What can we learn from the Post Office scandal publicity (including TV)?

I have been listening to the Post Office Inquiry which shows proceedings on their website and YouTube. Initially I was struck by how the Post Office employees who testifying were like NHS and benefits staff I have met along the way. Indoctrinated into the (PO) culture, unwilling to look at evidence, many still claiming that they were right and (as described by one commentator) 'thick as mince'.

It wasn't until the ITV drama this week until public attention was galvanised.

At the end of the program one of the characters said responsibility needed to be laid with the government.

Anyone seeing parallels with what could be called the ME scandal?

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/hearings

 

@Trish wrote: Wouldn't it be amazing to have a really well done drama showing the devastation caused by GET for pwME.

Snap, I came here to post that very thing.

Some of the legal changes that are being talked about (belatedly) to curb the inordinate power the Post Office has, would surely restrict the new powers the Government wants to grant to the DWP, making it a police force as well judge, jury and executioner.

 

I'd love to see it too, but it's not easy to evidence to a high standard. What's happened to us is immoral, but it's unlikely it was actually illegal—it's very different to the Horizon case, even though it's caused no less misery and harm.

I'm not so sure, unfortunately! The Post Office is owned by the government, but DWP is the government.

 

The only dramas that spring to mind are 'wide eyed and legless' and the episodes of 'the golden girls'.

 

I was aware of the post office scandal a lot of yrs ago, must have read something about all the wrongful convictions. What i've been thinking this wk, is how they got away with the terrible miscarriage of justice ruining so many people's lives, for so many years, until suddenly there's a tv programme dramatising it, & then all of a sudden everyone is up in arms about it and the government are doing something.

I dont think a tv drama would work for us at this time, not until there is clear, un-controvertible evidence of biological/organic abnormality. Once that happens i think there may well end up being at least 1 drama about it, and the push for compensation will be huge. But frankly, even if that evidence were to materialise in the next few yrs, given that the PO scandal's been going on since 1999 (i think, not sure of the date), i doubt many of us will see it.

 

There's fundamental differences in the available narratives (the story a dramatist wants to tell) between the two the scenarios:

1. Jack the Giant Killer - where in GET is there an equivalent giant(s) to the UK PO, an international Tech company with $billion turnover, the UK legal system, and or the UK Government ?

2. Legal certainty - where in GET are there victims who have been imprisoned, exonerated, and/or where the legal system is shown to have failed ?

3. Heroes(1)- where in GET is there a small identifiable group (sub Postmasters) all of whom have suffered demonstrable harm from the State ?

4. Heroes(2)- where in GET is there a plucky articulate, media confident, personable 'Jack the Giant Killer' (Alan Bates) ?

5. Heroes(3) - where in GET are there media and political figures who have consistently raged against the injustice (eg - Richard Brooks of Private Eye) ?

6. Winners - where in GET are the oppressed who have had success, who have triumphed over adversity - gone from victimhood to exhonerated ?

The are other elements that made the dramatisation a media success - place broadcast in the Electoral cycle, broadcast in the post Christmas dull slot, features an Institution (the Post Office) which has a distinct place in the UK psyche and a focus of monumental nostalgia. None of which can be replicated in any dramatisation of GET.

Even as a documentary without a supporting dramatisation to peak the public interest there needs to be a compelling narrative, and unfortunately there is little attractive about GET or ME/CFS. Less shocking and therefore with far less traction the best that might be hoped for is a humdrum version of the Contaminated Blood Scandal and that story retaold over decades changed almost nothing for the victims.

My view is that the best use of the media for ME/CFS is positive stories, and while they may be few and far between nothing else is going help maintain useful public profile.

 

The trouble is that any documentary or dramatisation would need to be screened/promoted by a major media broadcaster. The nearest thing the ME community got to that was Unrest on Netflix.
Unfortunately the main character in the more recent 'The lost King' would probably be the most 'public view' of pwME.

 

I was sacked by Post Office International Telephones in 1978 due to my sick absence (a result of drug addiction which was in turn a result of trauma induced by a relationship break-up). This was despite having such a good record in the past that I was on a line-testing panel in Wales, and was the first woman to go on night-duty, and my record was improving again after the incredibly-difficult process of giving up the drugs.

I don't know if that's relevant as I'm not thinking very clearly!

But I have watched the series with great interest and concern. I've been very worried about a local sub-postmaster who alerted me to problems he was having with the system in around 2000. I think he has since died, and understand that some local people didn't believe him. I certainly did.

 

Sorry you went through all that @MeSci (trauma>addiction>treated so badly by the PO) you done amazing.

Sorry too to hear about your local sub PM. Terrible just terrible to not believed & not to live to see this which i am sure would have helped him feel vindicated. OR at least be an 'i told you so' moment.
What a tragedy.

 

I remember thinking 'sounds like NHS/Benefits people about ME', when i heard about the PO situation too.

 

I met a few people at DWP Tribunal level who were downright malevolent. Including the token 'disabled person' and a lawyer. Been assessed by a GP who shouldn't be allowed contact with anyone vulnerable.

The PO attracted some of these types (from watching them at the Inquiry).

 

A lot of the good ones—people who went into it to help—left years ago when the culture changed.

A relative trained as a disability support worker, who could help people struggling to succeed in job interviews because of employers' prejudices about their disability. She loved it because she was sometimes able to make a real difference, and was devastated at the about-face in attitudes.

She said they could all spot the difference between people who faced obstacles and people who were playing the system, so there was never a need to label everyone a scrounger. She left because they'd set themselves up as the enemy, and as a result, fewer people who wanted jobs were able to get them.

 

For anyone who has not followed the Post Office/Horizon debacle and wants a moderately long read on the subject, Private Eye has summary of all its investigations going back over a decade: Justice Lost in the Post

An aspect that hasn't recieved much attention is that the legal conditions for exoneration of all the sub Postmasters has existed since 2019 - and it is solely down the Government of the day that the situation has not been expedited. A major part of the inaction is the very inadequate appeal against wrongful conviction process in the UK, with many of the sub Postmater's cases being refused an appeal despite the obvious flawed evidence from the PO. There's also the fact that it is now almost impossible to get any kind of compensation for a wrong conviction. So the story isn't just a single failing, rather it's a 25 year long set of failures by multiple players.

 

This dramatisation came years after everyone - the legal system, the media, politicians- accepted there had been a massive miscarriage of justice and even so still hardly anything had been done to compensate or indeed exonerate all those affected.

We are many, many years away from that. We are at the Computer Weekly stage in the ME scandal, with S4ME as the Computer Weekly equivalent - or perhaps at the early Private Eye stage, with the Times as our Private Eye, a lone voice in a largely apathetic or sceptical media.

If anything, this is a reminder that even after the establishment entirely recognises that we are right and what was done to us was wrong, even so we should not expect to get any wide public recognition of our vindication unless someone dramatises our story so people can understand and relate to it.

 

This is a quote from an Article, about the Post Office scandal, in today's Independent
'Giving the story a heart and a face is what seemed to pique the production company’s interest.'

 

One advantage of a TV drama is that we don't seem to need to apply 'balance' as per a documentary or a news item.

There are plenty of people with ME we could make a dramatisation of showing how we were harmed over exercise as an example. The TV drama used the Fraser judgement as a positive climax to the story. If that hadn't happened there would be no drama and I guess no current Inquiry.

 

This