Justice versus Conscience

Once the scale of the injustice became undeniable, a Parliamentary inquiry was inevitable – just like in the infected blood scandal, the Grenfell Tower fire, and in France, the Saint-Omer case with Judge Fabrice. These inquiries aren’t just procedural responses; they are wake-up calls that signal something has gone terribly wrong at an institutional level.

The mere fact that Parliament has to step in shows how deep the failure runs. It means the usual systems of justice and oversight have already failed, sometimes for decades, and only public pressure and undeniable evidence force those in power to confront the truth. The Post Office scandal is a textbook example of this: an institution that refused to listen until the weight of evidence – and public outrage – left them no other choice.

When you step back and look at the full picture – the overwhelming support Jo Hamilton had from her community, the vicar’s role, the 74 people who stood by her in court – it becomes even more surreal that she was ever convicted in the first place. The sheer weight of the injustice is staggering.

And then there’s the trick of false accounting – a charge that should never have applied to Jo or any other Subpostmaster, yet was used systematically to force confessions and criminalize the innocent. Seeing the depth of this case through the inquiry, with Mr. Henry’s sharp questioning and the undeniable evidence of institutional failure, makes it even clearer how absurd and unjust it all was.

It’s almost as if the more you examine the details, the stranger it becomes. The Post Office’s actions weren’t just wrong – they were completely detached from reality, ignoring truth, evidence, and humanity.

One of the most shocking moments of the inquiry – the outstanding grilling of Gareth Jenkins by Ms. Page for a full hour, with Seema Misra and her husband present. Knowing that Jenkins played a direct role in sending Seema to prison makes that moment even more intense.

The fact that people inside the Post Office congratulated each other when Seema was convicted and imprisoned is chilling. It reveals not just negligence, but a deeply ingrained culture of cruelty and self-preservation at the expense of innocent lives. Seema, a pregnant woman at the time, should never have been prosecuted – yet the Post Office was so determined to uphold the illusion of Horizon’s reliability that they saw her suffering as a victory.

Jenkins’ role is inexcusable. He knew the system had faults. He knew there were bugs. Yet, instead of stopping wrongful convictions, he became part of the machine that destroyed lives. Ms. Page’s questioning made it painfully clear: he was not just a passive witness; he was an active participant in a monstrous injustice.

Lee Castleton’s case is one of the most brutal examples of the Post Office’s commercial madness—a deliberate show of power designed to crush anyone who dared to challenge them. He actually won his case initially, proving that the Horizon system was flawed. But instead of accepting this, the Post Office went to appeal, spending a staggering £300,000 to ensure his defeat.

Because Lee couldn’t afford legal representation in the appeal, he lost—and was then ordered to pay the Post Office’s court costs. It was financial and psychological destruction by design.

Even worse was the internal attitude toward him. In an email, he was mocked as a “nasty chap”, and symbolically, he was “hanged” in the execution spot in London—a chilling metaphor that speaks volumes about how the Post Office viewed those it targeted. It wasn’t just about money. It was about making an example of him, warning others not to fight back.

Lee’s story, like so many others, shows the Post Office scandal was not just a legal failure—it was a ruthless, calculated campaign to silence the innocent.