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...

You can’t really argue it’s a race thing either. Sikh and Hindu men are not in grooming gangs.

Why is that?

Some cultures just have shocking attitudes to women. We should be able to say that.

I’m more concerned with the fact that it took an unreasonable amount of time for any action to be taken.

Sure, perpetrators might come from a different culture, but why weren’t local services more proactive in tackling it?

We all know why: because back then grooming young girls wasn’t taken anywhere near as seriously as it is nowadays.

Agree

To be fair, if urban, educated Pakistanis have come from Lahore or Karachi then the picture would probably look different. It's the rural clan culture in places like Mirpur which is so dysfunctional.
If Hindu men had been brought from uneducated villages where women have low status then there might have been similar problems (not the same clan system though). There's clearly a severe problem of rape in Hindu-majority India now. The difference was that the Hindus & Sikhs who came here were urban & educated etc

I think it was just a case of "Asian" being a more general term and everyone being terrified to actually say "Pakistani". I can understand why it upset a lot of people whose culture was/ is totally different, and misled a huge number of people who never listened to victims or read any of the reports or listened to Sarah Champion, Maggie Oliver or Anne Cryer at the time.

Yes, and the problem is it's a specifically Mirpuri Pakistani problem because that's who we invited in back in the 50s and 60s. Why??

It's astonishing the way the government brought so many people in with so little care about background

i was wondering at what point you’d blow your cover, a thread disguised as concerns for rape victims but in actual fact inciting hate towards an entire community. Imagine hating immigrants more than pedophiles and rapists.

Congratulations on spectacularly misreading my whole argument...!

'Blow my cover' - I have nothing to hide..🙄

The specific individual men she’s talking about are paedophiles and rapists 🙄

Thank you!

Re Maggie Oliver, I was just reading her Wiki page : When Oliver got upset about the handling of the case, she claims one of her seniors told her, "Maggie, calm down. Listen: What would these kids ever contribute to society? They should have just been drowned at birth".
Need to check the citation, but unfortunately sounds plausible to me. The contempt the police seemed to have for the girls was horrible.

It does sound plausible.

Note the grooming gangs are still operating, too...!

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&rct=j&url=www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/01/the-grooming-scandal-abuse-today/%23:~:text%3DIn%25202003%252C%2520the%2520local%2520Labour,here%252C%2520according%2520to%2520multiple%2520sources.&ved=2ahUKEwi4ge_z682SAxVUQ0EAHeGFNZoQmL8OegQIBxAC&opi=89978449&cd&psig=AOvVaw1pX7uuLgCMHf4GNW5arJwy&ust=1770775762903000

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2050kkpzypo&ved=2ahUKEwi7_puS7M2SAxWbVEEAHUOaEfwQFnoECD4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3drcpabB28P0LepUfXwFiH

I am not convinced about that tbh. As I said earlier, from what I learned as a rather naive student in the early 70s, the significant appearance of large quantities of heroin from pakistan was a noteable event. It was traded through some, not all, local businesses and went from strength to strength as takeaway businesses and taxi firms flourished in Northern towns.The grooming gangs seem to have been a by product of some of those. Certain families became very rich and influential.
One of the biggest west yorkshire heroin dealers I know of has a veritable mansion in the middle of an otherwise quiet little town. He has been in business for decades.
Just as an aside, I moved down south over 40 years ago and the biggest drug lords/ money launderers/ organised crime people here are Albanian and Turkish. The police turn a blind eye to it where I live too.

Hang on, why do you think the abusers were not from Mirpur? I think most British Pakistanis are?

Or was your disagreement with something else? Sorry, I don't quite follow...

Sorry. I didn't explain clearly.
Yes, I am sure the abusers in the grooming gangs were/ are from the Mirpur community. I think that is down to particular cultural norms in that community. I listened to Anne Cryer talking about this in depth at the time.
I am not sure it goes back to the 40s and 50s because I haven't heard or read anything about that period. I understand that many people from many different countries came here in the 40s and 50s, my own parents included. As far as I was aware the vast majority came to work and just had to get on with it..
The first I heard about serious concerns about the Mirpur community was the heroin in the early 70s. The grooming gangs were the same people. Still ongoing.

I understand,,thank you. To clarify : I definitely don't want to condemn all immigrants who've come over the last decades..or all Pakistanis or all Mirpuris etc My own grandfather came here as a refugee from Poland in 1945, I'm certainly not anti-immigration of decent, law-abiding people.

I agree most people coming in the 50s (it was mid-50s Mirpur immigration started) got on with work. However, the Mirpur community does seem to have preserved unhealthy norms and as you say, dysfunction was evident by the 70s. It may not have resulted in crime before then but these attitudes must have had deeper roots.

Agree with all this.

Sadly ironic that mixed-race relationships were criticised then, but that greater cross-community relationships are a sign that the West Indian community as mixing more than the Pakistani community was.

And yes, as you say, Pakistanis may have been seen as better adapted then due to marrying, working etc. Apparently misogynistic customs, drug dealing etc were ignored since they mainly affected women in the community or poor working class white girls in the surrounding areas. Until the problems became too huge to be suppressed...

Yes, Pakistanis did face racism and violence but as you say they protested less for various reasons. So again they were seen as better kinds of immigrants possibly...

I’ve married into Sikh family. My grandfather in law was certainly not educated beyond primary school and maybe a few high school years. So dispute your argument that the underlying factor is urban vs rural. It’s simplistic and reductive imo.

What is far more pertinent is cultural attitudes towards women and consent.

From what I’ve observed Sikh women have far more parity in their marriages as they do not practice polygamy. They are able to have more influence generally speaking. The Islamic practice of having multiple wives is a means of controlling and disempowering women. It’s by design.

It’s also not accurate to say Sikhs who came to the UK were uniformly urban or educated, many were from rural backgrounds too. The difference isn’t city vs village, it’s gender norms and how women are viewed and treated.

And the idea that India has an “out of control” rape problem compared to everywhere else is a common misconception. On a per capita basis, India’s reported rape rate is actually lower than many Western countries (of course underreporting is an issue). It’s still a huge problem but I don’t think you are being entirely accurate in what you are saying.

I’ve spent 3 months living in India and dispute your characterisation of India having a severe rape problem. And question why you are pushing this agenda…

why are Muslims overrepresented massively in prison populations? Like I said you can’t account for this solely due to racism.

We have to be able to say some cultural attitudes and behaviours need to be criticised and challenged.

II don’t think we invited them -apart for some to work in the ?cotton mills in central England when they struggled to staff the low paid jobs, the rest came ,imv, once they realised what an amazing country the UK was - free education and healthcare, better pay, the brought over family ,spouses, everyone they could, before there were limits on immigration. I expect that stopping it would be obvious racism. So it was left to run..

The millionaire with the mansion I mentioned earlier has a very small business... Everyone knows him, except the police.

It seems to be an issue wherever there is very strong tribalism that people bring with them.

That can be because of religious beliefs. You can see that historically wherever there was a group that would not intermarry for religious reasons, or create other strong ties outside the community. That does not always lead to criminal behaviour, but it very often can lead to social problems with the dominant group, especially as the religious group becomes more numerous.

Some religions also tend to reduce tribalism because the belief system is more universal. Christianity has typically had that effect to some extent which may be why people from the West Indies integrated more. Even when there were people who disapproved, there is nothing within the dominant Christian belief that really supports that, Christianity has always been racially diverse, and that tends to allow for things like intermarriage. Sikhism I think also tends to produce people who integrate well into western societies (maybe other societies too, I am not sure.)

Education and rural vs urban can be factors because exposure to more education tends to mitigate against tribalism and to some extent so can living in cities and also wealth. People become less parochial. That doesn't mean all poor, rural, uneducated people are tribalistic, but it does mean you may find those attitudes more commonly in those settings.

I suspect few people in the 50s thought that they would settle here permanently, or at least not in large numbers.

Yes, and if it is down to discrimination, which is a possibility, then surely that needs to be investigated and tackled? It’s a two way street. There’s a discrepancy and it needs to be looked at.

So what about the Indian population then. You mention how well the wind rush generation integrated and just ignored a large section of South Asians. Or are we all brown so it doesn’t matter?

What I think is most interesting is how some men have that predatory nature and anyone who shows any vulnerability gets targeted. We see that with the grooming gangs targeting white vulnerable women and white men who target white women for abuse. It may interest you that some muslim grooming gangs were operating in Southall targeting Sikh girls (and have been for a number of years) but no one really cared because they girls and brown. Also some of the policemen who were involved in helping those victims from the grooming gangs then went on to abuse those women because they were vulnerable. Men, but not all men.