The accusations made by Carl Beech, *top left,* about Conservative M.P. Harvey Proctor, *bottom left,* among others, followed hot on the heels of the scandal of Jimmy Savile, *right,* which had shocked the nation.

A Conspiracy of One

When high-profile members of the British Establishment—including a former prime minister—were accused of being pedophiles, the country tore itself apart trying to find the truth

By John Arlidge

Photo illustration by Chop Choppish Shop

Britain does a good line in scandal. The Profumo affair, the abdication of King Edward VIII, and Prince Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein are just a few. Each one starts small, seems almost unbelievable, and then turns out to be true.

Take the latest, the Post Office scandal, which was the subject of the recent hit TV show Mr Bates vs the Post Office. In what British prime minister Rishi Sunak called “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” around 3,500 men and women who ran small branches of Britain’s postal service were wrongly accused of—and in some cases wrongly jailed for—theft, false accounting, and fraud. Some committed suicide. But all along a toxic combination of venal Post Office management and a faulty computer system was to blame.