The British state and grooming gangs

The blight of the sustained and organised sexual abuse of vulnerable young white girls by gangs of British men of Pakistani origin has been a stain on many of our towns and cities.

Why is it that over the years the response of local authorities and others charged with investigating this abuse, with some notable exceptions, has been to downplay it? It was done either by denying the problem exists, or by burying any investigation in such time-consuming and bureaucratic processes that the impetus to seek answers was stifled.

Downplaying the abuse continues. In January, Oldham council requested government funding to enable it to re-examine historical claims of such abuse in its area, but safeguarding minister Jess Phillips refused. A rare unanimous vote of the council on 13 February rejected Phillips’s claim that local inquiries were best and called for a statutory judge-led review as it would have more powers.

Silence

The Conservative parliamentary opposition, sensing an opportunity to embarrass the government, called for a national enquiry, despite having remained silent for 14 years when in office. Starmer, with a huge parliamentary majority, was always going to win the vote on 8 January. But that didn’t prevent a national outcry.

So Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans for a nationwide review of grooming gang evidence, and authorised government support for five local enquiries. Set against decades of evidence of grooming abuse in up to fifty towns and cities, such a limited proposal was never going to be enough.

For decades politicians of all stripes have sought to gain favour with so-called communities and community “leaders”, always self-identified or chosen by the politicians, never by the people. Everything else was seen as low priority – notably the class interests of workers whatever their religion or origin.

So nothing happened when, in the 1990s, rumours began to emerge of vulnerable young white girls being targeted for abuse. That the abusers were said to be of Pakistani origin resulted in a predictable official response, either denial or counter-accusations of racism. In effect, the abusers were given carte blanche to continue.

In 2001, care home workers and social workers in Rotherham began reporting that girls in care homes were being picked up in taxis and driven away to be plied with drugs and alcohol and then repeatedly sexually abused. Again, the girls in question were almost exclusively white, while the taxi drivers were of Pakistani origin.

Reports of this abuse, along with the identities of taxi drivers involved, were forwarded to the police and the council. But as it emerged later, no action was taken despite further evidence from Dr Angie Heal, an analyst working with South Yorkshire Police, and local solicitor Adele Gladman.

The evidence of organised grooming was mounting, but those who tried to identify the perpetrators were at best ignored, at worst vilified. In 2003, MP Ann Cryer made public her allegations that British Asian men were grooming underage white girls in Keighley. Branded a racist, she was denounced by her local Labour Party.

Courageous

But Cryer and others would not be shut down. Other MPs and some courageous journalists, not least Andrew Norfolk of the Times, continued to raise awareness about this scandal. Eventually, in 2010, five men were convicted of sexually abusing children, the first grooming gang prosecution in Rotherham.

Genuine attempts to uncover the facts were met with official resistance and a failure to take the matter seriously, largely in an effort to shield local authorities and police forces from criticism. But the weight of evidence, particularly in Rotherham, was overwhelming.

In 2009, the government had put Rotherham children’s safeguarding service into intervention, effectively concluding it was not fit to do its job. Belatedly and reluctantly, Rotherham council had to act.

In 2013, the council commissioned Professor Alexis Jay to lead an independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Rotherham between 1997 to 2013.

The ensuing report, published in 2014, was a bombshell which completely undercut the attempts of officialdom to deny the extent or the seriousness of the abuse. It described in detail the extent of the abuse of some 1,400 victims, including rape of girls as young as 11 by large numbers of male perpetrators, and the trafficking of victims to other towns in northern England.

Blatant collective failures of political and officer leadership in councils were identified. Police were found to have seen car crime and burglary as more worthy of attention, treated many child victims with contempt, and failed to act on their abuse as a crime. Safeguarding staff were overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases.

Of particular concern was that the vast majority of perpetrators were described as “Asian”, a non-specific designation, often deployed to avoid the more accurate “British of Pakistani origin”. Several staff members reported they were afraid of being labelled racist. Some said their managers instructed them to be non-specific when describing the abusers.

Ignored

The 2014 report was thorough, but its focus on Rotherham meant that elsewhere similar patterns of abuse continued to be ignored. Inquiries in Bristol, Telford, Oldham and Rochdale among others, confirmed that such abuse continued and that there was widespread failure of those in authority to ensure the safety of vulnerable young people.

In 2016, the Conservative government turned back to Professor Jay, asking her to take over and lead the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Launched in 2014 in the wake of the Jimmy Savile and other abuse scandals, it was reconstituted as a full statutory inquiry the following year.

‘Cultural sensitivities must not prevent the investigation and prosecution of criminal exploitation of children…’

Its report when published in 2022 described CSE in England and Wales as an epidemic, with tens of thousands of victims. It made many recommendations, not least that police should focus on investigating the criminal conduct of sexual exploitation, rather than sanctioning children for anti-social behaviour. The inquiry also called on the Department for Education to ban the placing of 16- and 17-year old children in semi-independent or independent care if they were at heightened risk of becoming victims of CSE. Most significantly, it said that police forces and local authorities should collect data in every suspected case of CSE, including the existence of criminal gangs and the ethnicity of perpetrators.

This January, Professor Jay gave evidence to the parliamentary Home Affairs Committee about the progress on the inquiry’s recommendations. She expressed her frustration that none had been implemented, and that representatives of the then Conservative government had been unhelpful, even at times antagonistic.

Jay bemoaned the failure of the British state to ensure the care of so many vulnerable young people, but she was clear that another national inquiry was not the solution that so many appeared to think it was. As she explained, public enquiries are good at establishing the facts, but have no power to enforce remedial action.

British workers cannot expect the British state to remedy the situation of its own volition. It will offer regrets, excuses and apologies, but nothing more. We cannot allow cultural sensitivities to prevent the investigation and prosecution of criminal exploitation of children. Above all we need a change of ideology: put class interests first, don’t allow imposed ideas of “community” to obscure class needs and action to protect children.