Mick Hartley

Fraser Nelson went to Blackpool, and found an appalling tale of child sexual abuse amid the poverty – abuse committed by white men acting alone. He concludes that the inquiry into the the grooming gangs therefor needs to be widened:

If there is to be an inquiry, it absolutely needs to be wide-ranging — because this is about far more than race, policing and politics. It is about what happens when a country stops noticing its own children. The predators at play are not just gang leaders but also the forces that thrive in these broken places: neglect, addiction, violence and poverty.

But this misses the point. Of course what’s happening in Blackpool is appalling, but the grooming gangs were a particular phenomenon that happened, across a range of northern towns, where groups of ethnically Pakistani Muslim men targeted young white girls – “slags” – for grooming and sexual abuse. The police, and social workers, and politicians, looked the other way – largely out of a fear of racism accusations, and in particular a fear of stirring up that demographic generally viewed as a bunch of idiots racists and thugs otherwise known as the white working class. By all means hold an inquiry into Blackpool, but not this inquiry. Not the grooming gangs inquiry.

See also:

Completely disagree on this. Grooming gangs a particular phenomenon not looked at by Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse. Louise Casey was clear on need for specific inquiry including to look at why men from some cultural backgrounds over-represented in the data. People in… https://t.co/ytp7issu5w

— Sonia Sodha (@soniasodha) October 25, 2025

“People in authority don’t need another excuse to avoid the issues including why people looked the other way for so long.”

“For too long “there are other types of child sexual exploitation” (yes, there are and they’re truly awful) has been used to obscure proper investigation of grooming gangs including hard look at what role cultural factors and racism played. The police still aren’t even collecting the data we need on this. Not good enough for victims.”

“Yes there are commonalities with all forms of child sexual abuse, which I’ve written about. But there are partic aspects of grooming gang rape and abuse that have never been confronted by national investigation and will not be without a specific focus. It would be a very serious mistake to broaden it.”