The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Source: How much confidence, if any, do you have in the national inquiry on grooming gangs? | Daily Question

A YouGov survey suggests there’s little public confidence in the national enquiry on rape gangs. This, even though no chair has yet been appointed and the terms of reference have yet to be defined.

The Labour Government will have trouble building confidence in a process it desperately tried to avoid. Its attempts to make the enquiry credible are undermined by its own backbenchers. They sneer and shout “shame” when the Leader of the Opposition quotes victims in Parliament. Labour clearly wants these young women to shut up – just as they were told to do by public sector authority figures who were supposed to be their protectors when they first reported the crimes against them.

Four representatives of rape victims have resigned from the enquiry’s oversight panel. They’ve blown the whistle on what they see as political efforts by the Home Office to weaken the focus on so-called “grooming gangs.” They’ve objected to proposals to have the enquiry chaired by members of two professions (police and social workers) whose members are deeply implicated in the scandal. One of them – Fiona Goddard – said;

“This is a disturbing conflict of interest, and I fear the lack of trust in services from years of failings and corruption will have a negative impact in survivor engagement with this inquiry,”

I entirely understand her concern. The Rules of Natural Justice must be observed here. They are:

• Nemo judex in causa sua (no-one shall be a judge in their own cause)
• Audi alteram partem (hear the other side)

A social worker, policeman or teacher chairing the enquiry would give cause to fear a breach of the first rule. The chair of the enquiry should be an independent judge. There should be nothing in his or her personal history to raise fears of prejudice.

Broadening the enquiry away from the specific crimes in question will reduce the opportunity for victims’ stories to be heard. These are young women who, as scared little girls, looked to authority for protection and weren’t listened to. The second rule of natural justice means they must be heard now. If not, there’s no hope of restoring public faith in our justice system.

The practical consequences of losing that faith have recently been seen in Ireland. Criminal Law was invented to end individual revenge, family vendettas and mob violence. If it can’t be trusted, those things will return.

For my own part, I don’t think this enquiry was ever necessary. I fear it will mostly be used to obfuscate the issues and protect criminals in authority.

Our law on statutory rape is clear. Our law is also clear that anyone who

receives, comforts, or assists another, knowing they have committed a crime, with the intent to enable that person to avoid arrest, trial, or conviction

is an accessory to the crime. For example, a social worker whose response to an adult male raping a minor was not to call the police but to persuade the girl to shut up and marry her rapist, is clearly – in my legal opinion – an accessory.

Our laws are fine. They just weren’t enforced. There is nothing stopping the police and CPS across the whole country tracking down all the rapists and their accessories and prosecuting them. If they do that, all the facts will emerge in thousands of cases in open court.

If it’s left to the enquiry, rather than the courts, to establish why and how our public servants betrayed these girls, the outcome will be a predictable “yada yada” response. It will result in a “lessons must be learned” whitewash.

I predict – because Labour is largely funded by the public sector unions – that we’ll also end up with some kind of amnesty. Officials who “misguidedly” and “with the best intentions of fostering good community relations” were accessories to these disgusting crimes will be let off the hook. I’d rather let their solicitors use that “community relations” guff in their pleas in mitigation!

Another reason to suspect that the enquiry will do more harm than good is the way all involved continue to use the weasel words “grooming gangs”. Yes, these criminals buy young girls chips, beer and cigarettes to entice them away from the safety of their families or (God help them) council “care”. That’s sleazy for sure but the real crimes are the rapes. They probably smiled at the girls as they enticed them to their doom. Would you therefore call them “smiling gangs?”

To focus on the “grooming” rather than the actual rapes is part of the toxic behaviour by public employees that grew this scandal to such horrific proportions. It’s downplaying the horror of what has been going on for decades. The officials concerned are not accessories to the buying of chips, beer and fags. They’re accessories to rape.

The British public was already sick and tired before Elon Musk rescued this story from the dustbin to which the British Establishment had consigned it. We’ve been attacked for decades for loving our national culture, our history and our values. We’ve been sneered at for loving our flag. We’ve been intimidated into acquiescence for fear of being called “racist” or “islamophobic.”

A fair and open enquiry – if such a thing were possible – would provide evidence;

• that the multiculturalism we never asked or voted for led to the rapes of thousands of girls
• that hundreds or even thousands of public sector workers sought to protect the reputation of multiculturalism by deliberately and systematically perverting the course of criminal justice.

The consequences of that for our political establishment and our public servants would be lethal. That’s why it will never be allowed to happen.

I may be a retired City lawyer now, but I went to a bog standard comprehensive in a working class town. I grew up around girls like these. To me they’re not distant, contemptible proles to be exploited for votes, as they are to the likes of Starmer.

I would love the rape gangs to be stopped and for the victims to see justice done. Yet another reason to salt the earth where the pathetic “Conservative” Party once stood is that it failed to take a fourteen-year-long opportunity to do just that.

Almost entirely independent of public sector or Muslim votes, the Party of Thatcher (the most moral human ever to hold the office of Prime Minister) did absolutely nothing. It would still be doing nothing if not for Elon Musk.

So now, God help us, justice is up to the Labour Party to deliver. A party that has nailed its flag to the mast of multiculturalism, depends on Muslim votes and is the political wing of the public sector unions. I hope and pray that I am wrong but if you get to my age and you’re not a cynic, you haven’t been paying attention.

Really, gentle reader, what are the odds?