Layers on Layers: From Town Halls to Westminster, the Architects of Silence
How many of you know the journey from local council leader to Member of Parliament can be paved not with service, but with silence?
Take Jim McMahon, now Labour MP for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton. Before Westminster, he was the leader of Oldham Council – a council repeatedly exposed for burying the truth about grooming gangs.
While survivors begged for justice, McMahon's administration chose reputation management over child protection. He now sits in Parliament, but his complicity in Oldham’s darkest scandal is now out in the open.
Likewise, look to Shaun Davies, the Labour MP for Telford. He too was a council leader. His name surfaced in The Spectator for his role in Telford’s grooming gang cover up, a scandal where children were abandoned to abusers while officials worked to protect their own image. Like McMahon, Davies failed his community yet was rewarded with a seat in Westminster.
And then there is Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Middleton South. How many of you were aware he was leader of Manchester City Council between 1984 to 1996?
Where is Stringer's condemnation of Greater Manchester Police and his own council’s role in shutting down Operation Augusta - the very inquiry that identified nearly 100 “Asian” men as child rapists, men who were then left free to continue abusing children after Augusta was closed down? Why has Stringer not led the campaign for a National Inquiry?
Now we hear Stringer may be preparing to step aside, clearing a path for Andy Burnham to re-enter Parliament and position himself as the next Prime Minister.
This is the same Andy Burnham whose rape gang inquiries have been exposed as cover ups. Inquiries that failed to interview survivors and took selective notes rather than record the testimonies of witnesses.
Layers on layers on layers. The grooming gang cover up is not a series of isolated failures. It is a career ladder that is built on silence, on betrayal, on children sacrificed so political ambitions could flourish.
I am Raja Miah. Seven years ago I began exposing how politicians protected the rape gangs.
The truth can no longer be buried. The Pakistani rape gangs are real. Their victims number in the hundreds of thousands. And the cover up is still ongoing.
Now the National Inquiry is about to begin. This is our one chance to stop another whitewash. But that will only happen if enough people know the truth and are willing to fight back.
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This is the fight. This is the moment. There will not be another.
– Raja Miah MBE