Why Labour Killed the Grooming Gang Local Inquiries

Britain’s government has done it again. After voting against the opposition’s motion for a national statutory inquiry into Britain’s ongoing Pakistani rape gangs scandal, Labour promised £5 million in funding for local inquiries in five of the 50 known towns and cities affected. This included Oldham, where the council said they were incapable of conducting an independent inquiry without government assistance; to which Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips took four months to respond before refusing to help. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament that independent KC Tom Crowther, who oversaw the Telford inquiry in 2022, would set the framework for the investigations. But once the scandal fell out of the headlines, the government set to work stealthily stripping back all the provisions promised for the five inquiries.

On Tuesday, a day before Parliament enters Easter recess, with only 45 minutes warning, Phillips announced at the despatch box that the inquiries will not happen. Instead, councils will have to bid in a “competing fund” and can spend the money on nebulous “victim support” measures. This avoids the uncomfortable process of local authorities naming who among them knew about the rape, torture, and trafficking of thousands of working-class white girls, and either did nothing, or actively facilitated the abuse. Furthermore, despite condemning Conservatives for failing to implement the findings of Alexis Jay’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), Labour today have dropped plans to implement Jay’s recommendation to extend compensation time limits for victims too. It seems the government are not even interested in buying the girls’ silence.

This should sicken us, but not surprise anyone; least of all Tom Crowther, who heard nothing from the Home Office since the announcement and had to call them in February to ask “Do you still want me?” Crowther was then informed he was no longer required, and that ministers and civil servants would set the terms of reference for the inquiries instead. These same Home Office civil servants referred to the rape gangs as a “grievance narrative” perpetuated by “right-wing extremists” only last summer, in a report commissioned by the Home Secretary. (For more on the Muslim activist infiltration of the Home Office, see here.) Even if the inquiries had gone ahead, there was a good chance that they would have been just as much of a cover-up as when, in 2020, a Home Office report claimed that the vast majority of child sex offences were committed by white men. This is despite the papers cited by the report finding that 80 percent of group-based child sexual exploitation perpetrators are ethnic Pakistanis.

This is the reason why the government has refused and resisted first a national, now the local inquiries. Labour rely on the Muslim vote as a client group to make seats in Birmingham, Bradford and London safely red. At the last election, former Shadow Minister Jonathan Ashworth lost his seat to independent candidate Shockat Adam, who campaigned solely on a ceasefire in Gaza. Other sitting ministers, like Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting, and Jess Phillips herself came within a few hundred votes of defeat by Muslim candidates — and would be likely to lose, were an election held today. This explains Labour MPs’ recent pandering to Muslim interests: such as establishing an Islamophobia blasphemy council and lobbying to build an international airport in Mirpur, from which the majority of Pakistani rape gang perpetrators originate. Labour appear to have made the craven political calculation that being honest about the ethnic and religious composition of the rape gangs will cost them Muslim voters.

This explains the ashen grimaces of Starmer’s front bench as Shadow Minister Katie Lam asked, “Does the Minister accept that in many cases these crimes were racially and religiously aggravated?” Of course they were: perpetrators recited verses from the Qur’an as they tortured the girls, and denigrated them as “white slag”, “white whore”, and “white c*nt.” When Rochdale rape gang ringleader Shabir Ahmed was convicted in 2013, he told the court, “We are the supreme race, not these white b******s.” One gang convicted in Rotherham in 2017 shouted “Allahu akbar” as they were led out of court.

During her statement, Lam read a new quote from a court transcript procured by Adam Wren of Open Justice:

“The girls we are talking about are predominantly white. The men who preyed on them were predominantly Muslim, generally either from Pakistan or of Pakistani heritage. One of the victims from Dewsbury was told by her rapist:

“We’re here to fuck all the white girls and fuck the Government.”

Lam also read from the original Oxford trial transcript, which was shared on X by Max Tempers and caught the attention of Elon Musk — bringing global attention to the scandal.

At no point in their crimes have the perpetrators been shy about their hatred of white people, of women, of non-Muslims, and of Britain as a nation-state. This has all been suppressed by a media and political establishment who find it impolite and inconvenient to talk about. Hence why Labour’s faces ranged from looking bored to enraged that anyone dare mention the crimes they would rather be kept quiet. These were the faces of people who had just heard how a child was anally gang raped and violated with a baseball bat, and wondering how they could spin refusing an inquiry into such crimes as a good thing.

Phillips settled on accusing Lam of minimising the severity of other types of child sexual exploitation instead. This was disingenuous, even for Phillips — who, at the height of the scandal earlier this year, portrayed herself as the real victim in interviews with any news outlet available, after Elon Musk tweeted unfavourably about her. Labour look to have decided that, for political expediency, white working-class girls must remain silenced.

Their counterparts in the Liberal Democrats demonstrated more ideological reasons for rape gang denial. Tessa Munt MP said “My blood is boiling listening to this stuff” and emphasised how “white men” are really the ones truly to blame.

Her colleague, Munira Wilson MP cited her taking offence as reason enough to shut down the debate:

“I welcome the Minister’s statement. I share her disappointment that the Conservatives have sought to pick out one particular community. Day after day in this Chamber, they vilify Muslims. As somebody who has Muslim family and brown skin, I say that we feel increasingly uncomfortable in our own country, given the attacks that we hear, day after day, from the Conservatives on all Muslims. It is an absolute disgrace.”

This is reinforcing the same chilling effect that was cited in the Jay and Louise Casey reports as the cause of why whistleblowers didn’t come forward sooner with knowledge of the abuse: that “you couldn’t bring up race issues in meetings … or you would be branded a racist.” It appears many politicians still believe that the victims of the Pakistani rape gangs should be silenced for the sake of preserving diversity.

Where should victims turn now? The Conservatives have promised to table a second vote on a national inquiry, via an amendment to the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill. In the eventuality that is voted down, newly-independent MP Rupert Lowe’s crowdfunded non-statutory inquiry is the only alternative. I have heard murmurings that Conservatives are willing to be involved, given Labour’s likelihood of blocking the statutory inquiry. It would be the right thing to do: for the victims demanding it, and for the public who need to hear the horrific abuse they were subjected to. Even if the senior Labour party officials implicated in the cover-up — such as former leader of Telford council and sitting Labour MP for Telford, Shaun Davies, or former leader of Oldham Council, now assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister, Jim McMahon — refuse to show up, questions can be asked of them, on video, in their absence.

Reform UK previously promised to bring forward a privately funded inquiry, but leader Nigel Farage has since said “there’s no point me holding an inquiry into this or Rupert Lowe holding an inquiry into this unless it has statutory powers.” Yesterday, Farage suggested Reform would pursue a judicial review instead; however, without an inquiry to determine which public bodies and officials failed and were complicit, the scope of the review may be difficult to determine.

The best move for the victims would be for Farage, Lowe, and the Tories to set political divides and bad blood aside, and collaborate on a cross-party private inquiry. Such an act might bring just enough pressure to bear on the government that it forces the state to act. Until then, the victims will continue to be denied justice, so that Labour can pursue the repudiated narrative of multiculturalism, and appease the Muslim voters who have been turning increasingly to sectarian alternatives.