Labour suspends Trevor Phillips because he identified who made up child grooming gangs

[jadefinch]

Trevor Phillips is the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission - and he's recently been accused of 'transphobia' for saying women's same-sex spaces should be protected.

He's now been suspended by Labour for accurately saying that the majority of members of northern grooming gangs, which sexually abused tens of thousands of vulnerable girls, were Pakistani Muslim men.

One of the main reasons why the girls were put at risk was because the police and local authorities didn't want to intervene in case they were accused of Islamophobia.

Labour's war on both women and the freedom to say things that are true is not going away.

news.sky.com/story/labour-veteran-trevor-phillips-suspended-over-islamophobia-allegations-11953457

TP said on LBC that (paraphrasing) this could be seen as an attack on the EHRC, despite him having left there 8 years ago. It’s a reasonable take.

Cwenthryth by sacrifice I mean they still ignore the issue for their own gains (votes).

Funny how some posters are keen to say Rotherham etc "was the police's fault". Did the police groom the girls? It doesn't matter if the girls were the slaggiest slags or vestal virgins, they were under age girls who had been groomed by older men . Where the police failed was having the line that to pursue this would damage community relations. A crime is a crime.

Alloutoffucks - The main reason girls were put at risk was because professionals like the police thought they were just "slags" rather than victims.

No. The professionals are to blame for their cowardly failure to investigate. The abusers are to blame — solely and fully — for the crimes they committed against those girls.

Phillips made his programme and wrote his pamphlet several years ago, which is a lifetime ago in terms of politics and the rapid moving political map of the last 4 years. Labour's move against Phillips is just pure spite, because he was vocal about not voting for Labour in the last election. Labour is looking everywhere but in the mirror for a scapegoat for their dismal performance.

Heard TP on R4 this morning. I am grateful he is on the side of GC women, because he sounded like the only grown up in the room compared to the interviewer who sounded desperate to trip him up.

The Muslim Council of Britain person on R4 was ridiculous. The notion that Muslims don't think they are different makes no sense. By definition, belonging to a group and following a religion that is not part of the prevailing culture/religion of the host country makes you different. Along with the rules about mingling of the sexes and dress codes. That doesn't make you any less human and it doesn't make you any less British or entitled to the protection of the law of the land. But you are different by your own design, and the minute you start using your differences to try to bend the law or avoid scrutiny, then you are open to justified criticism.

Labour keep very quiet on their self ID policies in Northern towns it's not something they use in their campaigns or advertising for the reason that Muslims are not in favour of it.

Can GC groups try to target such communities with information? For example, could Transgender Trend send their packs and book to local schools and groups. I would be happy to contribute to such a drive.

WTAF Labour.

It appears that nobody made this complaint, the Labour party spontaneously decided to investigate him. Labour have told him that he must not quote the allegations against him and if he needs support he should contact the CAB or Samaritans.

Good. The sooner the labour party hurry themselves into oblivion the better.

(And I used to vote Labour.)

I find Trevor Phillips to always give a balanced, measured and thoughtful view on issues. What are Labour thinking?

On what basis can Labour forbid TP from quoting the contents of a letter sent to him? Talk about authoritarian. What have Labour got to hide if they feel their allegations are justified. If I was TP, I would publish and be damned. The Labour Party can expel him, but so what? They don't want someone with his inconvenient opinions anyway.

Oh well they can expel everyone for wrong think and stick with the tiny titan Little OJ and the rest of the misogyny gang and then wonder at the next election why they got less votes than the bloke dressed as a chicken promising free eggs for all.

I can't understand what is going on in Labour. They are in a complete mess.

We're going to be stuck with the Tories for a long time now and the country will be ruined.

I can't even see a time in the near future where I would be happy voting for Labour and if you had told me a few years ago that would be the case I wouldn't have believed you.

The police clearly in documents showed that they thought girls were choosing to have sex with multiple older men, and them receiving money for this was described officially as a lifestyle choice. They were not seen as victims.
Councillors refused to tackle it because of a fear of racism, but with the police it was pure misogyny.

I think one of the reasons Philips is so loved is because he is always so measured in his opinions. He has always come across as extremely intelligent.

And yes this is trying to set seeds to rubbish the anti semitism investigation. They know it will be damning.

The Monster Raving Woke Party.

Institutional fear of appearing racist, particularly in the local authority, was absolutely one of the factors. There were several.

Absolutely, Clymene. And absolutely the police as well.

Look what happened to Adele Weir, who identified what was going on with the grooming gangs back in 2000/2001. She gathered and collated so much information but instead of investigating further, the police completely ignored and refused to share the evidence she’d compiled, her office was broken into and documents deleted from her computer, records were falsified to make it look as if she’d agreed to be gagged when she hadn’t, and she was booked onto a two day “ethnicity and diversity awareness” course.

[From Wiki] A five-year investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that the Rotherham police ignored the sexual abuse of children for decades for fear of increasing "racial tensions". The IOPC upheld a complaint that a father of one of the victims was told by a police officer the town "would erupt" if it became known that Asian men were regularly sexually abusing underage white girls.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

(And yes, I know it’s Wiki, but this is a matter of public record. I’ve seen Adele Weir interviewed and heard her recount these events in her own words.)

Anyone who tries to downplay or deny the race issue here (and in the other similar cases) is colluding with the very mindset that enabled these abusers to continue abusing those poor girls, terrorising them (and often their families too) for years after the abuse was first identified.

Hundreds and hundreds more girls suffered because the police and the council deliberately refused not just to join up the dots - that had been done for them - but to act on the compelling, hard evidence that was presented to them, because of the race aspect.

Another version of the sacred caste approach.

And yes there is no way Labour will get in at the next election.

Anyone who tries to downplay or deny the race issue here (and in the other similar cases) is colluding with the very mindset that enabled these abusers to continue abusing those poor girls, terrorising them (and often their families too) for years after the abuse was first identified.

Yes. I fell out with a friend over this and so have seen the irrational rage talking about it can provoke, but the fact remains that if you refuse to talk about this you are making an active choice to sacrifice the girls who were abused, and the ones who will be abused in the future, in order to keep the peace. Which is a despicable thing to do.

@TalkingtoLangClegintheDark I am not downplaying that this was principally Muslim Pakistani men in Rotherham abusing mainly girls, most but not all who were white.
But if you read the actual full report and not wiki it is clear that white Councillors ignored it because of fear of racism - some parents and concerned others brought the issue to Councillors attention. It is also clear that some Local Authority officials ignored it because of the race issue. But the people who had the legal power to prosecute ignored it because they thought the girls were consenting and had chosen this "lifestyle". You have to recognise they were victims first before you can prosecute,
So yes if others had not been afraid of racist accusations, they could have put real pressure on the police to prosecute. But even without that, the police could have prosecuted if they had recognised these girls as victims.

I think facts matter in cases. Phillips is right that fears of being called racist, inflating race tensions was a factor. OP is wrong to say it was one of the main factors

JessicaLangoustine

Yes, I think self ID is an emerging issue in Muslim Communities, many think it's a conservative/tory thing rather than a Labour/cross party one and are more than likely not aware of Labour's stance. Labour are happy to let the tories carry the can so to speak.

If you look at how a section of the Muslim community reacted, in Birmingham to the school who were teaching about different families mainly LBGT themed, gives the flavour of why certain issues are downplayed and kept under the radar and why.

The school reaction was mainly about kids being taught that being lesbian and gay is okay. There is a lot of homophobia in the Muslim community including Imams preaching that homosexuality is wrong.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300239
Petition to release the grooming gang report, if it's ok to share here

Well, anyone who's been watching telly or reading the papers since the trans pledge fiasco surely knows that Labour is fully on board now, so all that's left to do is get the information out to parents about what that means for the schools their children attend.

Funny how some posters are keen to say Rotherham etc "was the police's fault". Did the police groom the girls?

I think some of the blame for the abuse that happened subsequent to Weir’s report in 2001 (and there were other well-known attempts to expose what was going on too, after hers) has to lie with the police and and the council, who made a deliberate choice to completely disregard these crimes, and the victims. I’m sure that misogyny and sheer contempt for these vulnerable girls played a big part in this choice but so did the fear of appearing racist, very much so.

Did they groom and abuse the girls themselves? No.

Did they abdicate their indisputable responsibility to protect these girls from a known and clearly evidenced threat of serious harm, and go after these dangerous criminals? Yes.

They could have stopped it years before. They didn’t. They were complicit in the abuse.

It's pointless to argue about whether it was the police or social services or the politicians who were most responsible other than the perpetrators. Every single institution that should have protected those girls failed. Each institution may have had different reasons, but there's plenty of blame to go around and none of them come out of it looking anything other than completely fucking useless.

Yes exactly talking to Lang

OP is wrong to say it was one of the main factors

And yet, alloutoffucks, the IOPC upheld that complaint I referenced above.