Elon Musk torpedoed the British Grooming Gang scandal back into the global spotlight at the turn of the year. In all the ensuing uproar, many things have been said. Now, that the dust has settled a little, let us take a look at this phenomenon and how it was treated in British society.

This massive abuse scandal took place in at least 50 British cities, including Rotherham, Rochdale and Oxford. Mainly Pakistani Muslim men abused almost exclusively underage girls on a large scale, sexually exploiting and mistreating them in a variety of ways. More often than not, these girls were from working-class, white British backgrounds. Despite all the reports and allegations, the police and social services did not act. Fear of accusations of racism prevailed. They did not want to stir up tensions around minority groups. This abuse and the huge failure of the government came into the open in early 2010.

In the years that followed, the mechanisms of denial and ducking the blame became increasingly obvious. This revealed not only failures within the police and social services but also a more fundamental problem in British society itself. While the authorities closed their eyes to the scale of abuse for years, the fear of being accused of racism led to a glaring lack of action.

British writer and historian Tom Holland, known for his bestselling books such as Rubicon and Dominion, posted the now infamous comment in 2015 that the true nightmare of Rotherham is that the motives of those who turned a blind eye, however dire the consequences, were indeed noble. In the eyes of many, a bizarre statement, reminiscent of American comedian Norm Macdonald's famous joke:

‘Someone once told me, ‘I think the worst thing about the Bill Cosby-thing was the hypocrisy’. And I disagreed with that.’

‘You disagreed with that?’

‘Yea. I thought it was the raping.’

But Holland stands by his point. After all, these people who let the abuse happen in silence did not want to give air to racism and wanted to protect race relations in society. From their perspective, that is a noble goal. But when overwhelmingly ethnic Pakistani men victimise white British girls en masse, is that not itself a violation of the social and racial relations that Holland so cherishes? To date, no broad social debate at all has emerged in Britain about how men in the Pakistani community view white British girls. Is that part of the relationship still irrelevant?

No, during these years of crime, it was always about protecting the interests of one specific minority group. There is nothing ‘noble’ about that, but in all its decency, Holland seems unwilling to see - or admit - that.

The protection mechanism lies deeper in the structure of the British class system, where social and ethnic lines cross and reinforce each other. Working-class girls, often already vulnerable because of their socio-economic background, were seen as inferior by both their abusers and by the agencies that should have helped them. Government agencies speak not of girls who were abused, but girls who made lifestyle choices. Their suffering was either not seen or it was dismissed as less important than maintaining harmony between ethnic minority groups and the British population.

The scandal additionally produced painful cases which exposed the failure of the system on yet another level. A father of one of the victims told the news organisation, GB News, that he was arrested twice while trying to get his daughter out of a property belonging to one of these gangs. He was not the only one. Several fathers, who wanted to protect their children from horrific abuse, were arrested for ‘disturbing public order’ or ‘threats’. This shows how far political correctness extended, even to the point of punishing ordinary citizens for taking responsibility for their own children.

Equally shocking is the story of the girls who went to the police station to file reports but were not taken seriously, and in some cases were even turned away. They were often advised not to file complaints, with the explanation that it would be ‘awkward’ to penetrate a culture of ‘minorities’ who were already under such pressure. Such cases are not only a tragedy for the victims, but also baffling evidence of the failure of the British state to fulfil its civic duties.

Another telling statement came from British television presenter, Tom Harwood. On X, he posited the thesis that without activists Tommy Robinson and the radical English Defence League (EDL), editors would have been more willing to commission investigations into these gangs because they would have felt less uncomfortable at their dinner parties. You didn't want to associate yourself with those unwashed hooligans, did you?

By this, he is suggesting that if Robinson and other types of that calibre had simply kept quiet, the mainstream agencies, newspapers and journalists would have taken action. The question is whether that would really have happened. Is that not just an easy excuse? And did Robinson's activism in itself really have such a deterrent effect? Was it not rather the whole association of this phenomenon with immigrants and the working class?

This is also remarkable given that Harwood is a presenter at the right-leaning GB News, where figures like Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees Mogg also regularly appear. It indicates that this sentiment is represented from left to right across the political spectrum.

And that is bad, because the idea that ‘the lower classes’ could not investigate a phenomenon like this in a ‘decent’ way led to the suppression of much vital information. The real question is whether these people really had the confidence to offer justice to the victims, or whether their fear of social consequences led them to look away.

Perhaps the honest answer is that there was nothing noble going on in the background, that there was no reason to blame hooligans for making the subject ‘uncomfortable’. Perhaps it was just the case that the group of people who should have been responsible did not want to touch this subject with a stick. After all, you don't want people to think you are racist, do you?

Brent Hadderingh

Articles by Brent Hadderingh

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