Back when the Conservatives were in power, they launched a high-profile public inquiry into child abuse and grooming gangs in Rotherham—a Labour-controlled local authority.
They didn’t do the same for Bradford (then Conservative-run), Blackpool (variously governed by Labour and Tories), or Doncaster (at the time, run by the English Democrats—now part of Reform UK).
This wasn’t an oversight. It was a calculated political move, designed to pin the grooming gang scandals on Labour, and it worked. The narrative stuck. But the truth is that councils of all political stripes were implicated in similar failings.
Take Bradford. During the scandal, the council leader was one Eric Pickles. And guess who, as Secretary of State, later decided not to investigate grooming allegations in Bradford? That’s right—Eric Pickles.
Funny that.
Since returning to government, Labour has quietly launched inquiries into child sex abuse in six local authorities. The right-wing commentariat has been up in arms, accusing Labour of secrecy and playing culture war games of their own. And to be fair, they’ve got a point—there’s been precious little transparency. I couldn’t even get a full list of which councils are being investigated, let alone their terms of reference.
But then, at 5am last Friday morning, West Yorkshire Police smashed in a few doors in Bradford. Twelve men and one woman arrested. Part of ongoing inquiries.
So now we might have a better idea of what those secretive Labour investigations are really doing.
I read the Jay Report into Rotherham. What shocked me most was the collusion between local politicians and parts of the Muslim community, where illegal behaviour was tolerated to maintain voting blocs. It was a grubby, transactional kind of politics.
But what shocked me more was that I’d seen the exact same thing—different community, same tactics—when it came to the Catholic Church.
I was an NHS CEO when criminal record checks were introduced. Among the staff visiting patients were priests from several denominations. We paid their dioceses for chaplaincy services. We had an Imam on the books too, and an official Quran (kept pristine in its special box, as far as I could tell).
I insisted everyone—including clergy—go through the checks. The Catholic diocese hit the roof, claiming they were exempt. I got hauled in to meet a senior clergyman who accused me of religious intolerance.
I stood firm. No one visits vulnerable patients without clearance. End of story.
The diocese retaliated, leaning on senior doctors and non-exec directors to undermine me. It got nasty. Political pressure, character assassination—the works.
I still didn’t budge.
Eventually, two local Catholic priests were quietly moved to rural Irish parishes—well out of reach of UK safeguarding checks. We never found out what they’d done. But clearly, it was bad enough that the Church didn’t want us to find out.
Funny that.
I always think of the fact that ‘Jack’s Return Home’ was based in Doncaster, Cyril Smith’s time in Rochdale, or equally the world of sleaze around the Met.
It’s there in ‘Lucky Man’ too, in the scenes with the local councillors, police, and sex workers. While these are fictional examples, it shows how much
Which without wanting to minimise the horrors of grooming gangs from Oxford to Rochdale, and the specific culpability of some on the left in ignoring specific problems – there is a long-standing issue of the police ignoring child sexual exploitation, or actively turning a blind eye to organised prostitution.
It’s convenient to blame that on local councils, or on politically correct pressure, rather than police choices.
It shows that these things were accepted as part of life for a very long time in parts of the North, including where I grew up. There are inquiries still going on about abuse in YOIs in County Durham .
This is the north, the north, where we do want we want to