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

Right to family life, the cases where people haven’t been deported it’s the family used in their defence. I also think this is extremely complicated. If you are in a cousin marriage for example and your husband is one of these scum I imagine the pressure to support a claim for right to family life is immense, even if you personally hope he burns in hell. It’s another reason cousin marriage should go.

Matthew Syeds article mentioned biobank finding significantly higher rates of incestuous progency (father being a brother or the mothers father) in muslim communities than the norm. Theres a world of abuse here thats being hidden and any talk about it is shut down immediately. No-one wants to have sex with their dad or their brother.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in an effort to be anti-racist many people have ignored the suffering of ethnic minority women.

Whats troubled me over the last few months and particularly reading whats become available online over the weekend is that the phrase 'grooming' gang was a way to hide the horror of what went on.

Even child sexual exploitation gives the impression that children were taken advantage of, rather than the torture that actually happened.

I think when people call for inquiries, what they want is to hear what exactly is going to change to stop this exact thing happening again, and people who were complicit, either through incompetence or malice, held to account. But i dont think that is going to happen anytime soon.

👏

It’s amazing to me that in the first 12 months they found 550 offenders and 4000 victims. It’s the scale of the thing which is so overwhelming. 4000!

JK Rowling was right, rape gangs, call them what they are rape and torture gangs.

Justice delayed is justice denied. To this day there are criminals walking free who were never properly investigated or got a slap on the wrist. To this day there are victims who were never properly heard. Like post-South African apartheid, or post Rwandan genocide, these communities cannot heal until the truth is heard.

Yes this is an interesting point. Perhaps someone within the Council has recognised there is a potential conflict of interest or that a Council inquiry would have certain limitations. It would be good to see the original letter.

A country wide enquiry will never happen, it would shine light into too many dark corners and make too many people realise just how widespread this abuse is and would set race relations back a century. Too many politicians and civil servants would be shown to have covered up the abuse as the feared being called racist so they took the easy option and no doubt more than a few took backhanders, new clothes and holidays.

This is spot on. Jess Phillips will live to regret this decision. It also encourages the two tier accusation and gives the appearance of Labour being keen not to upset its client voters. Next stop Blaspemy laws?

Many, many people suspect that certain communities all over the country are deliberately preying on vulnerable white children and that the police, social services, schools, care homes etc are allowing the abuse to continue for fear of being accused of racism. It will come out eventually. Sadly when some lone like Farage is in No 10.

It’s absolutely true that a huge problem was that the police looked at these immensely vulnerable girls who had very often been sexually abuse by their white families at home (hence being in care) who were angry, drunk, taking drugs (which they had been given) and who declared themselves in love with the men who had groomed them and regarded them as ‘slags’ who were getting what they deserved. Police refused to charge and the CPS turned down referrals as guidelines stated that if the witnesses were of ‘bad character’, unreliable and changed their stories, then there was little prospect of conviction. It was disgraceful. I’m sure that attitudes like this persist and more always needs to be done to root them out. Misogyny is everywhere. But the inquiries did not ignore this factor, in fact it’s central to the recommendations made in all the reports, and guidelines on investigating and prosecuting have been completely rewritten eg https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/17/cps-guidelines-child-sex-abuse.

Jack Straw was basically gagged from stating that there's a problem with Pakistani Muslim men and grooming, lets just call them raping, gangs.

amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/08/jack-straw-white-girls-easy-meat

I mean, he's been vindicated since, but at the time there was a lot of very left wing ranting about how we can't stereotype Pakistani men. But it was true: Pakistani muslim men were carrying out (and still are) these targeted crimes against underage white girls.

This article talks about how we can't talk about it on account of being branded racists for stating facts: www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2024/2/23/the-uks-grooming-gangs-and-the-lessons-never-learned

Yes, I agree we can't be sure without seeing Oldham's letter. And I agree with your list of three likely options.

If we're going to get into the nitty gritty of parsing the language, then because Phillips' letter says "for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry", I would go for your (b) as the most likely meaning.

If the wording had been "for Oldham Council alone to carry out an inquiry", then I would have gone with your (c).

However we may both be putting too much weight on everyday language which just wasn't written to bear it.

It would need Oldham's letter to make things clearer.

Regardless of which of (a)-(c) pertains, I agree that Oldham Council probably won't have made the decision to have an inquiry lightly.

But of course, left wingers are intrinsically superior, moral and righteous.

Labour not giving a toss about girls and women, surprise surprise

There are people in Oldham who keep the issue alive and raise it at every opportunity/council meeting. And probably will continue to do so until the right kind of enquiry is commissioned. I've leaned towards thinking a full public enquiry is not needed in the past, but I think given the Jay report's 20 recommendations have not been implemented at all, plus all the scandals/cover ups that have recently had light shone on them, I'm now thinking full enquiry + accountability.

The current MP for Telford (Labour for those who care about these things) blocked an enquiry into child rape gangs when he was council leader. Hope he gets booted at the next election.

If I were leading a council and someone told me there were a group of people raping children in my town I’d be calling in an enquiry and getting the police to explain exactly what they were doing about it, talking to schools and social workers and probably making public statements about calling and informing if you suspected anything.

Where was peoples moral compass and compassion here. Just the complete lack of compassion for the children still haunts me. People knew and they turned a blind eye.

There are stories coming out on twitter from people who tried to report and were stone walled by the police or local authorities.

@User37482 That's unbelievable. What on earth was his justification for blocking it?

Of course it doesn't need an enquiry.

Those girls are just working class scum, aren't they. I mean who cares?

It doesn't surprise me at all that Labour won't launch an enquiry into this. Bloody appalling, but entirely predictable.

Edited for omissions.

That's awful if girls in care were further abused and I don't want to diminish their ordeal at all, but I have also seen on social media first person posts from victims and their parents claiming they received death threats when they tried to intervene. I bring this up only to underline the seeming invulnerability of the perpetrators. They did not fear any repercussions from the authorities. For me that's a key reason why this needs a national spotlight and potential legislative change.

Alexis Jay was ongoing and they felt any further scrutiny was unnecessary. 2 years later he was calling for a government enquiry when Telford hit the news I think. They must have known if the home office knew. Everyone seems to have fucking known.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

Was it not Kier Starmer who was Chief Prosecutor around the time when dozens of the child rapists could have been arrested but he said no?
I'm not surprised Jess Phillips doesn't want a national enquiry, nobody wants to grass up their boss.

NO
fullfact.org/online/starmer-muslim-grooming-prosecution-crime/

"NO
fullfact.org/online/starmer-muslim-grooming-prosecution-crime/"

But the CPS decided not to prosecute - under Starmer's charge?