Something Rotten in the State of Britain

Let us compare the fates of two people who have recently come to blows with the British justice system.

The first person is Bannaras Hussain: a leading figure of the notorious Rotherham rape gang. The infamous Hussain brothers groomed, raped, and brutalised white working-class girls for over a decade. In 2016 Hussain was jailed for nineteen years after pleading guilty to ten charges including rape, indecent assault, and actual bodily harm. Some of the victims were as young as eleven. Hussain was released on licence in December 2024 after serving only nine years of his sentence. He spent less time behind bars than the years he spent abusing children. Having committed unspeakable acts of cruelty and shown zero remorse – he purportedly drove around town with his brothers bragging “we own all Rotherham, we are all Rotherham” – Hussain is now walking the streets of the UK.

The second person is Lucy Connolly: respected childminder with no previous criminal record, mother to a child of twelve, and carer to an ill husband. Connolly was sentenced to two years and seventh months behind bars in October 2024. Her crime? An incensed social media post written in response to the Southport attack. On 29 July 2024, Axel Rudakubana murdered three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. In a highly emotional state, Connolly posted the Tweet: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it”.

The incendiary tweet was based on supposition. Tensions about immigration and multiculturalism were sky-high, and the Southport murders sent shockwaves through an already febrile society. Rumours swirled online about the culprit being a Muslim asylum seeker. Connolly thought better of the ugly post and deleted it a few hours after posting. But the damage was done and people had screenshotted the angry Tweet. Eight days later she was arrested and charged under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986. Under duress, Connolly ended up pleading guilty to the offence of distributing material with the intention of stirring up racial hatred and was sentenced to 31 months behind bars.

Allison Pearson provides a more detailed account, outlining the mitigating factors and arguing that Connolly’s sentence was disproportionate:

“Lucy Connolly was a first-time offender, a person of good character, a mother of a 12-year-old child, a carer for a husband with a serious blood disease; she suffered acute anxiety and was on medication as a result of huge personal trauma [losing her own child].”

Furthermore, Connolly has been denied Release on Temporary Licence, which permits inmates to stay two nights at home each month. In the Spectator Laurie Wastell points out that ROTL is granted to fellow inmates convicted of more serious crimes:

“A low risk to the community and a primary carer to her child, Lucy ought to be a prime candidate for this normal step in the rehabilitation process. But Lucy claims that a prison official told her probation officer she wouldn’t get let out with a tag ‘because of press and public perception’.”

The British justice system appears to be at sixes and sevens, and the public is waking up to this fact. A deleted Tweet landed an otherwise spotless citizen in jail for two and a half years, while a child rapist who was involved in one of the most heinous scandals in British history walks free after nine years.

Rotherham is at the centre of the ongoing rape gang scandal. A report released in 2014 found that at least 1,400 children were victimised there between 1997 and 2013. This is one of fifty towns; a portion of thousands of little girls who were abused by organised networks of predominantly Pakistani men and failed by the system. It is just the tip of the iceberg and the British public want justice. As the Telegraph reports, “this is a scandal that should be rooted out entirely, and investigated by the full might of the British state”.

Against this backdrop, Labour’s recent moves are baffling. On Tuesday 8 April, the government made the decision to water down inquiries into the ongoing gang rape scandal that has shocked Britain to the core. Having rejected calls from Oldham Council to hold a national enquiry back in January but pledged £5 million in funding for local inquiries, Labour rowed back on some of its promises. Jess Phillips put forward a “more flexible approach”, broaching the idea of victim-led local “panels”. Connor Tomlinson reports on the full details here, digging into why this might be.

A chasm has opened up between what the public wants and what the government is doing. A YouGov survey released in January showed that more than three-quarters of Britons wanted a national investigation into the rape gang scandal. This followed a string of posts by Elon Musk criticising Labour’s refusal to launch a full inquiry and even claiming that Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison”.

Let us not forget – Starmer criticised politicians “calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far-right”. His own voters disagree with him, with two-thirds of Labour voters supporting a new public inquiry. A representative poll from Friderichs Advisory and JL Partner found that 40% of 2024 Labour voters strongly or tend to agree that the scandal came as the direct result of a cover-up. Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary, addressed Starmer’s dismissive remark: “smearing people who raised those issues is exactly how this ended up getting covered up in the first place”.

Moreover, nearly half of Britons (46 %) think that life in prison is the appropriate sentence for child rapists, with 30% backing the death penalty. Why is Bannaras Hussain free, one might ask?

The 41st British Social Attitudes (BSA) report, published last June by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), showed trust in Britain’s government at a record low: the 2019-24 parliament significantly undermined the public’s confidence in politicians and the political system. It is hard to see how Starmer is restoring trust by slamming social media posts and downplaying the abuse of thousands of little girls.

Judging from Jess Phillips’ behaviour on Tuesday, one might have thought that this is an irksome and overblown matter. Brendan O’Neill has commented on Phillips’ “noiseless irritation” – she seemed visibly put out during Conservative MP Katie Lam’s lacerating intervention, which can be found here. The details Lam included are harrowing. It is easy to feel inarticulately outraged by the barbarism and primitive misogyny of the rape gangs (as Stephen Pollard rightly suggests, “let us do away with the euphemistic ‘grooming gang’ label”). The Sentencing Remarks of 27 June 2013 bring to light yet more horrors the girls endured, focusing on the verdict of five criminals. It sets out “the exploitation and abuse of young, highly vulnerable girls in the Oxford area over a long period”. The depth of cruelty is unimaginable. The girls were no more than dirt to their abusers – there to be humiliated, tortured, and gang-raped in racially aggravated attacks.

Perhaps even more disconcerting is the fact that the girls were failed by the very systems designed to protect them. The betrayal came from within. The girls were not only brutalised by criminals, but let down because officials were afraid of causing offence or provoking “significant community tensions”. They are complicit – and now the government continues to betray thousands of girls by refusing to confront the evil in front of them.