Former South Warnborough sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton has written a book about how she was caught up in the Post Office scandal. She was featured alongside lead campaigner Alan Bates at the centre of television drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office which brought the faults in the Post Office’s Horizon computer system to the attention of the nation. Jo, born in Portsmouth in 1957, had previously worked for the MoD, lived in West Germany as an Army wife, been a carer for the elderly, driven trucks and run one of the roughest pubs in Aldershot. But even all that life experience could not prepare her for the horrors in store when she took on the seemingly quiet life of running the South Warnborough village shop and post office in 2001. The failures of Horizon, and the subsequent cover-up, saw Jo plead guilty to 14 charges of false accounting for trying to make her books balance to avoid a more serious charge of stealing £36,644.89 from the Post Office. She was given a community order and put on probation. Eventually her conviction was overturned, alongside those of many others, as the scandal was exposed - and now Jo has added published author to her varied curriculum vitae as she tells her story in Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton?
00:00Hi, I'm with Jo Hamilton, one of the leading figures in the post office scandal, and she's written a book about her experience called Why Are You Here, Mrs. Hamilton, which was the reaction of the judge when she was accused of false accounting in Winchester Crown Court, a conviction which was subsequently overturned as the whole scandal became public knowledge.
00:21Jo, what is your motivation for writing the book now?
00:24Well, people have always badgered me about writing a book, and I always thought I should, but I've been so busy campaigning, and then I thought I'll get to the end and then I'll write one, and then part of the way, after the drama aired, there was so much furore, and I was approached to write one, and I thought, well yeah, now is a good time because the story is so awful,
00:53and I thought it might just put more pressure on the government to actually get this whole mess sorted out quicker than they are.
01:03What has kept you motivated to keep fighting all this time?
01:06Because they still haven't paid, 130 of my groups still haven't had their money, and obviously there are thousands more that still haven't had their money, but what is important is the 138 people that fought to enable all of this to happen, they still haven't had their money, and when you actually can pay your bills, it gives you such comfort, and I want everyone to feel the same as I do.
01:33So Alan Bates, Sir Alan Bates now, has written the foreword of your book, what's he like as a person, as a campaigner for the justice?
01:42Yeah, Toby Jones summed him up, and he said he's an unemotional man, and he really is unemotional, but he's a detailed man, and he's a genuinely good man, he's completely uncorruptible, he's focused, and he always wanted the truth to come out, and he's done it, he's achieved just that.
02:08What was it like to have all the support of the villages in South Warmboura?
02:15My village is absolutely wonderful, I can never repay what they did for me, I had a party for the village a couple of weekends ago to say thank you, but I don't know how else to express my love and gratitude for them, and the fact that they all turned up and behaved so brilliantly, and they loved me and supported me right through this whole mess.
02:37So now everything is okay from your point of view, you're still campaigning for everyone else as well?
02:45Yes, because it would be completely wrong to just sort of take my money and clear off, you know, without the group, we wouldn't be here, so I owe them a debt of gratitude, and I'll keep fighting until there's no breath left for everyone to receive their financial redress.
03:03So what would your message to the government be at this stage?
03:09Get your finger out and get everyone paid, stop paying lawyers, fighting everybody to the last penny of the financial redress, just pay people.
