To think the roots of the grooming gangs go back to failures from the 1950s on?

[Carla786]

I was reading Hina Husain's excellent article here and it made me think

https://unherd.com/2025/06/mirpuris-and-the-problem-of-integration/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

that discussion of the roots of the grooming gangs tends to focus on Blair's failed multiculturalism policies, local council/police etc failings.

But what rarely gets talked about is why and how large parts of the northern Mirpuri Pakistani communities were allowed to get to such a self-segregated and dysfunctional state to begin with.
Why was there no research in the 1950s-60s on the clan systems, misogynistic practices prevalent in rural Mirpuri villages when they were encouraged to immigrate? Why PMs from Wilson, Heath, Thatcher etc never appear to make integration of such communities a priority to some extent?

Most stuff just seems to blame PC culture & Tony Blair, who do share a huge amount of blame, but less is asked about why this situation, clearly full of potential issues, was never addressed much from the 60s to 1997...

Indeed!

What we should be looking at, as with Epstein and all other sexual abusers, is who benefitted and who turned a blind eye? Who colluded and why? Follow the money!

Some girls did have parents. The Sikh girls groomed were majority from intact families but abuse still happened.

I agree that abandonment/absence of parents played a big role but grooming can & did happen without that.

Hrtft, will later

grooming gangs exist because the police etc didn’t care about working class girls ???

black and Asian working class girls are victims of such gangs believe me, although probably to a lesser extent on the statistics

if The girls had been middle class, this would’ve been sorted straight away.

Excellent post.

This point esp caught my attention : 'And the radicalisation happened later, not when they arrived. They were all dressed like the Beatles in the 60's, and the women wore colourful salwar kameeze. Now they are head to toe in black nylon, the men in pyjamas.'

Radicalisation happened after- how and why?
I've read quite a bit about how UK-born Muslims were recruited to fight for Isis and similar patterns recur. Parents find it harder & experience more prejudice but do their best to fit in with laws etc. These particular children go off the rails to utter depravity. Why?

I wonder how much of a role Saudi Arabia's exporting of hard-line Wahhabi Islam played,,for one?

Exactly.

Sikh & Hindu girls were also abused. And though 'dirty non-Muslim girls' was part of it, a minority of victims were Muslim girls from their community.

To be clear, I wasn’t trying to insulate that if it’s an unpleasant an opinion, it’s automatically a male one, or that they must be Pakistani either.

And the other person I am thinking of, also posts on a variety of topics, and has done for some time.

From another side, I know Pakistani men who are currently in prison after being convicted with very little evidence of this type of historical crime. 2 of them were 14 when the ‘crime’ was committed, as far as they were concerned at the time, the girl was their girlfriend and was the same age

• that's really sad. I wonder if another reason the grooming gang victims were ignored was due to racism : women believed to be having relationships with men of a different race have often been seen as suspect, and it may have contributed to them being viewed as immoral/promiscuous etc rather than abused children.

Totally agree.
Big Yellow needs to do some research.

This comes up time and time again on these threads about 'how were kids aged 13 able to be out in takeways' etc etc

Short of locking children up, there is difficulty enforcing that. Children with either bad parents or poor parenting history, dont have the boundaries around them. Even if they then go into care, they dont magically then become invested in adhering to boundaries, its meaningless to them.

I know, Ive read it. Excellent book

We know the children were vulnerable and why. What we need more research into is how to change the mindset of the gangs that sees these girls as worthless

Yes. It would be great if we collected better quality data. But they don't because they're fearful.

Interesting post.

'Religion would have played a part in how people were seen, Christians at the time would have been seen to be more 'like us' I suspect.' - I agree but religion doesn't seem to have affected things that much since mainly Christian West Indians were treated more harshly, as you noted.

Norms towards women were partly changed by Indian reformers like the Brahmo Samaj, not only by British, and they did vary historically across India. But yes, the British being there ensured stuff like sati & child marriages bans were pushed through.

Yes I meant in terms of how much 'interference' as it were, that the UK as a whole put into communities and lives.

Interference might be the wrong word, perhaps oversight, interest, connection, disagreement, doing 'Christianity the wrong way' type of thing as part of the harsh treatment.

Whereas another culture/religion/different traditions that are very very different are sort of left alone to get on with it. Not helped and welcomed as such but neither interfered with that much.

So how do we address it earlier? Before these children get to this point? Because we need to. The reality is, there will always be people looking to exploit vulnerable children, whether that be the British workhouses of the past, the grooming gangs, now county lines. How do we address the vulnerability?

Ah I see ...yes, that makes sense.

Address the men first. We can't just think it ok to let the Pakistani community hold onto those views of girls.

That needs to be done, but it’s only dealing with a very small part of the issue. What about other other gangs who anre exploiting children every day? And even if we change the views of most, there will always be outliers. And don’t forget, for this particular issue, most convictions are historic. Is it still prevalent since the issue has been highlighted?

What if we worked to remove vulnerability? Wiped out poverty? Ensured that these children have a future and can see that? Otherwise it will just move onto something else. We will be discussing county lines in this same way in years to come, I’d put money on it

Its men

What is society doing about that. How are we training them, expecting of them, what are we being overt and voicing about?

How blunt do we need to be to talk about physical entitlement, personal hygiene, taking responsiblity for yourself, how to parent as a father, how to anticipate need (your own and others). These things seem instinctive or picked up by osmosis by many girls/women, but very lacking in men.

How do we protect children earlier? Have much higher intervention thresholds into families, early help, troubled families if you will. But then no one seems to want that, we have a 'live and let live' society, very individualistic. No one wants to be seen to judge or shame anyone elses life.

Is there any country on earth which has managed this?

Right now though, surely we can go into the schools and places of worship and say bluntly how to treat women and girls and not be afraid of cultural sensitivity.

Men need to be accountable.

But they aren't. And won't be.

Probably not. Are there communities within countries that have managed it? Possibly…..

Tackling poverty would be a huge start. Imagine if a minimum wage job earned you enough to have a decent standard of living? Allowed you to save for a house deposit on one wage? Imagine that there were lots of these types of job available.

If we are saying that we can’t wipe out vulnerability, can we start by reducing it?

Speaking generally, Islamic extremism was in its infancy in the 50s, and so these men seemed somewhat more benign, I suppose.