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You are not the only one
Throughout the Post Office Horizon scandal, affected workers were isolated and made to feel solely guilty for what they were accused of. We need more workers to join the trade union movement to see that, no matter what, they are not alone, says postal worker JOHN CARSON
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FOLLOWING the airing of the drama series, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, at the start of January, the outpouring of sympathy and solidarity with the victims of the scandal has been great to see.
From politicians, journalists, celebrities to regular folk on the street, the sheer sense and scale of the injustice has offended all. This has been particularly true in Royal Mail, where postal workers have regularly fielded questions about the situation from friends, family and customers (despite Royal Mail being split off from the Post Office and privatised in 2012/13) and have expressed their own shock and disgust to see the outrageous cases of the malicious prosecutions of many decent, ordinary, hardworking subpostmasters — part of the wider postal family.
Of course, the truth of this situation and the full extent of the lies told by the Post Office were not revealed suddenly by a successful television show — it was revealed in organised action led by Alan Bates’s group, Justice for Subpostmaster Alliance, formed in 2009, and which brought together the shared experiences of subpostmasters across the country in order to fight for fight for redress and compensation and to expose the lies and cover-up surrounding the cases.
The success of this campaign group over time has helped to highlight a fundamental truth: that when workers are organised and sharing knowledge and experience, it is always the best way to fight for truth and justice especially when fighting against the forces of corporations and the state, and therefore the Post Office sought to isolate these workers from the very beginning.
When subpostmasters sought advice and support from the Post Office they were repeatedly told “you are the only one” — a chilling and isolating phrase that ultimately was an attempt by the Post Office to undermine those affected by pretending they were on their own and were solely guilty and responsible for what they were accused of and that to reach out for support would be futile.
In effect, they wanted to place the God of the new Horizon technology ahead of the experiences of these subpostmasters. This itself is a continual danger for workers today.
In Royal Mail, we have been encountering the increasing deployment of new technologies over the decades but more so in recent times. Postal workers carry a “PDA” device daily which monitors their activities out on the street; whether that is scanning parcels, mapping locations and even periods at rest — highlighted by an ever-increasing yellow dot.
While not to be monitored in real time, the near wholescale visibility of the average postal worker through new technologies to the employer is ripe for error and/or exploitation and leads to a constantly increasing pressure and expectation. This experience is being increasingly replicated in workplaces up and down Britain.
The only way to counter the potential for exploitation in the deployment of these new technologies is to counter the potential for isolation as experienced by the subpostmasters through proper organisation.
In Royal Mail, agreements on new technologies are generally agreed with our union, the CWU, so that the workers voice and experience is placed at the centre of the conversation.
This was a very real reason why Royal Mail sought to fight a bitter campaign to defeat the CWU in 2022: they knew that they are best held to account and a balance of power is restored when workers are connected and share experiences, realising the common threads of injustice and oppression that can take place in the workspace and thenceforth can combine knowledge with action to do something about it.
With the increasing challenges facing workers in Britain, particularly with the increasing use and development of new technologies and artificial intelligence and when many workers are expected to work from home — further isolating them from the workplace and from fellow workers — we know that now more than ever workers need to know that their shared experiences combined and organised can expose truth in the face of lies in the fight for justice. In short, we need all workers to join our trade union movement and to know that no matter what, that they are not on their own.
John Carson is a postman and lay member of the national executive of the Communication Workers Union.
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