The biggest miscarriage of justice in British history?

The biggest miscarriage of justice in British history? After the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Pistons Office aired, parliament announced that hundreds of post office operators who were wrongfully accused of stealing and fraud will have their convictions dropped to “draw a line” under what is being called the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.

The biggest miscarriage?

While I agree it is an absolute injustice, the biggest is a stretch. What concerns me is that the post office scandal affected mostly white British people. That doesn’t make it less of a scandal, but it becomes relevant in light of other scandals that still aren’t being addressed.

Serving with the 48th Highlanders regiment in Quebec and Nova Scotia, Daniel’s wartime experiences went beyond the battleground.

The speed at which parliament made this decision after the release of a TV drama has made me really question a few things about the government dragging its feet when it comes to compensation for other British scandals, especially ones that involve ethnic minorities, including Windrush and Grenfell.

In 2018, thousands of British citizens, mostly from the Caribbean, were wrongly detained, threatened with deportation and denied legal rights because the Home Office had accidentally categorised them as illegal immigrants.

Hundreds were denied access to healthcare and benefits and were threatened with deportation despite having the right to live in the UK.

A significant number were even deported to countries they had not lived in since they were children. Many died before the government could contact them to apologise for its error.

Now, almost six years after the scandal came out and 75 years after Windrush Day, hundreds of compensation claims are still pending.

As of May 2023, 302 claims had been sitting in the system for at least 12 months. Calls have even been made to make the compensation scheme independent from the Home Office because now there is such a lack of faith in the system because so many people have died without receiving a penny, let alone justice.

We won’t forget… Paulette Wilson was a loving grandmother who moved to the UK in 1968 and worked in the House of Commons restaurant before she was detained and threatened with deportation to Jamaica.

Wilson passed away suddenly at the age of 64 – having just one month earlier delivered a petition with other victims to parliament urging the government to speed up its pay outs under the Windrush Compensation Scheme.

I was so outraged by the lack of justice and so saddened by her death that I named an award after her at my annual awards event. This is just one of the victims of this scandal that has claimed the lives of so many.

According to the Home Office, the backlog is still sitting at around 3,720 cases. The Grenfell Tower fire exposed serious failures in the safety of high-rise buildings in the UK.

The building, which contained 129 flats over 20 floors, became a blazing inferno, killing 72 people. It was horrendous. Justice hasn’t been achieved yet, as the same “cladding scandal” continues to affect thousands of homeowners.

There are still at least 10,000 people living in tower blocks deemed unsafe. I personally think these make the biggest miscarriages of British history, and yet the government is stirring on their hands.

Watching this post office situation unfold reveals how quickly politicians can change things if they want to… The question is that when it comes to people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, do they actually want to?