If you call this MP racist, you are complicit in attacks on young girls
A leading commentator gives a damning verdict on the storm over British-Pakist ani g rooming gangs
IT I S a black day f or democracy when a ny Member of Parliament is put under police protection. Yet this is the abysmal position i n which Rotherham MP Sarah Champion finds herself. Her ‘crime’? Her courageous decision to speak out about the British-Pakistani grooming gangs who have lured, entrapped and sexually ravaged vulnerable young white girls in northern towns.
So poisonous is the public discourse on this difficult issue that Champion – who has already been forced to resign as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities – has been accused of ‘industrial scale racism’. Some in her constituency want her deselected as MP.
Now, following death threats, Scotland Yard has intervened.
The attacks on her began last year when she dared to write a newspaper article saying that ‘ Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls’. ‘There, I have said it,’ she added. ‘Does it make me racist?’
No, it doesn’t, is the only reasonable answer. She should, in my view, have expressed herself more moderately, but Champion cannot and must not be condemned for speaking uncomfortable truths.
Instead of vilifying her, we should confront instead the wrong- headed activists who think we can beat racism by burying gruesome secrets.
I know more than most about the vituperative attacks suffered by those who raise their head above the parapet.
Last year I interviewed for this newspaper three wives and a daughter of British-Pakistani men who had been jailed for their part in these evil sex gangs. How, I wanted to know, did the men treat the women in their family behind closed doors?
Cruelly and oppressively, was the short answer. The men, all husbands and fathers, did not care about consent and sex equality.
The response was as angry as i t was i rrational. I was mauled for ‘inviting people to hate Pakistani men’ and for harbouring prejudiced attit udes. An uncompromising Asian and Muslim anti-racist, I had somehow mutated into a self-loathing bigot.
I was even accused of disloyalty – a charge I freely admit. Loyalty is an oath of silence. I have never taken that oath. One must be fair and, when necessary, fearlessly critical of oneself, our communities and the nation.
It is true that people of colour suffer and survive discrimination and humiliation. They feel beleaguered. They circle the wagons, watch out constantly for enemies and traitors.
Even so, there is no excuse for the gale of criticism directed at anyone who attempts to shine a light on what is truly going on.
In fact, most Asian feminists I know back Champion and admire her courage. We understand how tough it is for white MPs to comment on or condemn the behaviours of those in minority communities.
Meanwhile, I brace myself every time a new grooming case reaches the courts because I know I will have to endure fresh racial onslaughts.
It was a Muslim Pakistani, Nazir Afzal, who, as one of the lawyers working at the Crown Prosecution Service, got the first prosecutions and convictions of groomers – a breakthrough dramatised in the BBC film, Three Girls.
He, too, was slandered, and l abelled a race traitor and stooge. Yet I am confident that t here are t housands more unseen and unheard victims. There are hundreds of perpetrators still at it.
The calculated, appalling cri mes committed against white girls, often troubled and vulnerable, need to be exposed and the perpetrators punished.
It is they – not those who criticise them – who are to blame if their activities are recruiters for the racist hard Right.
Their depravity and their lack of humanity is inexcusable. I would urge British Muslims to care about these white victims as if they were their own daughters. Many do so already.
One Muslim woman who is fostering one of these broken, sexually abused teenagers, told me recently: ‘I look at this child and don’t even want to pray sometimes. I feel shame for my culture.’
Two conversations with university students, both from Yorkshire, also ring in my ears.
Sandra, a young white woman seethes as she tells me she is thinking of joining the EDL: ‘What did we white girls ever do to your guys? Why do the bastards want to rape me?’
They don’t, of course. Not all such predators, I reminded her, were Pakistanis. Jimmy Savile was a lifelong abuser, after all.
A Muslim student – let’s call her Iman – was also incandescent. ‘They go out, do what they want to white girls and protect their own,’ she raged.
She explains how, following t he r e vel a t i o ns a bout t he Rotherham grooming gangs, her own brother had been targeted by white thugs in a racist backlash. ‘Who suffers? We do – men like my lovely father and two brothers. Those sex beasts are making us not safe. I want them killed.’
Violence is not an answer to violence. But in this way, Iman is right: if these gangs really cared about their faith, their families and communities, they would not give succour to inflammatory groups such as the English Defence League and Britain First.
The appalling racist and sexual crimes of these grooming gangs are wrecking all our futures. Those trying to punish Champion are on the wrong side of history. Genuine antiracists must support her. So must Muslims who believe in universal human rights.
If we don’t, we become complicit in the vilest of crimes against vulnerable girls.
Condemned for speaking uncomfortable truths