Political correctness has stood in the way of a reckoning for far too long.
Source - Spiked
3rd January 2025
Fury over Britain’s grooming-gangs scandal seems to have finally reached boiling point. This week, it was revealed that Labour safeguarding minister Jess Phillips had refused last year to initiate a formal government inquiry into the historical child-sex abuse that gripped the town of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, throughout the 2010s. The response online has been fierce, attracting international attention. Even X owner Elon Musk weighed in, going as far as to say he believes Phillips belongs in prison and accusing prime minister Keir Starmer of being ‘complicit in the rape of Britain’.
The shameful treatment of England’s grooming-gang crisis really does deserve this global outrage. The mass rape of mostly white, working-class, underaged girls by groups of primarily Pakistani-heritage men has been largely swept under the rug by our own establishment. The horrors suffered by the victims deserve to be faced head-on.
Perhaps even worse than the abuse itself was the authorities’ indifference to these girls’ suffering. A 2013 inquiry into the Rotherham gangs found that 1,400 children had been sexually abused there over a 16-year period. Despite this, Rotherham has been named as the first-ever ‘Children’s Capital of Culture’ – a multimillion-pound opportunity for the council to try to cleanse its deservedly dire reputation, at the UK taxpayers’ expense.
Similarly, in Telford, an independent report found that more than 1,000 children had been groomed over 30 years. Abusers even set up a ‘rape house’, where victims were ferried to. But ‘unease’ about the perpetrators’ race meant this abuse was not properly investigated. For decades, grooming-gang paedophiles operated with impunity across the country.
Whoever did try to draw attention to these institutional failures was met with dismissal. One such courageous figure is Margaret Oliver, a retired police detective who played an integral part in exposing the Operation Augusta scandal.
Operation Augusta was set up in 2004 following the death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, who died of a drug overdose just two months after reporting that an older man had sexually assaulted her and injected her with heroin. Augusta subsequently identified at least 57 victims (mainly girls between the ages of 12 and 16) and some 97 potential suspects (predominantly of Pakistani origin) across Greater Manchester. However, senior officers at Greater Manchester Police deprived the investigation of resources, before shutting it down completely. Oliver has called for the prosecution of police officers for ‘deliberately ignoring’ cases of child sexual abuse.
Despite the silence of the British political class over grooming gangs, there were thankfully some brave individual politicians who raised the alarm. This includes the former Labour MP for Keighley in West Yorkshire, Ann Cryer, who entered parliament in 1997 and stood down at the 2010 General Election. Cryer was one of the first public figures to talk about grooming gangs sexually abusing young girls in Yorkshire back in 2003. As a result, she was shunned by the police, social services and so-called community leaders. Her courage to speak up even resulted in death threats being sent to her.
Sarah Champion, previously the Labour MP for Rotherham, resigned from Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet following a similar backlash in 2017. She had said that ‘Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls’. Champion accused the ‘floppy left’ of avoiding issues such as the grooming gangs for fear of being accused of racism.
The dismissal of the mass rape, torture and exploitation of vulnerable working-class girls is a stain on Britain. Far too many politicians, local councils, police forces, social workers, safeguarding teams and educators have fallen well short of what is expected of them. While investigative reporters such as Andrew Norfolk should be recognised for their work on this front, far too many journalists – including so-called feminists who supposedly care deeply about the safety of women and girls – have dared not to touch the issue. The fear of being accused of racism or Islamophobia has kept them quiet.
A true marker of an advanced, civilised society is the degree to which it protects its most vulnerable members. On this front, modern Britain’s record leaves plenty to be desired. What is needed now is the mass arrest and prosecutions of those who have yet to be convicted for their involvement in grooming gangs. And public officials who are directly responsible for turning a blind eye to such atrocities should also be held accountable for their dereliction of duty. Justice must finally be served.
Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.
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