plus: thirteen suspected suicides

There’s no feeling of anything but bleakness, writing the headline above. Here’s the full story. The Inquiry asked the question and the Post Office gave its best guess, based on the applications it had received from the families of deceased compensation claimants and its own media monitoring. Thirteen dead, at their own hands, as a direct result of the way they were treated by the Post Office. Read all about it.

Every human life lost is a tragedy. There is no pecking order. The Post Office suicides were once lives being lived to the fullest, in proud service of their communities and families. They were making the world a better place. Then they were stigmatised, ruined and within months, taken into darkness, where they felt and saw no hope.

It’s a horrendous statistic, made more surreal by shaking hands and saying hello to the survivors who came along today. The Subpostmasters who possibly contemplated the worst and somehow came through it. Of the people present at The Oval in South London today, I personally know at least five people who attempted to take their own lives and two more who came very, very close. I celebrate the fact they are still with us.

But thirteen suicides. Hoo-weee. That’s a lot of blood. And whilst I understand that sorting out redress/compensation is an essential part of this process – I want to identify and talk to the people with that blood on their hands. Why did they do it? How, in 21st Century Britain, did they make conscious decisions to ruin someone without – for a second – considering the flimsiness of the evidence against them?

And worse – when they knew they might have caused a number of innocent people to be convicted of crimes – how did they think it was better to try to cover it up, rather than face the consequences?

At the first sniff of the idea that you might have been directly, or indirectly, responsible for sending a single, solitary person to prison, why wouldn’t you throw your hands up and start working towards an immediate solution? We’re not in product recall/process error territory here.

I have theories. But I’m not sharing them until they are fully evidenced. Human psychology is not my bag, but it’s a hell of a thing.

Okay – enough indulgence. I’ve tried to absorb and make sense of a very long report (which I did read in full – all 163 pages of it – thanks to the lock-in) and I think my piece stands up.

But you are more than welcome to disagree – the whole thing is here.

Best

Nick

I am (still) writing a new book about the Post Office scandal called The Great Post Office Cover-Up. You can put your money down now for a copy which will arrive after Sir Wyn Williams’ final report. Buying a pre-publication copy of the hardback (£15 + P&P) or paperback (£10 + P&P) will be cheaper than the post publication price, help support an independent publisher (by buying direct) and offer you the opportunity to join my secret email mailing list. For more info about the book, click here!