Labour rejects calls for Oldham grooming gang inquiry

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Are Labour right to push the responsibility for carrying out a public inquiry back onto Oldham Council?

I don't understand how it is considered acceptable for local authorities to carry out their own inquiries when they are often part of the institutional failure that allowed these crimes to be carried out on such a large scale over decades. Councils, police and social services were/are all implicated in the failure to act (or to actively obstruct) in some way or another.

"Phillips’ letter to Oldham Council, seen by GB News, claims it is for the the local authority ‘alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the government to intervene.’ Reports have previously been commissioned and produced in Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford; Oldham now plans to launch its own Telford-style inquiry. Given the strength of feeling – which Phillips acknowledges in her letter – it seems inevitable that there will be questions or debate in the Commons when parliament returns next week."

"Yet for the hundreds of victims and those invested in bringing perpetrators to justice, this will seem pitifully inadequate. In each town where grooming gangs operated, similar patterns emerged: victims were ignored, law enforcement complicit and political officials more concerned about reputational damage than lives affected. Local authorities can hold their own inquiries, of course. But given the scale of these crimes, the fact they took place over decades, in many towns, suggests a level of institutional complicity requiring the attention of central government."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-rejects-calls-for-oldham-grooming-gang-inquiry/

Archive...

https://archive.ph/3greC#selection-1667.0-1759.570

Well, I've posted. I'll be surprised if the thread stays up though from the little I read.

Yes I don't think that thread will survive. Swiss cheese problem.

Gosh, that's a microcosm of what the issues are.

"So what then? You want to allow this to continue and bury Labour’s reputation so much that the naive and impressionable working class vote back the conservatives…or heck even Reform?"

yeah, that went down like a cup of cold sick. I think the thread will be pulled.

We know what the underlying cause is here. It is institutional and societal misogyny.

Hopefully we'll never find out. But i think if boys had been the target, it would have played out the same way.

There's some very obvious bad faith posting on that AIBU thread.

Do you think that person believes what they are saying?

"The worst thing about this is how it effects political opinion polls"

Not in the teeniest tiniest bit.

It's like a checklist of goadyfuckery.

My view as well.

The Labour government should merely undertake to look at the recommendations of the previous inquiry and implement them as necessary.

Okay, good. I can spot a goader TRA at a million paces, but that's because I've honed it. So good to know

Oh!

From 2h ago
13.59 GMT
No 10 confirms Starmer not ruling out holding new inquiry into grooming gangs
Downing Street has said that Keir Starmer is “open-minded” about the case for holding a new inquiry into grooming gangs, as demanded by the Tories.

At a post-PMQs lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson echoed what Keir Starmer told MPs earlier when he said that the government wanted to focus on implementing the recommendations from the national child abuse inquiry, and that a further inquiry might hold things up.

But the spokesperson also made it clear that a further inquiry has not been ruled out.

Asked if Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, was right to suggest in an interview yesterday that there could be a fresh inquiry, the spokesperson said:

The prime minister’s position is the same as Jess Phillips’, which is we are open of course and will always listen to what victims want in this case.

What we have heard from our engagement with victims and survivors group is they want to see action. That is why we are focused on following up the recommendations of Prof Alexis Jay and taking the actions we need to deliver justice …

As the prime minister said on Monday we will always remain open-minded. We will always listen to local authorities who want to take forward inquiries, or indeed further allegations that need to be followed up.

Asked whether a new inquiry would be off the table, the spokesperson said:

Our position is that victims groups have told us that they do not want to see a national inquiry, that we therefore share that view that that would not be the best way to deliver them justice.

We’re not taking some sort of binary approach on this … The government’s approach is rooted in what victims want in order to deliver justice.

I copied the above from a Guardian live article. I was worried if I linked it it would have been updated and moved onto something else.

The Labour government should merely undertake to look at the recommendations of the previous inquiry and implement them as necessary.

Why?

Why is "merely" in any way what they should be aiming for, when we are talking about tens of thousands of girls being raped and systematically degraded?

But the spokesperson also made it clear that a further inquiry has not been ruled out.

Crikey. He's far right winged himself

No 10 confirms Starmer not ruling out holding new inquiry into grooming gangs
Downing Street has said that Keir Starmer is “open-minded” about the case for holding a new inquiry into grooming gangs, as demanded by the Tories.

At a post-PMQs lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson echoed what Keir Starmer told MPs earlier when he said that the government wanted to focus on implementing the recommendations from the national child abuse inquiry, and that a further inquiry might hold things up.

But the spokesperson also made it clear that a further inquiry has not been ruled out.

"Not ruling it out", is their speak for "hopefully that will satisfy critics in the media and on social media and it will all blow over".

Andrew Norfolk was just on The Media Show on Radio 4 talking about the recent developments in the scandal. Now, he's a voice worth listening to.

He wouldn't touch the story initially when it was below the radar because the Far Right had seized on it. That's familiar. He eventually did get involved and saw the mainstream media go out of their way to avoid looking at the scandal. It was clear that this was being echoed across the Establishment. He then started to notice that the mainstream media were concealing the identities of the rapists (sound familiar?), he got his story into the Times and then there was the initial exposure of the scandal. But then he and others at The Times were attacked by parts of the media and academia as being racists. Eventually this led to the first of the Inquiries. Two years in he (with a colleague) was able to speak to senior staff at the DPP including Starmer. His version of Starmer here is positive about Starmer rewriting the guidelines which enabled a wave of prosecutions.

Norfolk is horrified that the debate now is being driven and manipulated by lies from over the Atlantic.

In a completey unsurprising move, apparently The Guardian rejected the story out of fear of being labelled as racist.

I'd say that's an essential listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0026ncy

Well there might come a point when another inquiry is useful.

Obviously there are different purposes to different inquiries.

Many of the existing reports and inquiries are about tackling child sex abuse gangs, preventing further harm, looking after victims.

Some of the survivors and people who have been doing heroic work in this field, may well want a further inquiry to further those aims.

There may also be need for investigations to bring to justice anyone criminally culpable in impeding investigations into child sex abuse.

Whereas that Daily Telegraph article linked earlier on this thread has the opening paragraph:
"Labour has blocked an inquiry into Sir Keir Starmer’s conduct as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service while investigating the Oldham child grooming scandal."

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-defends-blocking-grooming-gang-185104639.html

The Telegraph said the quiet bit out loud there. The Tories want an inquiry because they hope they can make mud stick to Starmer. Even if there's none to find.

It would be the "Keir's Beer" media circus writ large.

I remember that.

Each day a new headline:
"The police have sent a questionnaire to the Labour Party,"
"The Labour Party have submitted the police questionnaire,"
"Starmer has (or hasn't) submitted a written statement," ...
... all the way down to ...
"Police say nothing wrong, no charges, nothing."

Followed by another round of, "It's disgraceful police don't feel able to charge Starmer".

Very much the process is the punishment.

No, it's like pupils marking their own homework. Philips is out of order in trying to make them do it themselves when they asked for a public enquiry with independent judges.

In a completey unsurprising move, apparently The Guardian rejected the story out of fear of being labelled as racist.

I think they also rejected someone else, maybe Julie Bindel for the same.

Well there might come a point when another inquiry is useful.

Obviously there are different purposes to different inquiries.

Many of the existing reports and inquiries are about tackling child sex abuse gangs, preventing further harm, looking after victims.

Some of the survivors and people who have been doing heroic work in this field, may well want a further inquiry to further those aims.

There may also be need for investigations to bring to justice anyone criminally culpable in impeding investigations into child sex abuse.

Yes, as many of us have already said on this thread and others.

As a society people dont give a shit because it was working class girls who were targeted. We have a huge problem with class and snobbery in this country
I currently have a thread in AIBU about a social housing tenant who was stabbed by a housing association contractor. It has just a few posts. If it had been the other way around and the tenant had stabbed the contractor that thread would now be many pages long frothing about problem tenants.

I think (hope) we are seeing the power of calling people far right disappearing in front of our eyes.

Oh major cross-post. I hadn't seen that when I posted.

Thanks for sharing that, @lcakethereforeIam – and well done for catching it before it got updated.

It was boys in the case of Cyril Smith MP for the Liberal Party and that was well and truly covered up. The boys were 'in the system' in Care Homes or places for troubled youth.

The pattern is the same - pick victims that are not cared about and will be disbelieved.