Is This Time Different? British Muslim Grooming Gangs Are Hot Topic Again

Peter Byrne/PA via AP

The British grooming gang scandal has been simmering for decades, occasionally heats up to a boiling point, and always seems to go back to simmering. 

I don't have the space or the time to do a deep dive into the history of the scandal or the myriad failures of officials at all levels of government, although I really should do a deep dive at some point. But the basic facts are simple: all across Britain, for decades, young British girls have been groomed, raped, physically abused, tortured, and perhaps killed by gangs of mostly "South Asian" UK residents and citizens. 

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The police didn't just ignore this evil; they facilitated it by covering it up, accusing girls of inciting it, and arresting parents who complained about it. Occasionally police officers themselves participated in the rapes of children. 

There's no doubt that this happened, and there are accusations that the practice has continued to this day. No doubt you have heard about it to some extent, although few people know the scope of the conspiracy or how, even after the scandal erupted, few people have ever been punished. 

The issue has been popping up again, first with the imprisonment of UK activist Tommy Robinson, who is currently being held in prison in solitary confinement for airing a documentary on the scandal against a court order. Robinson is always referred to as a "far-right" activist, just as everybody outside the Establishment is, and no doubt he is a bulldog on this issue and is quite hostile to the "South Asian" culture that spawned this affair. 

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I don't know if that makes him "far-right" or not and frankly, I don't care. He was imprisoned for airing a documentary, and he is unrepentant. 

But what sparked the current frenzy is the rejection--once again--of a local council's request that the UK government conduct a formal inquiry about this. My X feed is almost equally filled with news about the terrorist attacks yesterday and the so-called "grooming gang" scandal. (It really wasn't "grooming" in most cases--it was gang rape after gang rape conducted systematically and with the knowledge of authorities). 

Labour has blocked an inquiry into Sir Keir Starmer’s conduct as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service while investigating the Oldham child grooming scandal.

Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, refused to launch a public inquiry into historical sexual abuse by gangs in Oldham, saying it was for the council to decide whether one was necessary.

The scandal was one of several across the country in which dozens of girls were abused by British Pakistani gangs.

Police forces and prosecutors often did not take action for fear of being called racist or Islamophobic, a failing Sir Keir addressed in 2012 when he was running the CPS as the director of public prosecutions.

Elon Musk, the US tech billionaire and ally of Donald Trump, and Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, led criticism of the decision to block an inquiry.

Mr Musk, who will have a major role in Mr Trump’s incoming administration, has emerged as a vocal critic of Sir Keir and his Government in recent months.

Writing on his social media platform X, Mr Musk claimed Ms Phillips “deserves to be in prison” over the “disgraceful” decision, which he suggested had been taken to protect the Prime Minister.

He said: “Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008–2013.

“Who is the boss of Jess Phillips right now? Keir Stamer [sic]. The real reason she’s refusing to investigate the rape gangs is that it would obviously lead to the blaming of Keir Starmer (head of the CPS at the time).”

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The current version of the outrage--this is not the first time it has upwelled, and no doubt contributes to the increasing hostility to Muslim immigrants in Britain)--is aimed at Labour's decision to downplay the affair, but the Tories (who are now scandalized!) failed to follow up when they were in power. It really is a DEI scandal, not a partisan one. Nobody wanted to incite racial tensions, so they avoided highlighting a problem that really is South Asian/Muslim in origin. 

It is impossible to overstate how depraved the British politicians and government officials were in dealing with the rape gang issues. They were utterly unconcerned with the rape of, perhaps, thousands of British girls across the country. Their main concern was not undermining woke ideology and their own electoral chances. 

A 2022 report found children in Oldham were failed by agencies that were meant to protect them amid alleged grooming by “predominantly Pakistani offenders” in council homes and shisha bars, and by taxi drivers.

Sir Keir admitted that the CPS had let vulnerable girls down under his watch, after a case was dropped against a rape suspect in 2009 despite all evidence pointing to their guilt.

Speaking in 2012, near the end of his five-year tenure as DPP, he admitted that the ethnicity of suspects had been an issue in securing prosecutions of grooming gangs.

He said: “In a number of cases presented to us, particularly in cases involving groups, there’s clearly an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed.

“As prosecutors we shouldn’t shy away from that. But if we’re honest, it’s the approach to the victims, the credibility issue, that caused these cases not to be prosecuted in the past. There was a lack of understanding.”

On Thursday, a former MP for Rochdale claimed that an ex-chairman of Labour’s parliamentary party had warned him that drawing attention to the ethnicity of grooming gangs could harm the party’s electoral chances.

Simon Danczuk, who represented the town from 2010 to 2017, said he was “threatened” by Tony Lloyd, who at the time was campaigning to be the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner.

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Keir Starmer was in the heart of the scandal as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, which facilitated the stonewalling by allowing child rapists to go unpunished. Even he admitted that the race of the offenders made him and others shy about inflaming racial tensions. 

Sacrificing white children to the woke gods. That is what it amounted to. 

Many of the perpetrators are still on the street, and people are getting jail sentences for speaking out against this atrocity that are longer than some of the pedophiles brought to court have.

The obsession with racial sensitivity in Britain is as bad as ever, leading to what Elon Musk and others have rightfully called a "two-tier" judicial system. If you are Muslim, you can rape children; if you are white, you can go to jail for pointing it out. 

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It is obviously the case that being a Pakistani Muslim does not in itself mean that you are a rapist, but it is also obviously true that this scandal is all about covering up the crimes of Pakistani Muslims because the white establishment worried about racism more than the safety of children. 

This time, the upswell in outrage over the grooming gangs scandal feels different than previous iterations. I could be wrong, the populist moment the West is going through has made people much more open about talking about what amounts to a huge problem to this day. Elon Musk has gotten involved, and the pressure to release Tommy Robinson is ratcheting up. 

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Will it make a difference? Only time will tell. 

But it feels like people are ready to ditch political correctness and demand accountability. Can the Establishment jail them all?

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