Thanks to a recent ITV drama, the Post Office’s long-running persecution of former subpostmasters, falsely accused of theft due to a dodgy software system, has been elevated to the level of a national scandal.
The story of this gross miscarriage of justice has struck a chord with the public, coming at a time when the real thieves in society – the capitalists and their representatives – are on the loose, still at large.
Many workers can likely relate to the fear of being victimised or scapegoated by the bosses. But above all, it is the hypocritical establishment, including its corrupt and criminal politicians in Parliament, whom workers have the most scorn for.
These MPs and Lords have blood on their hands, supporting war crimes by their imperialist allies in the Middle East. At home, they protect the rich and powerful, whilst punitively pursuing the poor and vulnerable.
And now, when it comes to delivering justice for ordinary people, they have the cheek to twiddle their thumbs and pontificate about the application of the ‘rule of law’.
In this respect, the subpostmasters scandal has served to expose the class nature of the capitalist legal system, which is clearly constructed and weighted in favour of the bosses.
Big business cabal
Over the years, at numerous points, warnings were raised with the Post Office and Fujitsu, the company behind the notorious Horizon IT system at the heart of this episode.
Consultants Ernst & Young, for example, advised Fujitsu that their system “may lead to the processing of unauthorised or erroneous transactions”. Similarly, independent forensic accountants Second Sight uncovered evidence of miscarriages of justice.
Rather than fixing these errors, those at the top threatened lawsuits against those who tried to correct any problems. Why? To protect their profits, privileges, and positions.
Despite being state-owned, the upper echelons of the Post Office are stuffed with ‘City grandees’, adept at using the legal system for shameless banditry.
Recent Post Office chair Tim Parker, for example, a.k.a. the ‘Prince of Darkness’, formerly had a long corporate and private equity career, before serving as chair of HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The Post Office board, past and present, meanwhile, consists of former directors from Deutsche Bank, DHL Express, Barclays, LV, Walmart Europe, and ITV.
This big business cabal protected themselves and their reputations through legal threats and intimidation – including against journalists, in an attempt to prevent the broadcast of a BBC Panorama episode featuring a Fujitsu whistleblower.
Spider’s web
Despite these gangsters’ best efforts, it is abundantly evident today that hundreds of subpostmasters are innocent. Yet justice is still elusive. The process of providing compensation and quashing convictions has proven to be grindingly slow.
The public outcry generated as a result has caused consternation for the Tories, who find themselves enmeshed in yet another crisis.
The law is a spider’s web, an ancient proverb correctly states: the weak get caught in its threads, while the strong rip right through it. After weaving a complex legal trap to ensnare ordinary people, however, the establishment itself has now become entangled.
Lawyers have warned the government over its plans to draft legislation that would allow those convicted to be exonerated en masse, fearing that this could set a precedent that would undermine the authority of the entire bourgeois justice system: a vital pillar of the capitalist state, and an important weapon for the bosses against the working class.
To ‘correct the wrongs’ and ‘learn the lessons’ of these events, therefore, the government might instead choose to embark on a lengthy, drawn-out, toothless inquiry – much like those ongoing for the murderous Grenfell disaster and the Tories’ deadly response to the covid pandemic.
In this way, the establishment would no doubt hope to let off some steam, so that attention on this scandal dissipates, allowing the real criminals responsible for these injustices to walk away scot free.
Overthrow their system
The institutions of bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois justice system have once again been revealed to be a total and utter sham.
These institutions exist to ensure that there is one rule for the rich, and another for the rest; to uphold a status quo in which the poor and weak always suffer and pay.
To secure genuine, real justice for the victims of capitalism everywhere requires nothing short of overthrowing the whole rotten system.
