Backdoor Bougatef, Browne Jacobson and the Lawyer Who Would Not Sign Off His Own Threats
Oldham Council commissioned a national law firm to threaten me with the High Court. For weeks, every letter came from an anonymous mailbox and every request for a named solicitor was refused.
A national law firm threatened to drag me into the High Court, warned that breaching the injunction they sought would mean criminal prosecution, and promised that Oldham Council would recover every penny of its costs from me personally. Browne Jacobson. Hundreds of lawyers, offices across the country, instructed by a metropolitan borough with a legal budget that never runs dry. On the other side of their letter stood one man on police bail, with no solicitor, no money and no institution behind him. Then I asked a simple question. Who, exactly, is making these allegations? And for an entire month, nobody at that firm would put their name to the case.
Every email came from the same address. OBC117691.00002@brownejacobson.com. That was my correspondent, a file number. The letter it sent demanded I stop making allegations against individuals at Oldham Council while refusing to identify a single one of them.
So the lawyers were anonymous, their alleged victims were anonymous, and when I asked for proof they had even been instructed by their client, that was refused too. The only named person anywhere in the correspondence was me. My name, my signature and my home address went out on every reply, to people who would not tell me who they were.
On 13 September I asked who had conduct of the matter. Their answer came back the same day, from the same mailbox. "We do not agree that there is any need for a named individual for you to respond to the letter in a meaningful way." A heavyweight firm of lawyers, spending Oldham's council tax to threaten a man on police bail, had decided the man did not need to know which officer was threatening him.
So I went over their heads. I wrote to their three directors by name, Richard Medd, Caroline Green and Andy Stephens, copied to Paul Entwistle, Oldham's Borough Solicitor, and asked the question they were dreading. Prove you have been instructed at all. Show me the signed instruction letter from Oldham Council. Seven days.
That email left at 4.29 in the afternoon on 14 September. At 6.33 the same evening the answer arrived, and it did not come from Browne Jacobson. Alexander Bougatef personally entered the correspondence, confirmed he had instructed the firm, threatened me with the Council's full legal costs and copied every councillor in Oldham. I had asked the solicitors to prove their client existed, and two hours later the client walked into my inbox to prove it himself, with sixty witnesses attached. Whatever was said between Browne Jacobson and the Civic Centre that afternoon, it was said urgently.
The firm itself still refused everything. The instruction letter? "We do not think that would be appropriate to provide written instructions from the council, and indeed it is not required where we have sent a pre-action letter." A named individual, asked for the fourth time on the 19th? "We are of the view there is no need for you to be provided with the details requested." Cowards hide behind process, and this was process doing a great deal of hiding.
On 29 September they got my formal response, and it was not the surrender their letter had priced in. Twelve numbered demands. For every allegation, show me the post, name who it harassed, explain how. Name one person I caused alarm or distress. Point to one council service that failed because of me. I set out the SRA's published three-part test for a SLAPP and told them their letter met every limb. I told them that the moment they evidenced harassment of one actual human being, I would attend the ADR their own letter had refused on my behalf before I ever spoke.
Read my letter here. I'm still waiting for a response.
Then I reported them to the SRA and copied the whole file to their directors, since their staff were hiding.
And then a person finally appeared.
Not the solicitor running the case, because to this day I do not really know who that was. On 5 October, Mandy Cooling wrote to me under her own name, and her job title told me everything about why. Risk and Compliance Director. The executive who exists to protect Browne Jacobson from its regulator surfaced within days of the SRA entering the correspondence, suddenly courteous, finally naming the supervising partner as Matthew Alderton, offering me telephone numbers and monitored mailboxes. For a month the case had no humans in it. The moment the case became a risk to the firm, a director signed personally. They found their manners the same week they found their exposure.
After that, nothing, ever. The twelve demands were never answered. Not one post identified, not one victim named, not one instance of harassment particularised. The application that was coming "without further notice" never came at all. Firms that size do not misplace a live injunction. They understood what a courtroom would require of them, against a defence whose first exhibit was Shabir Ahmed's conviction headline, and they walked away without a word. Nobody has ever written to tell me it is over.
For 8 years I've exposed how politicians and police covered up the gang rape of working-class White girls by Pakistani grooming gangs. I, with the support of the people of Oldham, led the campaign that forced the National Inquiry. Now, with your help, we will force this inquiry to a place it does not want to go.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham fronted a series of Assurance Reviews of which one was in my hometown of Oldham. It was a cover-up of a cover-up. It tried to bury the truth. Don't believe me? Ask Maggie Oliver. Even she has come to the same conclusion.
Despite Burnham's efforts to help hide what took place, we forced a national inquiry. Whilst previously defending the robustness of his now exposed cover up, Burnham is now trying his best to rewrite the truth of what he really did.
Unfortunately, as of yet, the national inquiry will not investigate Burnham or his actions and his deceit will go unchallenged. We hope to change this before the investigation starts in Oldham.
Once Burnham is in Downing Street, the pressure to protect him will be immense. The institutions that failed these girls will try everything possible not to hold a PM accountable. Much of the press will look away, as always. This is why it is up to us to carry the truth.
Which is why I'm turning this community of readers into something more than what I can manage on my own. We need to grow.
Before Burnham reaches Number 10, Red Wall and the Rabble needs 2,000 more paid subscribers to help grow and become more than a one man operation. With your help, we can do in towns and cities across the country what we have done in Oldham.
Should we succeed, politicians will go to prison. It is as simple as that. Surely, on this prospect alone, it is worth your support.
Add it up. One man on police bail, living off credit cards, without a lawyer, against a national firm and the public purse of a metropolitan borough. They arrived as an overwhelming force expecting immediate surrender, retreated every single time they were asked for evidence, and abandoned the field the moment scrutiny turned on them. They had the money, the power and the costs threat. I had the evidence.
Which is why Browne Jacobson must not escape the national inquiry when it reaches Oldham.
Public inquiries do not exist only to examine councillors and police officers. They exist to examine everyone who exercised power over this scandal, and a law firm that took public money to threaten the campaigner whose reporting helped force the inquiry exercised exactly that. Its senior partners should be summoned and put under oath. Who instructed you, what evidence were you shown, what did the people of Oldham pay, and why hide who was involved. There are no anonymous mailboxes in a witness box. They would not give me one name. Which is why the national inquiry should take testimony from every one of them.
I’m Raja Miah. For over seven years, I have led a small team that exposed how politicians protected the rape gangs. Before that, I spent over a decade trying to stop violent extremists exploiting abandoned communities.
This work is free because the truth must circulate. But truth without numbers is easy to crush. The government does not fear facts. It fears scale.
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Raja Miah MBE