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

https://juliebindel.substack.com/p/a-small-sample-of-my-writing-over?triedRedirect=true

Not really, @CheeseFromTheNorth .

According to that link you repeated, Starmer changed the CPS so that child rapists could more easily be prosecuted. And they were.

Some people have tried to use against Starmer the fact that in 2009, the year after Starmer became head of the CPS, a case was turned down for prosecution by the CPS because of the existing guidelines. There's no evidence Starmer had any involvement in that decision.

Starmer brought in Nazir Afzal as chief prosecutor; Afzal overturned the 2009 CPS decision on that case and successfully prosecuted the rapists.

Starmer also changed the guidelines which had caused the CPS to reject the case in 2009.

So if you're genuinely interested in Starmer's impact on prosecutions of child rapists, he has increased the ability to prosecute child rapists and the number of successful prosecutions.

It's right there in your link:
https://fullfact.org/online/starmer-muslim-grooming-prosecution-crime/

Yeah I follow Afzal on twitter and he pointed that out. I think the bottleneck is with the police tbh. There have been a lot of prosecutions, we just don’t hear about it. I am sceptical of the CPS though as so many possessing child abuse images seem to get away with a mere slap on the wrist.

It really concerns me though that so many were found in the first 12 months of Sunaks taskforce. 550 people is extraordinary in 12 months, I hope they have kept up the pace and we see more being convicted.

Whatever happens I think theres a spotlight on this in a way that is harder to avoid. But all the people who hid this should be exposed, the police and local councillors especially.

We really need to ignore accusations of bigotry, it’s used as a way to get people to shut up. Especially when it comes to harm to children we have to keep talking about it. I’m asian, I don’t care more about community cohesion than I care about children being raped, I think not charging people for crimes like these (severely) worsen cohesion over the long term. We can’t have a high trust society when institutions can’t be trusted to do the right thing, regardless of how uncomfortable it is. Very few things have managed to make me feel so much despair as this scandal. The suffering of little girls, what was inflicted on them, It’s unbearable.

This whole situation is just a case of finger pointing and buck passing. It's not surprising that the politician with the power to make a difference (who makes big speeches about protecting women and girls) that when she has the power to do something hides behind process and doesn't use her unique opportunity to effect change. Well done Jess "All talk no trousers" Phillips.

Parties of all colours have had a chance to right this wrong and have refused to. No wonder trust is so low in politicians.

I believe local government is the most corrupt level of government and councils will do whatever they can to avoid scrutiny. Local politicians will represent whatever party is likely to get them elected.

Previous inquiries have had very limited scope (such as covering a couple of years and not decades), a national inquiry would hopefully resolve this (although the current Covid inquiry refuses to investigate its origins because it's politically preferential to do so).

And I don't like people here hiding behind the "well he's only left/right wing so doesn't care, therefore we shouldn't investigate this". This is the exact attitude being played out nationally.

So many midsize towns are struggling to keep afloat, do the councils really have the resources to spare for inquiries? The government should be funding them at the very least.

I think about my own town and I can't imagine how the police could have coped with crime on this scale; there just aren't enough officers. Properly funding public services is important!

Long before we had 'transphobic' we had 'racist'.
You have to be able to question and treat all people the same, no group should be able to escape scrutiny.

I hate this government

It's not a good reason for action either.

I would hope people have the good sense to know the difference between actual racism and pointing out that group of people are behaving in a way that is harmful. The recent discussion on cousin marriage descended into accusations of Islamaphobia despite the fact that we know it causes verifiable harm, not just harm to the children born but most likely harm to the women in these marriages (I accept that not all, but the potential for abuse and the covering up of abuse is immense).

The article I mentioned earlier about the number of children born of incest (as in brother or father not cousin) being especially high in muslim communities has really got me worried. There are things we aren’t talking about as a society and girls and women of all colours will bear the brunt of this.

I wonder how many would be willing to fess up to having an actual problem though.

For not instituting an inquiry in six months that the previous government didn't bother to do in fourteen years?

Needing to understand how grooming gangs have operated for decades under the watchful eye of the police, councils and social services is the reason for action.

Failure to act leaves an open goal for the far right.

I think this article and comments here explain that one of the problems is those involved whilst claiming to care about what has happened to young women and girls, in fact dont. But are only too happy to exploit it as an issue to attack someone, or some institution they are politically opposed to.

So the Telegraph is using Musk, who is using the platform he owns to attack Labour, to join in their favourite hit list. Labour and Muslims.
Labour blocks grooming gang inquiry into Starmer’s conduct as CPS head

And as PPs have said, there have been many issues on this thread. And it always comes up about that some say it isn't discussed because of issues of not wanting to be seen as being racist.

But then it also comes up that in fact there is wide spread abuse of young people, not just girls, and particularly those in a vulnerable situation or an uncaring family.

The pattern of male abuse of young women is common throughout the UK (and elsewhere) but what often seems to happen is there are only hysterical headlines when Muslim men are involved.

A while ago someone produced statistics that showed that those who do the exploiting are usually in some are of work, eg mini cab drivers, who are more likely to have contact with vulnerable young people who are if not homeless scared to go home. And it just depends on which area in the country you live in as whether a particular ethnic group is involved in that work.

Covering up this particular example of sexual exploitation of young girls is no different to the covering up of sexual exploitation of young girls in so called care homes, and other institutions. Or the horrendous pattern of abuse of young women put into what is called "unregulated accommodation" where vulnerable young women are dumped by the care system, with out support or backup.

The underlying issue isn't about any one group of men, it is about a society that is meant to provide care and safety to young people to ensure that they do not end up being exploited.

Most councils will not have any sort of directive or intention of making suitable provision for young women and girls, and with the added pressure of funding cuts there is even less likelihood that a better level of support is provided.

Without even beginning to talk about why are so many young women finding themselves abandoned and vulnerable.

The idea that this treatment of young women and girls is only inflicted on them by Muslim men is just a distraction from the real issue.

Councils are not able, whether because they dont care, dont have enough money, or think young women and girls aren't worth bothering, to provide suitable support and accommodation.

The idea of organised gangs creates a sense that this is the worst ever situaiton for a young woman or girl. But a young women or girl who is being exploited by an individual man who pimps her out, equally suffers.

I just wish it were possible to have a discussion that focuses on how and why women end up in these situations of exploitation, and why those with the responsibility to protect them just dont do it. Councils, social workers, police, and in some instances families.

you do realise that the Tory government also refused a home office inquiry into Oldham and told them that the rule was that local inquiries should be set up and paid for locally?

Bloody 'ell. That headline!

I mean, when it's of the ilk of "Sunday Star Shocker: Starmer refuses to give score in tiddlywinks game when he was 10" it's just funny.

But this isn't. There will be people who will read the top of that article and wrongly believe it's an accurate picture. Eg it mentions the 2009 CPS decision not to prosecute – but doesn't mention the action Starmer took so that they would be prosecuted. And it's only way down at the very bottom of the article, below even Musk's many utterances, which bothers to mention the Labour government's support for the inquiry.

@IwantToRetire
I think this article and comments here explain that one of the problems is those involved whilst claiming to care about what has happened to young women and girls, in fact dont. But are only too happy to exploit it as an issue to attack someone, or some institution they are politically opposed to.

Yes this.

I find myself wanting to ask people who do this, and not just with this issue: "What are you prepared to burn down in order to gain (even more) power?"

Followed by: "Are you sure you'll be pleased to live in the world you'll have created by burning it all down?"

Makes people who vote for tax cuts and are then astonished at corresponding cuts to services, seem forward-thinking and realistic.

I suppose I should have caveated the above that I'm aware some internet sprites don't live in the UK – or indeed in any liberal democracy – so feel it's no skin off their noses.

Reading the Telegraph article right to the end, a more accurate headline for it might have been:

"Labour-controlled local council sets up inquiry into child sexual abuse gangs; Labour government encourages them and asks for findings to be shared and implemented."

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 agree. What those girls went through is horrific.

Yes it’s worth pointing out that Labour are entirely in agreement with the previous Tory government who sent an almost identical letter to Oldham Council in 2022.

As pp said and is clear from the AIBU thread, a lot of people think "grooming gang" is about underage girls consenting to sex with older men in exchange for vapes. Anyone labouring under that misunderstanding needs to read the court transcripts that have come out recently. This is about systematic rape and torture on a large scale.

x.com/serena_partrick/status/1874396241750262209

What I think is needed is an overarching public enquiry into multiple instances of these rape gangs. No passing the buck. Learning what went wrong and the patterns in multiple locations would inform any truly robust response by the government. It needs to be free of localised bias. But to do that, there would need to be an admission that there is a problem to investigate which is more than a casual association.

So a national inquiry, spanning decades and regions.

It should be a national enquiry and as public as possible to highlight the crimes being committed. The presence of grooming gangs is probably not limited to a few towns and we need to address the causes of these crimes and prevent reoccurences.

A fear of being culturally inventive should not be a barrier for as being as thorough as possible in investigating this national disgrace. Simply because the vast majority of grooming gangs seem to be Muslim men does not mean we should look at this series of crimes any differently or not pay them due attention as it play a against those whose agenda that but I culturism is always a success. If grooming is part of a culture then it's a culture we need to actively combat.

This is the approach of the Undercover Policing Inquiry. They sensibly took the view that separating different instances of abuse would obscure what the underlying causes were.

That's really interesting and pertinent @nauticant