Photo: Supplied by TVNZ
Alan Bates was one of 900 UK subpostmasters wrongly accused of theft by the British postal service in the early 2000s.
A four-part drama series Mr Bates vs The Post Office - now streaming on TVNZ Plus - tells how Bates took on the British postal service and campaigned for justice.
In an attempt to cover up the failings of faulty accounting software, British post office management "dug themselves into a deeper and deeper hole" with false accusations, Bates says.
"If they'd just got up in the early days and said 'Look, we know these systems go wrong. Let's see what we can do to put it right for people' life would have been a lot easier for everyone. And so many more people would have got their lives back," he tells Jim Mora.
In 1999, to automate its accounting system, the British Post Office rolled out new IT software developed by Fujitsu. Soon after, when funds started going "missing", local post office franchisees found out they were deemed responsible.
In 2003 Bates was fired from his position as subpostmaster at Craig-y-Don, Llandudno. Although he wasn't prosecuted, he lost his whole £65,000 investment in the business.
Bates says he and his wife Suzanne were luckier than many of the other accused.
"Even though the post office was taken away, we still had the retail side of our business, which we ran for a few years… We were fortunate enough to come out with enough to buy outright a small property for ourselves… We both had basic jobs and also I went back to college to [study] more on computer sciences and stuff of that sort, which was very useful going forward. It did help once we started to get into court and on the technical aspects of all of this."
After the Post Office ended Bates's contract, he set up a website to highlight his concerns, contacted journalists and rallied together other subpostmasters in the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) group.
Just under 1000 subpostmaters in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were prosecuted, Bates says, and only around about 100 have had their convictions overturned.
Many of those who received convictions have not come forward and even those in the JFSA group often had to be encouraged to stay.
"So many people have died along the way and certainly lives have been ruined... The trauma has been absolutely horrific for them. And many people want to just put these things behind them and move on with their lives and you can totally understand it.
"It's their houses they've lost, it's their businesses lost. It's their loss of income, it's the cost of a bankruptcy. All these things added up. That's what the financial redresses is for, to put them back in the position they should have been in if this hadn't happened to them. Nothing more."
Former sub postmaster Alan Bates leaves after attending a Business and Trade Select Committee hearing in at Portcullis House, in London, on February 27, 2024. More than 700 people running small local post offices received criminal convictions between 1999 and 2005 after faulty accounting software made it appear that money had gone missing from their branches. Photo: ANNABEL LEE-ELLIS / AFP
Many senior post office officials knew from quite an early stage about faults with the Fujitsu accounting software, Bates says.
"Too many people were trying to cover their backs and look after their jobs and bonuses and everything else along the way. I think events overtook them in the end. They'd lied for so long that they just had to carry on lying and they just dug themselves into a deeper and deeper hole.
"If they'd just got up in the early days and said, 'Look, we know these systems go wrong. Let's see what we can do to put it right for people,' life would have been a lot easier for everyone. And so many more people would have got their lives back."
Arrogance and ignorance were in the driver's seat, Bates says, as post office bosses dug their heels in to protect the brand.
"A number of these post office people, if you snap them in half like a stick of rock, you'd have found post office right through the core.
"A lot of these people had only had experience working in a post office. They'd started on the ground floor almost, on the counter in the post office and worked their way all the way up through this organisation. There was very little fresh blood in the organisation in those days and they just carried on doing what had been done before. That was a shame. That was a mistake."
With pressure from the government already intensifying, the post office wouldn't have got away with their misdeeds even without Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Bates says, but the drama series conveys extremely well both "the suffering and the misery that this major government organisation got away with".
Over the years, the fight for justice has been a "grind", Bates says, but he's just kept carrying on day after day.
"You just kept hearing all these awful stories from people and you just couldn't put it down. You couldn't let it go.
"We were out to expose the truth because with the truth, there was a lot more we could do. Convictions have been overturned, people are starting to get money back, a whole host of things. But we have to get this truth out.
"You've got to deal with tomorrow and if you start getting angry and wound up by the whole thing it doesn't help. You've got to keep thinking about things. You've got to structure things. You've got to move forward. And when you've got a big group of people, if you start running around, pulling your hair out and all the rest doesn't help anybody, does it?"
Bates says he enjoyed Toby Jones' portrayal of him in the TV show - "he's got a mischievous sense of humour a bit like myself" - but found the jumper and a T-shirt he wore to court "a bit too casual".
"I never once went to Parliament without a suit or a jacket. "
To honour Bates' hard work over decades, his local pub The White Lion Inn - "they're very good if you happen to be passing" - always keeps on hand his favourite beer, which is an elderflower ale from the local Welsh brewery Purple Moose.
"The brewery has provided the pub my beer anytime I want, free of charge. I only wish they'd done that 40 years ago."
Related
- The human toll of Britain's Post Office IT system scandal
- British Post Office scandal: Hundreds of victims to have convictions overturned
- Gwyneth Hughes: Mr Bates vs The Post Office
