Mick Clifford: When the State treats victims as opponents, not as wronged citizens

Many of the threads woven together in the UK’s Post Office scandal will be familiar to anybody who has observed the outworkings of scandal in this country

Toby Jones, centre, stars as Alan Bates in Mr Bates vs The Post Office. ITV's series dramatising the Horizon IT scandal. Picture: ITV

Britain is agog over Mr Bates vs The Post Office and rightly so. The ITV drama has depicted the struggles and strife of sub-post masters who were wrongly accused of defrauding their employer.

What resulted was what is now being described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. Over 700 people were pursued relentlessly across 15 years up to 2015 for financial losses that didn’t occur. At least four took their own lives. More were sent to prison, including a woman who was pregnant.