Darkness at Noon and the Post Office Scandal
Andrew Carey Editorial Comment Church of England Newspaper January 19 2024
Arthur Koestler’s famous and horrific account of life under the regime of the Soviet Union must have matched the experience of the nation’s sub postmasters and mistresses as they found themselves under the absolute domination of the Horizon computer system.
That Fujitsu system grossly and irrationally exaggerated the debit side of their weekly accounts, ramping it up to thousands of pounds and rising. They were coerced into agreeing these figures, the computer was king, no human manager could or would intervene. Then they were forced to agree that they owed sums underthe threat of criminal charges of theft.
The system crushed them and sucked out their savings, their houses, their peace of mind, driving some to suicide. Koestler would have known this from his days under Stalin’s brutal murderous rule. These victims had no legal aid offered, no redress under human rights law – designed to protect the individual from state power. Only the fact of ITV’s screening of Mr Bates v The Post Office got this massive evil into the public mind and an explosion of rage against the state machine.
As Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph remarked, the one brilliant operation achieved by the Post Office was denial, cover up and circular reviews leading nowhere.
Now the establishment has suddenly stopped ignoring the plight of this vast injustice and is rushing to undo the ludicrously coerced convictions and to get some compensation back to the destroyed finances of the victims, although sums being touted are paltry tokenism at the time of writing the tax man is seeking to maintain the state sponsored theft.
So the blame game has begun. CEO Paula Vennells has handed back her CBE and remains under fire. Fujitsu, the architect of the demonic Horizon system, is keeping quiet but must expect to be liable for billions to repay the theft taken from the victims, including houses. They are culpable and did not cooperate with investigations, according to the ITV film.
The so-called ‘Blob’, the Civil Service,is blaming thepoliticians, exonerating any blame by the state’s officialdom.
Fraud and economic crime against the sub postmasters, by their own department of state, must have slipped their attention, as must their emphasis on ‘diversity and inclusion’, not experienced by the victims clearly – who were picked out for cancelling.
What lessons can be learned? Transparency and honesty, and the capacity or the ordinary citizen to have access to systems that are oppressing them, with access to redress early on. The Blob’s slogans about inclusion and protection from fraud are not enough, and ministers need to reconnect with their constituencies, to accord real local people and communities as much value as powerful global IT giants.
The fear of Artificial Intelligence and the culture of absolute trust in the machine must be engaged with. As Hugo Rifkind in the Times wrote, “the computer says no” cannot continue, a human being must supervise the machinations of the machine. Computer programmes are not infallible. And as Dr Angus Dalgleish wrote in the Conservative Woman, bad computer modelling has blighted Covid lockdown policy, Net Zero energy policy where scientific empirical facts are becoming secondary to modelled speculation, and now in the Fujitsu catastrophic mistake and cover up. The nation needs to find ways of checking and double checking on computer coding and modelling, by real experts who are not politicised in their judgements.
There is also a Church connection to this horror story, as former CEO Paula Vennells is an NSM and was interviewed for the job of Bishop of London, such is her standing with the Senior Appointments Commission. Oversight and supervision are of course rendered in New Testament as Episcope – the caring and kindly ministry of the Christian flock, very different from what Matthew Lynn called the brutal managerialism of state-owned organisations.
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