"Break the silence around rape and violence against women" but don't mention grooming gang rape and violence against girls

There were many bad layers to the Rotherham situation: the men, the police, the care system, all of which should be blamed for what happened. However, the rapists themselves are the worst of the lot and should get the harshest punishment.

Walden, I too think that it can really depend on who you get, police-wise when you report. I rang up about a friend who had completely dropped off the radar, and whose parents had been trying to sort an arranged marriage for her, which she hadnt wanted. First police man's response was pretty much, "you're saying she's with her parents so she's not missing so we can't do anything." Arguing that it was her parents I was worried about got me nowhere. Reported it later to a police woman who said the first police officer was completely wrong (she was actually furious at what he'd said) and there was lots they could and should do, and immediately followed it up and actually managed to avert this trip to Pakistan where the marriage would have taken place.

The reason we're talking about Enich Powell LessWorried is because your deleted post was quite similar. Not because it's relevant.

Less, this article is particularly distressing but really important in understanding the darker side of our recent history:

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/27/britains-child-migrant-programme-why-130000-children-were-shipped-abroad
www.theguardian.com/society/2010/feb/24/child-migrant-programme-slavery

Yes, this is so so true. In a recent TV programme on grooming and rape, the person who set up a help place was dismissed time and again when she told the authorities. Various authorities said they knew but that she was being racist. No, she was alerting child rape, plying with alcohol and drugs and grooming, by a gang. The men have been since convicted.

I myself believe this because I saw instances of grooming and phoned the police. The much older man was with young girls who were changing into mini skirts, heels and etc (not the usual fashion statements, but sexualised look). Police said 'he is just their boyfriend; you cannot tell how young people can dress' so I repeated 'no that is not what I was saying' Then, I called a helpline on child grooming and they were very good, told me to complain to the police immediately. I did this and the reaction from another police officer was excellent 'police man should not have said that, you are right, you did the right thing, it is serious' etc. And this was only last month.

Idolising the nuclear family and not recognising alternatives does not protect women and children form misery:
www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/11/09/breaking-the-silence-britains-adoption-scandal-was-a-heartbreaki/

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/27/forced-adoption-mother-and-child-reunited

"I was a perfectly healthy, capable adult. I'm still angry my child was taken away." The social, economic and religious pressures that existed at the time are easily forgotten now that the stigma of illegitimacy has been erased and sex without a wedding ring is the norm.

Maybe but post fact people seem to find it a lot easier to put Rochdale down to the culture of the offenders than a misogynistic care system that failed vulnerable girls.

"My gut feeling is its less so. Many of the things that made society cohesive, the church, the trade unions, the nuclear family are dying out and being replaced by individualism."

I wasn't alive then either. But, although it is easy to see the past through rosy, nostalgia tinted glasses, my impression is that society is less divided now than it was then and that impression is based on what I know of recent British history and what I have been told by those who did live through it. It is a bit ironic that you talk about the positive contribution to social cohesiveness made by the church, when the church has its own horrific abuse scandals. I am a Christian myself, but think that the automatic deference towards institutions like the church, which was much more prevalent in the 60s helped those scandals to stay buried for as long as they did.

Likewise, a lot of terrible things happened within good old "nuclear families". The fact that single mothers and divorce etc are more acceptable now has, in my opinion, enabled more people to escape abuse, and resulted in fewer children removed from their mothers to be placed in care (where they were often abused).

Just because people didn't talk about sexual abuse, domestic violence and pedophilia in the golden past does not mean it wasn't happening within those much respected institutions.

Quentin I agree with everything that say about how those girls were viewed and treated by society. Its misogyny and class prejudice at its worst. However part of the problem Is also the culture the offenders came from. You could probably say that what happened was a result of the darkest parts of British culture and Pakistani culture combining to create something truly vile. You cant try and prevent cases like this from occurring again in the future without tackling both.

I wasn't alive when Enoch made the speech so its hard to say whither society Is happier and more cohesive than it was in the late 60's. My gut feeling is its less so. Many of the things that made society cohesive, the church, the trade unions, the nuclear family are dying out and being replaced by individualism.
I have read the speech, I don't agree with every word of it especially the part about piccaninnies however I don't think he's just talking about race. However race is something that makes integration harder along with language and culture.
I do believe that all races are equal however all cultures are not.

If we had a culture where girls were believed when they said what was happening to them, where under age sex with much older men and sex work weren't accepted as something vulnerable girls do and a "lifestyle choice" Rochdale and Rotherham wouldn't have happened.
Men abuse children all the time. Organised child abuse rings (sports clubs, churches, children's homes, cub scours etc) are not uncommon. Rochdale/Rotherham were perpetrators from a particular culture but those girls were vulnerable to abuse by any man because of the way society viewed them.

No.
Not as happy and cohesive as it should be.
More happy and cohesive than it was in Powell's time. And not the bloodbath he predicted.

"Not all cultures are equal."
"Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible."
Enoch Powell was not talking about culture in that speech he was talking about race and colour. Have you actually read it? Do you still think he was right?

Squishy when you look at Britain do you see a happy cohesive society ?

People from different religions and races marrying and having make raced children is a good thing because it means that people are mixing interacting and getting to know each other.

People marrying their cousin and having 8 kids who will also marry their cousins is not a good thing even if they get a test done to insure their not passing on any genetic problems.

I think Rochdale and Rotherham etc happened partly due to good old fashioned British class prejudice and misogyny and partly because we've imported an unpleasant alien culture and failed to challenge it in the name of diversity. Not all cultures are equal. Cultures that practise FGM, forced marriage and honour killings are inferior.

"We are, we've just voted to leave the EU in a large part because of immigration."

We voted to leave the EU because of commonwealth immigration?

Was Enoch Powell right? Was he fuck.
"In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."
Bollocks.

There are problems in today's society, but Powell didn't predict any of them.

He was right that the UK would change over time, and that the children and grandchildren of immigrants would be considered "British". But his concerns over the "descendants of commonwealth immigrants" living among us as British citizens is not really seen as a bad thing by most people, surely? Only people who object to black faces or (shock horror!) some of those commonwealth descendants marrying white British people to produce mixed race British citizens.

Go back 4 generations, most of us are immigrant descended. Go back further, all of us are and that was true in Powell's time as it was now. What he was objecting to in his speech was the colour of those immigrant descendants. I expect I'd be alright in his eyes, because my immigrant grandparents were white Poles.

That whole speech is ludicrous, as is the stupid anecdote about the racist old lady who we are supposed to pity because her business is failing, when the whole reason her business is failing is because she excludes customers based on the colour of their skin. Talk about entitled!

So no, he was not right. Unless you think that the race relations bill is responsible for Rochdale, and there would be no grooming gangs if only we were allowed to discriminate against black people.

If Enoch Powell was predicting that Britain would be an unhappy divided society as a result of mass immigration then he was right. We are, we've just voted to leave the EU in a large part because of immigration.

There is a reason why we are talking about a speech made in 1968 by a man who died in 1998. Are people being blown up my Islamist fanatics yes, are we seeing child abuse on an Industrial scale in Britain's cities being perpetrated on one ethnic group by another yes. Now of course its being carried out by men. However it is also being carried out by men from a particular background.

Link to the speech. Utter bullshit and actually it just shows how much idiocy the talk of immigration problems is because 50 years on nothing he says has come to pass
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html
I've read some shocking things on here but suggesting Enoch Powell was right, on the feminist board of all places, really takes the biscuit. Yuck.

Jiggly maybe Enoch Powell was right.

Jiggly maybe Enoch Powell was right.

"Surely the percentage compared to the general population or the population that would have access to the children is what matters. Are men from other cultures over/underrepresented in the stats? Sorry if I'm being dim."

...Part of the reason why one particular form of abuse (grooming gangs) might be particularly perpetrated by one ethnicity might be to do with the proportion of Asian men employed in the "night time economy"; Minicab drivers, kebab shop owners, etc. Not the only reason, of course, but it could be a factor.

So abuse requires would be abusers having easy access to vulnerable groups, and that may be partly why shits like the Rochdale gangs carried out that particular form of abuse - because they had access to adolescent and teenage girls through their jobs. A shit who happens to be a priest will abuse the children he has access to, and a shit who happens to be a celebrity will abuse the children he has access to. The patterns of abuse look different in all cases, because the opportunities available to the abusers differ, but they are all despicable.
I'm not saying that there isn't a cultural factor too.

You keep making it about race lessworried. Why?

Incidentally, I suspect your post was deleted because it was hate speech. This is Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech: www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html Your post pretty much paraphrased it.

I think the Guardian is increasingly about promoting "a good society" which doesn't exist and never will outside the heads of their columnists . Anyone who dares to point this out will be deleted. Increasingly on articles where they know the comments are going to be either hostile of simply pointing out the absurdity of it then no comments are allowed at all.