dave Wight, the cartoon


shows a nonplussed panel at the public inquiry listening to a man giving evidence. “I was only obeying postal orders,” runs the caption. Wight’s allusion to the Nuremberg


defence is not just for comic effect. As Brooks tells it, the scandal is a lesson about the capacity of people to behave appallingly if they believe their actions are in the best interests of the company. So much was at stake that staff at all levels persuaded themselves that ruining


16 | theJournalist


sub-postmasters’ lives was preferable to denting the Post Office’s reputation. Brooks, who has written investigative


stories for Private Eye for more than 20 years, says the malaise at the Post Office was less about individual bad behaviour – although there was plenty of it – than a systemic failing: “It’s too much of a coincidence: you just can’t get so many terrible people in one organisation. It’s something big and structural going on.” An institutional bias against sub-


postmasters meant legitimate investigations became heavy-handed accusations. To tell managers what they wanted to hear, investigators would routinely lie. “It was endemic,” says Brooks. “Tere


was no document from the top saying, ‘Tis is what you do,’ but it was understood that there were set lies that you repeated: you’re the only one, Horizon is robust… a lot of people were repeating things they knew were false. It fitted very neatly with what they wanted to do, which was to get convictions.”


“


Keeping up the pressure was where we came in. They had to know that whatever they were doing could come out


Weekly was first on scene with a piece in 2009 by Rebecca Tomson, who saw a pattern in complaints about Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system. S4C’s Taro Naw followed this up and added some Welsh cases. Te following year, Nick Wallis recorded a piece for the BBC’s Inside Out South programme and, in September 2011, Brooks filed the first of a


stream of reports to Private Eye. It took time, but this rattled the Post Office. “Journalism was very


important,” says Brooks. “It did play a role in bringing more victims out.” He admits the press was late to


the story, although local papers did good work reporting on convictions.


“Tat’s partly our fault. And partly because the sub-postmasters didn’t see the press as an important route for a while. I’ve said to Alan Bates, ‘You should have come to Private Eye


10 years before you did’. “Keeping up the pressure was where


we came in. Tey had to know that whatever they were doing could come out. Tat forced them onto the back foot. It led to more deception, but it’s in the nature of journalistic campaigns that the reaction isn’t, ‘Fair cop, you’ve got us’ – it’s to cover up more. Ten you have to probe the cover-up and, if all goes well, you break through.” Brooks thinks there is a good chance


the police investigation will lead to prosecutions but, as an investigative journalist, he knows how easily the scandal could have stayed out of sight. “Te truth doesn’t always come out,”


he says. “I’ve worked on really good stories where someone should have been recompensed and they haven’t been. It’s just died because the public body or private company has just strung it out and worn people down.” As we speak, he is filing another story


about the Post Office. Brooks, for one, is not worn down yet.


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