Julian Vaughan

Jan 13, 202411 min read

From Hillsborough to the Post Office Scandal

Hillsborough, Grenfell, Horizon, Windrush, Orgreave, Daniel Morgan Murder, Shrewsbury 24, Undercover Policing, Contaminated Blood Scandal, Phone Hacking, Blacklisting. The list of miscarriages of justice and the abuse of power in the UK is a lengthy one. The victims may not be connected, but this blog will set out the common threads linking these scandals.

I am confident most of you reading this blog will be outraged at the treatment of the sub postmasters. I am angry too. I am angry because it is yet another example of the imbalance of power between the state and the people, and how if this imbalance is left unchecked, it will inevitably lead to more scandals being added to the list above.

The tragedy of Hillsborough continued long after the shocking events that took place at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989. Indeed, the lack of any justice for the victims and survivors of that terrible day remains an open scar on the UK’s legal system. The treatment of the fans on the day itself, and the combined actions of the state, police and media over many years meant that they endured what must have been an unbearable double injustice.

I have written previously about the events surrounding the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath in some detail, which you can read by clicking here. In this blog I will just briefly cover the culture of the state towards those impacted by the disaster, how that culture is still present today and this culture’s role in the Post Office scandal and others listed above.

Politicians

After Hillsborough, with some notable exceptions including Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, politicians from all sides of the House of Commons were far too willing to accept the narrative pushed by state agencies, passively accepting what they were told at face value. In 2011 David Cameron was widely reported to have said in relation to the families ongoing campaign for justice that it was “like a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that isn’t there”.

In relation to the Post Office scandal Sir Ed Davey MP, now leader of the Liberal Democrats and between 2010-2012 the Post Office Minister, recently spoke about how he bitterly regretted the Post Office not being honest with him at the time. We need politicians who forensically challenge those in positions of power, not as they did in the case of Hillsborough and the Horizon scandal, meekly accept what they are told at face value.

If we continue to draw the majority of our MPs from a narrow pool of talent in the corporate world, is it any wonder that corporate lobbyists will hold greater sway over politicians than the issues of ordinary working people. Paula Vennells and Post office executives were believed by many politicians because they are cut from the same cloth. The lack of working class representation means that there will always be a tendency for MPs to, consciously or subconsciously, side with people from the world which they were drawn.

The law

In the case of Hillsborough, state agencies such as the police were able to call on virtually unlimited financial resources to obtain the best legal counsel in the land, while the families of the victims had to raise funds to get legal representation. Again, during the years of the legal proceedings surrounding the Post Office scandal the state had virtually unlimited funds, while the sub postmasters struggled to obtain the necessary financial backing.

It is now clear that Post Office Executives were economical with the truth and evidence of the widespread problems with the Horizon IT system were withheld from disclosure at the numerous prosecutions brought by the Post Office against the sub postmasters. Hillsborough campaigners have for many years been calling for a Hillsborough law that would introduce a ‘duty of candour’ that would require public officials to tell the truth at public inquiries and inquests as well as establishing an offence of recklessly or intentionally misleading the public, media or court proceedings.

The government’s December 2023 response to Bishop James Jones’ report ‘The patronising disposition of unaccountable power’ which was published in 2017 in my view, and more importantly the view of the Hillsborough families, falls significantly short of putting a ‘duty of candour’ in a robust legal framework. Instead, the response relies on ‘Codes of Conduct’, the ‘Nolan Principles’ and the much criticised and ineffectual ‘Ministerial Code’. None of these ensure sufficient accountability among our public servants and politicians.

Corporate Culture

A common thread through many of the scandals is an arrogant corporate culture that prioritises reputation and the pursuit of profit over truth and the safety of the public. In the case of the Windrush scandal, where many people were wrongfully deported, denied benefits and lost jobs and homes, just like the sub postmasters they endured the full force of the state in isolation, with no knowledge that others were suffering the same injustice. The safety concerns of the residents of Grenfell were ignored, while cladding firms with guilty knowledge of the hazardous nature of their products raked in profits. The deregulation of the building industry, accelerated by years of austerity and corporate lobbyists persuading politicians that safety regulations were ‘a burden to business’ meant that a disaster such as Grenfell was inevitable. Grenfell was no accident, it had been foretold for many years by many people, but those in power chose to ignore them.

What gilded lives the corporate elite have in the UK. Serenely gliding from boardroom to boardroom, awaiting the inevitable gong and string of non-Executive Directorships, lacking any fear of personal accountability from a legal system stacked in their favour assisted by a cosy relationship with politicians who lap up everything they say at face value over a canape and free drink.

The attitude of the Post Office towards the sub postmasters was corporate gaslighting on an industrial scale, shifting blame onto the sub postmasters with the guilty knowledge that their IT system was defective. This was matched with an institutional blindness and denial to the facts of what occurred. In the words of Mr Justice Fraser’s judgement on the Bates v Post Office group litigation: ‘’This approach by the Post Office has amounted, in reality, to bare assertions and denials that ignore what has actually occurred, at least so far as the witnesses called before me in the Horizon Issues trial are concerned. It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat.’’

Accountability

This imbalance of power, the protection of the establishment and the corporate elite via the media, politicians, the legal system and the police, creates a culture of unaccountability which in turn breeds an arrogance that will be recognisable to many of the victims. This arrogance which starts at the top, then permeates through all layers of an organisation, whether it be the Home Office, cladding firms or the Post Office.

Seven years on and no one has been held to account for the tragedy of Grenfell, Why is it that the wheels of justice turn so slowly if at all for ordinary people. The incompetent administration of the Windrush compensation scheme has been found to have become an additional trauma for claimants who had already been subject to the UK’s ‘hostile environment’, and commitments made in the ‘Williams Review’ Inquiry have been dropped.

The firms involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower were emboldened to cut corners by a government hell bent on deregulating the building industry and this created a culture where tests were falsified and reports on their products were kept secret. At the same time local authority cuts resulted in overworked inspectors missing vital issues relevant to building safety, and people who lived in the tower who complained about the refurbishment were labelled “rebel residents”.

The links between Orgreave and Hillsborough

There are many similarities between the treatment of striking miners at Orgreave and the Hillsborough victims. Orgreave, a coking plant on the outskirts of Sheffield was in 1984 the scene of shocking police violence against the pickets and the arrest of 95 miners. 55 of these miners were charged with riot (an offence which at the time carried a potential life sentence) and the remaining 40 were charged with unlawful assembly. All charges were subsequently dropped, but not a single police officer present on that day has faced disciplinary or criminal proceedings. Like at Hillsborough four years later, there was manipulation of evidence with junior officers having their personal statement dictated to them by senior officers and collusion between the police and the media to portray a false picture of events and blame the innocent to conceal their own wrongdoings and failings. Further, in common with the other miscarriages of justice and scandals the miners had their hopes raised and then dashed with the then Home Secretary saying in October 2016 that there would be no investigation or inquiry of any type on the grounds there had been no deaths, no convictions, no miscarriage of justice, no new lessons for current police forces to learn and that it was a long time ago. The lack of accountability of the actions of the police at Orgreave emboldened the South Yorkshire Police and sowed the seeds of the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent cover up.

Collusion

The murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987 exposed police corruption and the shady world of collusion between the press and the police which has never been fully exposed. The eventual independent inquiry into Morgan’s death found that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally corrupt in its handling of the investigations into the murder of Daniel Morgan and that the force had placed protecting its reputation above the investigation, an approach that was also taken by the Post Office. This collusion was also present in the blacklisting scandal in which hundreds construction workers lost their jobs after being deemed troublemakers while raising legitimate workplace issues.

The phone hacking scandal, the treatment of the ‘Shrewsbury 24’ striking building workers convicted of unlawful assembly and conspiracy to intimidate, and the Undercover Policing scandal, where police spies formed sexual relationships with female activists, shines a light on the culture and collusion of our police who acted with impunity as a result of a shocking lack of accountability. *In an attempt to keep this blog as short as possible I provide full links to these issues in the ‘further reading’ section underneath this blog.

Delays

As Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester said in relation to the need for a Hillsborough Law: “From Peterloo 200 years ago to Grenfell today, ordinary bereaved families continue to be treated in a cruel and dismissive way by a justice system which favours the powerful and the connected. It is a pattern that keeps on repeating itself and it is time to break it.” Again and again, we see examples of the glacial pace of justice for ordinary people, including the much criticised Windrush Compensation scheme and the lengthy delays to the publication of the report and roll-out of a full compensation scheme for victims of the contaminated blood scandal.

Conclusions

The ITV short series “Mr Bates vs the Post office” beamed the profound human tragedy of the sub postmasters into our homes. It was watched by an estimated 9.2 million viewers and the public outpouring of anger has had an immediate political impact. The question being asked by many is why it took a TV dramatisation for politicians to finally take action. Again, the sub postmasters have suffered in a similar fashion to the victims of Hillsborough in the fact they endured a double injustice, the false accusations themselves and the failure of politicians and the legal system to hold those actually responsible for the scandal. The victims of Hillsborough never received the justice to which they were entitled. This must never happen again and those responsible for the numerous gross miscarriages of justice endured by the sub postmasters must be held accountable. Handing back a CBE and expressing regret is not justice.

Interweaved through the miscarriages of justice and abuses of power listed at the start of the blog (and I could have added the Aberfan disaster and the case of the Nuclear Test Veterans to the list) we see the common threads of delay, deflection, obfuscation, denial, collusion, the prioritisation of reputational protection, the unbridled pursuit of profit, corporate blindness and a lack of effective accountability.

Until we learn the lessons of historical miscarriages of justice we will be condemned to repeat them. We now have overwhelming ‘guilty knowledge’ of the causes and shocking human impact of these abuses of power. We have to take the necessary steps to ensure they will not happen again.

To avoid corporate bias, steps must be taken by all political parties to ensure that our Parliament is drawn from a far more diverse and representative pool of talent in our society. The law must be made more accessible to all, on an equal footing with state agencies and corporations. State agencies must open themselves up to greater scrutiny and accountability, with legal consequences for those individuals found to have lied, whether actively or by omission. We should encourage businesses to flourish, but with the proviso that they are expected to behave ethically, displaying an awareness of their duty to protect the public, rather than the naked pursuit of profit at any cost displayed by the contractors for Grenfell.

An effective Hillsborough Law, which would place a duty of candour on the police and public officials (rather than the mish-mash of current codes of practice and principles put forward by the current government) would be a good start in the rebalance of power between the state and the people that is so urgently required.

What can we do?

Stay angry! The news cycle will move on and we will be distracted by other issues. Write to your MP and ask them to take action and show support, both for the sub postmasters and the campaigners for an effective Hillsborough Law. While great strides have been made over the last few days, there is much still to do, both in terms of compensation and holding those responsible to account.

I can only imagine what it is like to have the full force of the state bearing down on you, it must be a very lonely place. I know that the sub postmasters have been very grateful for the outpouring of public support – keep talking about it, share their stories when you see them on social media. I’ve provided a list of relevant social media accounts below.

If you are working, join a trade union. One of the many disturbing aspects of the Post Office’s approach was to isolate the victims by lying to them by telling them they “were the only one” with problems with the Horizon software. Leaving aside the National Federation of Sub Postmasters (NFSP) of whom Peter Fraser, the judge in the group action trial said: “It is obvious, in my judgment, that the NFSP is not remotely independent of the Post Office, nor does it appear to put its members’ interests above its own separate commercial interests.” an effective trade union means you have the full weight of the union behind you, rather than having to deal with work related issues alone. * Full disclosure I have been a trade union H&S representative for the last 14 years.

Finally, I would like to extend my deepest respect to those who stood up for the sub postmasters, such as Lord Arbuthnot, previously a Tory MP, the other MPs who stood up for sub postmasters in their constituencies and of course Alan Bates, who drew the sub postmasters together and gave up so much of his time in the pursuit of justice. I would like to thank the sub postmasters and survivors of Hillsborough who I have been in touch with recently for their time and help with increasing my understanding of the issues – any errors and all political views in the above blog are mine alone. I have the deepest respect for the fortitude of the Hillsborough families and the sub postmasters. Solidarity with all those impacted by the miscarriages of justice discussed.

Julian Vaughan

13th January 2024

Links to social media accounts to follow (Twitter/X):

@WindrushLives – covering Windrush scandal issues

@NowHillsborough – campaign for a Hillsborough Law

@NickBraley1 – Hillsborough survivor and campaigner against police corruption

@PeteApps – Author of ‘Show Me The Bodies – How We Let Grenfell Happen’

@CastletonLee – ex Sub Postmaster

@orgreavejustice – Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign

@hackinginquiry – campaign for press accountability

@UntoldMurder – covering issues around the murder of Daniel Morgan

@CampaignTB – advocates for those infected with contaminated blood products

@Shrewsbury24C – campaign that overturned the unjust prosecution of 24 building workers in 1972

@SpycopsInfo – covering the undercover police infiltrating protest groups

@DaveBlacklist – blacklisted union activist

Julian Vaughan

From Hillsborough to the Post Office Scandal

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