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

One thing I keep on hearing from some of those skeptical of there being an Inquiry is that there isn't the evidence to support that the subject of the Inquiry is an actual thing. But it looks like there has been no proper effort made to gather this evidence.

This is a line I've heard a great deal in another context.

The Telegraph on what Wes Streeting said

https://archive.ph/OJt7S

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/11/streeting-grooming-gang-rhetoric-second-nz-mosque-massacre/

Apologies if this has been posted, but this interview was eye-opening for me, found it referenced in the comment section of the Spectator Kirkup article:

Raja Miah is good to follow on Twitter/X about this.

One thing I keep on hearing from some of those skeptical of there being an Inquiry is that there isn't the evidence to support that the subject of the Inquiry is an actual thing. But it looks like there has been no proper effort made to gather this evidence.

99% out of 100 that is a gotcha line designed to shut things down. These crimes happened, and they share common features. The race element has put obstructions in the way of safeguarding these girls even if you take it out of the victim/perpetrator dynamic, either because people who should have done something were genuinely not wanting to rock the boat, or they could use it as a convenient excuse to hide behind to justify their lack of action.

This is slightly off topic - but also relevant as it picks up the issues about values and how certain groups view women. The Telegraph reports that Italian Police are investigating serial sexual assaults on women on New Years Eve by men carrying Palestinian and other flags. Similar to the Cologne sexual assaults:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/11/italian-police-investigate-nye-mass-sexual-molestation/

https://archive.ph/0B7qV

Discussion with Bari Weiss, Julie Bindle and Ayaan Hirsi Ali...

I’ve listened to this - very interesting. Julie B is quite critical of Starmer as pm and says what I thought about how he centred himself and Jess instead of the victims. Though interesting to see how each persons experience colours their views.

Though interesting to see how each persons experience colours their views.

But they clearly have so much respect for each other despite not being entirely in agreement.

Really interesting discussion.

Well someone is seeing the way the wind's blowing.

https://x.com/Inevitablewest/status/1878188731489988770?t=w_4RgIqJhjAjkFq-WxRfjg&s=19

🚨BREAKING: Labour MP Dan Carden breaks with Starmer to call for a grooming gangs inquiry:

“The outcome must include acknowledging the racial and ethnic hatred of this mass sexual violence. This is not an obsession of the far right. I am speaking out because over the decades there have been far too few Labour voices expressing clear disgust and outrage at these heinous crimes, their cover-up and the lack of action.”

The Sunday Times has a couple of articles today

https://archive.ph/4FzX2

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/grooming-gangs-ethnicities-how-many-statistics-data-dpx2bfrts

This one could have been written by Felix, 'we don't really know'. Although I'm not saying that's inaccurate.

This article runs down the situation in Oldham

https://archive.ph/8qMBV

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/grooming-gangs-campaigners-inquiry-labour-h8qj5kpqx

The ordeal suffered by Samantha Walker-Roberts beggars belief. I hope 'Sophie' sees more of her abusers face justice.

Part of why this is true is because we (at least in theory) have safeguarding to protect us from strangers / unrelated individuals. If you remove all public safeguarding then I suspect that very quickly the statistics will change and proportion of sexual violence by people we don't know will rise rapidly. The difference in offending between single (female only) sex and mixed sex spaces already exists to show the truth of this.

And yes, saying we shouldn't differentiate between different types of CSA is really just a way of avoiding the issue and a way of sweeping a specific type of sexual abuse under the carpet. And I think that is an evil thing to do given the harm these children have suffered.

Thanks for posting this, top of my list for watching when I have time. Bet it's very interesting.

Im going to post links to two threads to prove the point im about to make
Link 1

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5250643-dispatches-britains-benefit-scandal?page=1

Link 2 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5247469-to-think-housing-associations-need-to-do-more-stringent-checks-on-who-they-employ-to-go-into-tenants-homes?reply=141261794

Thread 1 complete with derogatory comments about people on low incomes was started this afternoon and is steaming ahead.
Thread 2 which i started last Wednesday about an SH tenant who was stabbed by a contractor has only a few posts and is struggling to get off page 1
Its not really hard to see how working class people/SH tenants are seen in this country. If the tenant had stabbed the contractor Thread 2 would be moving even quicker than Thread 1 So its not a great stretch to see that the children of working class people are seen as expendable and not just by the aborrent members of those grooming gangs either. Society has helped to create the situation to make this abuse easier for them to get away with
On the news last week a father of one of the girls talked about how he was arrested by the police for trying to rescue his daughter. There is no way they would have arrested him if he had come from a "naice" area.

The resistance to what needs to be done is not only because of the culture issue It would mean tackling the class issue and they dont want to do that . They dont know how to do that. Or both!

The abusers were working class too. So if its a class issue, why were they protected?

Lots of the police, councillors, social workers will be from working class backgrounds. They lived alongside these girls, probably went to the same schools.

The abusers, the girls and many of the people in authority are the same class.

Middle class people are generally more well connected, so a middle class father might know who to speak to get his daughter out of danger without being arrested. But we dont know how many girls who were close to being abused were protected because they were the nieces of police officers, for example.

I believe the medias attitude to northern towns, class and race will have a big influence on how its reported, though. And that has allowed those in authority to avoid scrutiny.

n

Let women speak went to Oldham yesterday.

The Telegraph have reported on Rotherham

https://archive.ph/IwdAW

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/13/grooming-gang-victims-rotherham/

It's a long article and I suspect it could easily have been twice as long. Don't read it unless you're prepared to be very angry.

Jic you're not cross enough, the Times

https://archive.ph/PzaiF

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/grooming-gangs-inquiry-told-not-to-investigate-senior-officers-2wqg9tp22

This is horrific.

And the thing that I’ve noticed, is that a lot of people seem to think that these men targeted children in care.

But from my reading over the last few months, it seems a lot of these children were taken into care after they were already being abused.

Parents were trying to protect their children, going to the police and social services, and ended up having their children taken off them.

Absolutely fucking evil.

And the tragedy of it all is that no one will ever be held accountable.

Even if all comes to the light eventually, it’ll just be ‘lessons learned’ and they never fucking will be 🤬🤬

Wow the testimony from the women that were there was chilling. The lady who was a trainee social worker and was told by a senior social worker it would be 'criminal' to try and stop the rape of underage girls and she'd lose her job and be finished as a social worker??!! WTAF is going on in this country? If a social worker is being encouraged to overlook rape of children?

It's so unbelievably shocking. Kudos to those women speaking up now, given the attempts to silence them it can't have been easy. I am sure they are in the minority even now.

KJK is spot on when she says talking about this is seen as WORSE than the actual rape and torture of little girls. So people who say we're quite far from Afghanistan as a country are clearly wrong. In certain areas of the country at certain times, among certain demographics, we're not.

The other excellent point was the comparison of sentences of paedophiles vs women saying words the powers that be don't like on twitter. Even when those words are truly awful - WHAT THE FUCK? It's not worse than PAEDOPHILIA?

It's Orwellian, worse than Orwellian. The torture those girls experienced is worse than Winston experienced.

Wow the testimony from the women that were there was chilling. The lady who was a trainee social worker and was told by a senior social worker it would be 'criminal' to try and stop the rape of underage girls and she'd lose her job and be finished as a social worker??!! WTAF is going on in this country? If a social worker is being encouraged to overlook rape of children?

I hope this senior social worker who said this is named and shamed.

These children were so screwed up by the abuse, I don't doubt it was a horror story for their parents. Especially dealing with them alone, not just in the absence of help from the authorities but with them actively hampering. The girls, in drink, in drugs, in 'love' with their rapists, in fear and, let's not forget, children what an absolute nightmare and they, and their families, were in this nightmare for years. Whenever the authorities made a decision they seem to have made the wrong one, the self serving one, the 'easy' one.

At least fourteen hundred children abused in Rotherham. From the Times article

The IOPC carried out 91 investigations into police failings, covering 265 separate allegations made by 51 complainants. It examined 47 officers and found that eight had a case to answer for misconduct and six for gross misconduct.

The disparity in numbers alone says the investigations have barely scratched the surface.

Immense gratitude to Kellie-Jay for allowing a space where these brave women can speak up. Because it's clear no-one else is going to allow them to.

She also pointed out how effective the silencing has been. I wonder how many former social workers sit scared of speaking even now.

Every time I listen to those who were there, I end up shaking with terror at the end. I cannot even begin to imagine how the victims felt and still feel.

I read in one article that those convicted have been allowed to go back and live where their victims still live (after serving insulting sentences) and the terror felt by a victim seeing her torturer rapist (one of the few convicted ones) in her local supermarket - so the state continues to enable the abuse of these women.

And yet, Starmer managed to send a mother to jail for 26 months for saying something racist for about 2 hours on twitter, before deleting it. So he can get things done when he wants to - he obviously just doesn't think torturer rapists of young children deserve to be in jail for very long, and that saying something racist for a couple of hours is worse.

Of course that mother is away from her children now.

Where are the snap court cases for these men?

I do not feel our daughters are safe. I know these girls were already vulnerable, but it's the thin end of the wedge, as we've seen in Iran and Afghanistan, it's not going to end here.

We all need to rise up to stop it.

Starmer's not wrong in demanding Mandatory Reporting.

He's been fighting for it for more than 10 years – and this stuff is why. But it also needs the police to act when it is reported.

Not reporting child abuse 'should be criminal offence'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24772777