Gov refuses home office investigation into historic child sex abuse in Oldham

[Perzival]

I've just read on x that Jess Phillips has formally declined Oldham council's request for the HO to investigate the grooming gangs in Oldham. Why on Earth would they do this? Apparently JP says it should be a local investigation? Clearly that is a conflict of interests and if the council are asking for help they should?

The only link I can find other than x is GB news (apologies).

https://www.gbnews.com/news/oldham-grooming-gangs-labour-government-inquiry-abuse-scandal

The very reason the far right are taking hold is BECAUSE of the absence of anyone doing anything from left, right, central.

By allowing this to go unchecked and hushed up because we can’t be seen to be targeting certain demographics is EXACTLY why people are going more extreme. They don’t trust mainstream politicians of any flavour.

The left have been very quick to shut down any centrist to right person as thick, racist, etc. You now have the consequences of those actions. Farage on the rise, Trump in the USA. It’s a direct action of many governments not doing anything and people who are extreme left shutting down any conversation. It’s an own goal. People feel let down.

they couldn't give a flying fuck about domestic violence, rape, abuse of women.

Neither does Jess Philips, apparently.

Sensible post.

It is good that someone is raising the fact that these disgusting crimes have been committed, over a very long time but don't think they are doing it because they care about the young girls/ women who have been so abused. They care about self promotion, their agenda and making everything into a political win for them.
We need to concentrate on what is wrong and what is right, regardless of left / right/ black/ Asian/ white and general in-fighting!

Exactly this

Agreed. V similar to what I said in an earlier post.

Yes this! The left are so quick to shut any criticism down that they leave people frustrated and disenfranchised and more likely to go to Reform

Tom Holland's a historian, right? In that case he presumably knows that this is EXACTLY the argument Stalin used when collectivisation and dekulakization led to the Holodomor.

This 1000%. I was a bleeding heart leftie all my fucking life and I'm now politically homeless and watching Britain head towards some kind of Mad Max dystopia because NO ONE HAS THE COURAGE TO TELL THE TRUTH.

Some of these communities have values completely alien to Western, British values. The media cover up means that the many decent people in those communities don't get a voice either- they don't get a chance to say 'We utterly reject these fuckers and everything they stand for' but the horror is they will pay the price of the backlash when most did nothing wrong. It's no different from tolerance for LGB people diminishing because of blur haired lunatics on Twitter screaming about Trans rights. Decent people of every creed and colour are over it. They will vote for anyone who promises to restore sanity even if they are a liar in a budget Trump mask.

And the great unspoken topic here is porn and how utterly corrosive it is, how it is robbing men of their fucking souls. Some can literally no longer see women as anything other than holes to be fucked. The breakdown of respect between men and women has accelerated like never before. Now men aren't even held to the most basic and minimal standards of society - to treat women with respect, to work, to provide for their children, to be functional adults instead of weed smoking porn addict gamers.

I am fucking over it. We need politicians who are worthy of our votes.

All she said is that they should commission their own inquiry. The government is looking to implement the wider inquiries findings from 2022 - what's wrong with that?

Whhaaaat, are you saying that Farage and Elon aren't true feminists??

Don't be so fucking rude. If there's one thing women don't need a lesson on here is that none of them give a fuck.

Jess Philips is a woman who's made a fair bit of bunce from books and TV appearances which are specifically predicated on her being a fearless feminist. Yet a quick search through Hansard and also her Guardian comments/articles will show that she's expended considerably more time and energy on excoriating Boris Johnson for eating cake during lockdown than she has on the issue of systemic rape gangs and the institutional cover-up.

There's PLENTY wrong with that. If you can't see it I can't help you I'm afraid.

Well things are warming up now, at least its getting wider airing.

From a personal point of view I could not give a shit if its the left, right or spot the fucking dog that is shouting about it. This needs adressing opening up and discussing and putting to bed with convictions and support for all invoved.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14243873/Kemi-Badenoch-Elon-Musk-rape-gangs-scandal-Keir-Starmer.html

I stopped worrying about being called "far-right" in 2019 after people called me that for liking JK Rowling's tweets.

I think there are parallels. Anyone who has actually looked at trans surgery results and knows what is happening under the whitewashed label "gender affirming care" can't unsee it.

Anyone who has read the court transcripts posted on twitter about the inhuman violence done in these cases also can't unread it. Believe me, don't read them if you are sensitive but it is SO MUCH more than "just some 16yo kids in care who had older boyfriends".

What when agencies in the command of the council were knee deep in involvement? That’s marking your own homework. If you can’t see the problem with that - there is no explaining it to you.

https://x.com/SamanthaTaghoy/status/1874814722085712060

This young woman was asked by the police if she consented. She was 5 years old when it started. Her post seems to suggest it’s still happening in Telford today. Any locals on here know if this is the case?

she was being interviewed by Talk Tv at 3pm today.

1 in 73 Pakistani men in Rotherham have been convicted. It’s so very hard to prosecute for rape so how many are perpetrators if 1 in 73 are convicted?
A few Hindus are saying their girls are also targeted.

Some of what happened sounds more like torture than rape.

Everyone agrees that the mass grooming, exploitation, rape and abuse of girls is abhorrent and there has long been acknowledged that there is a particular problem with gangs of men of Pakistani heritage forming gangs for organised child abuse. There was initially and for far too long a disgraceful response from local politicians across the country and from multiple police forces who failed to treat the girls as victims. There was also a deplorable instinct to downplay or hush up the racial element either out of fear of appearing racist, to avoid inflaming local tensions or to protect people in the same community. Whistleblowers were ignored or even punished. However, it is not true to say there has been no coverage and no action since these events came to light . There have been thousands of newspaper reports including the investigations in the Times that exploded the scandal. There have been multiple large-scale reports and inquiries, both local and national. Multiple police forces have set up units to investigate and prosecute gang members and there is a national task force too. Hundreds have been arrested and there have been multiple trials and convictions. New guidelines on how to spot and deal with child exploitation have been created. These things are ongoing. Phillips has not said there should not be a second Oldham inquiry. She has supported it. But said it should be conducted locally, in the same way as the Rochester and Telford and other inquiries have been.

I would like to add two points into this debate. Firstly. Jess Phillips has rightly raised the point that rather than further enquiries we need to focus on implementing the requirements of the 2022 enquiry and the Rotherham enquiry led by Alex Jay. In both reports the culture of the Police and Social Services in treating young women and girls is called into question. In essence they were treated as criminals rather than victims with one social worked suggesting that the girls had taken "lifestyle choices". The Police refused to acknowledge any initial issue at all and in some cases arrested parents who went on site to try and get their daughters away from their abusers. The issue for me is a much more basic one of misogyny which is ingrained into institutional thinking. On all sides of politics progress on violence and abuse of women is too slow and in 2025 society still tolerates widespread abuse from all types of men.

Why should I have any faith in the abilities of the police forces’ ability to impartially investigate sexual abuse against women and girls, when many of them have been found to be institutionally misogynistic?

And if this is happening so often, that multiple local inquiries are needed, surely there is cause for an overarching investigation and inquiry to join up the dots? Something has gone seriously wrong, in many places, many times over if there is a need for many local inquiries.

And for all the new procedures etc, who’s checking to see if they are implemented and effective?

This article framed it better than me.

The reasons for refusing a government intervention can be disputed, but it cannot be disputed that it is reprehensible. The case for a centralised inquiry is clear: while this request was for Oldham alone, there has been a rape gang scandal in over 50 British towns and cities. This is a staggering scale of depravity, and most cases are marked by close resemblances in their systematic nature. The demographics of the rapists are often disproportionately men of Pakistani origin and their victims are particularly vulnerable young girls, often in social care. There have been large-scale cover-ups within ethnic communities, social services, police forces and council authorities.

Politicians have taken to passing laws named after victims — such as Martyn’s Law, Clare’s Law, Harper’s Law — to ensure the often appalling and nightmarish circumstances of their deaths never happen again. By contrast, it seems like politicians cannot wait to forget the victims of Britain’s grooming gang epidemic.
While there have been isolated inquiries, such as the Jay Report and a 2013 report by the Home Affairs Committee, these have not provided sufficient answers. But a report solely into the events in Oldham will arguably suffer from the same issue, as will any report provided by a council reporting on its own conduct. Given that many of those involved may still be serving, it will be difficult to name the individuals at fault.

Rather than treating each gang as a separate problem, the Government should launch an inquiry that deals with the disturbing phenomenon as a whole. It should treat this as what it is: a national problem, not isolated incidents. It should provide the resources, authority and backing necessary to deal with the crisis as such and tackle the institutional cover-ups which happened time and time again, regardless of the council area responsible.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/why-is-labour-rejecting-a-national-grooming-gangs-inquiry/

I want the cover up of these abhorrent abuses to be thoroughly investigated and the results made public. I don't care if this is through an inquiry or something else but it needs to be nationwide and carried out by independent, reputable professionals.
If this makes me right wing, so be it.

Matt Goodwin

I can confirm that
@RupertLowe10
will be joining our show State of the Nation tonight 8pm on GB News to tell us what HE thinks we need to do to fix the grooming gang scandal

There was a long independent inquiry into cases in some areas published a couple of years ago. It focussed on a few areas, and I guess Oldham wasn't one of them. Prior to that, there were also stand-alone inquiries into the Rotherham and Rochdale abuse rings.

Maybe the feeling is now that enough "lessons have been learned" to establish best practice nationally.

What a snotty, patronising comment. Time to move on? I bet you wouldn’t say that if you or one of your kids were one of the victims.

If Jess Phillips fails to act now, she will have completely failed at what will be the most important job in her career. And that's what she will be remembered for- looking the other way, because she found it politically inexpedient to face what has been- and seems to be likely still ongoing- mass rape of girls.

So much for Jess, the fearless feminist.

Any inquiry should also take into account family and community links between the members of the panel and the people investigating.