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

And I find it a strange argument that Labour has to follow the Tories lead.

Has anyone argued this? I haven't seen it, if so.

On the contrary, Labour is moving forward where the Tories didn't.

Eg on mandatory reporting:

the Tories fudged it
(May 2024)
New child abuse laws a 'fudge', inquiry chair says
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0lmek4m8no

Labour has timetabled a bill for spring
(7 January 2025)
Cooper promises law to tackle child abuse cover ups
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2wx9w47p9o

Thank you for that cake.

My God it's, harrowing to read.

And it would appear that almost the entire fucking town is complicit.

It reads like a script to a nightmare film. Council offices accessed, through five layers of security, keys located, files deleted and wiped, no evidence of a break in. No report to the police.

The police basically telling whistleblowers and victims to shut up or else. Men on the council involved at the deepest level. Fathers of these girls being arrested.

It's like the entire town has been held to ransom by rapists and drug dealers all in bed with the authorities, many of whom appear to be in it up their neck.

I'm absolutely horrified. Less about men's attitude to women, you can't be on this board for five minutes without seeing that.

But more about the whole bloody scale of it.

The reason none of this was stopped was because those in a position to do so had exactly the same attitude to these girls as their rapists did.

If there been a number of 'inquires' already, how come none of them have produced these men? All paid to protect these girls and utterly complicit in their rape and torture.

The reason none of this was stopped was because those in a position to do so had exactly the same attitude to these girls as their rapists did.

Yes, I've thought this for a long time.

Or if they don't have absolutely identical attitudes in their own lives, they certainly don't consider such attitudes very far outside their own boundaries.

The reason none of this was stopped was because those in a position to do so had exactly the same attitude to these girls as their rapists did.

If there been a number of 'inquires' already, how come none of them have produced these men? All paid to protect these girls and utterly complicit in their rape and torture.

Yes, exactly.

Labour has timetabled a bill for spring
(7 January 2025)
Cooper promises law to tackle child abuse cover ups
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2wx9w47p9o

That's a clear reaction to Elon Musk's intervention.

They were, presumably, reporting, investigating and prosecuting other men who were raping children?

And I find it a strange argument that Labour has to follow the Tories lead. Aren't they supposed to stand by their own principles?

Indeed.

I cant speak for anyone else, but I'd be holding a conservative government too. account to.

Reform mps would.

Absolutely.

The Tories didn't do nothing.
Grooming Gangs Taskforce arrests hundreds in first year - GOV.UK https://search.app/ZEgBaeXmkC9hYTVD6

Paul Waugh, MP for Rochdale and Sarah Champion now supporting an inquiry.

Not sure why people are banging on about who did what.

Locals have said this has been going on since the 70s

So thats what, 50 years?

Thats longer than I’ve been alive.

Multiple governments, multiple parties, multiple prime ministers and how ever many other ministers.

And NONE of them did anything.

This is absolutely endemic.

Cross party, top-to-bottom, spanning fucking decades.

It’s not fucking team red or blue point scoring.

Shame is free, and there’s more than enough to go around

I agree @GoldThumb.

The current government need to make the decision now, whatever has gone before.

GoldThumb

I agree too. The buck has to finally stop.

This.

Cooper promises law to tackle child abuse cover ups.

There were laws forbidding child abuse since before the rape gangs started but they weren’t used or upheld against many of the gangs.
It’s great that Yvette Cooper is promising a law against child abuse cover ups but no doubt the cover ups will be covered up.

I think there is a place for looking at the way party politics influenced people to look the other way (i.e. climbing the ranks, keeping sweet, not being a troublemaker if you have ambitions). However I think people should look more at the local level of councils, rather than what e.g. Starmer or Sunak or whoever did as leaders - not that they don't bear responsibility for their parties, but just because it's much less direct and you end up with generic "mistakes were made in the chain of command" conclusions instead of "Councillor Blah always voted against local inquiries because he was angling for the MP nomination and PC Blob deliberately scuppered that investigation because it was his cousin".

Local councils are often starting points for the major parties, and also at local level there are often small local parties or groups of independents who have their allegiances - which can be interesting.

One of the speakers at LWS said there is a plan to separate parents from their children.

It's just awful to think these children were taken from their parental love and care to be trafficked, basically.

And the point about the rioters sentencing is that it happened extremely quickly. And of course the PM had a lot to do with that - there was a sense that something had to happen quickly. Shows they can all ( Starmer, the Labour Party more widely, police, judiciary) get on with it very rapidly when they want to.

The only possibly conclusion is that they don't want to when it comes to child rapists and torturers. The sentences some of these convicted rapists received was an insult and it took far too long for barely any of them that were culpable to get any sentence at all.

Rioters who were sentenced quickly had pleaded guilty quickly.

Other rioters who pleaded guilty are still being dealt with: there was a sentencing just a few days ago of someone who pleaded guilty. That one was more complex as they had to decide whether to try him for his threat to murder Yvette Cooper and others, but in the end decided not to.

I completely agree with you that it has been taking far, far too long for child sex abusers to be prosecuted.

But I don't think you're doing anyone any favours trying to conflate child sex abusers – who follow up their abuse by pleading not-guilty so that the children they've abused have to endure testifying at trials – with people who rioted on camera and pleaded guilty to it.

Someone who has tried to prevent the conviction of child sex abusers is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson. Yep, Musk's hero Tommy.

Twice now he's tried to intervene in trials of child sex abusers to make the trials collapse.

Once might be ignorance. But twice, nah. Not when he had already been convicted for his first occasion.

Yaxley-Lennon was arrested (and pleaded guilty to contempt of court), the child sex abuse trials went ahead, and the abusers were convicted.

To be fair during that cave rescue of the Thai schoolchildren , Musk did refer to the ( white) rescuer as " that paedo guy" and offered to build a specially designed rescue craft.

The Hillsborough enquiry was long, long over-due - but did finally bring the matter to some kind of acceptable resolution, and the current enquiry into what went wrong in the Lucy Letby case is proving to be very thorough.

You think TR wanted the rape trials to collapse? For what purpose?

He was reckless as to whether they might. He acted solely out of his own interests and not in the interests of the victims.

Thank you and I make no apology for going back to this - as you say, it's long and it's taken me a day to digest it. I had seen some of the contents before but often unsourced and never all pulled together like this.

I was reminded of Gotham City. If they made a film about it, I have little doubt it would be decried as not credible and the makers probably cancelled.