They'll Rewrite History to Make Themselves the Heroes
Only If We Let Them
James Ignatius O'Rourke McMahon is back on Facebook, polishing his reputation. The Oldham MP insists he is a champion of victims of the Pakistani Rape Gangs. Progress is being made, he proclaims. He has raised this issue with the Home Office. He is pleased. No reference at all how it was public pressure that made silence impossible.
"I was calling it out a decade before many were even talking about it" - Jim McMahon
Behind the confident language and outright lies is a truth he hopes no one examines. McMahon does not mention that his entire defence of his record as Leader of Oldham Council depends on a single blog post from 2014. When he was the most powerful man in the borough, facing systematic failures in child protection, this obscure internal newsletter is all he has to show for it.
A Blog Post is Not Leadership
This 2014 blog post was internal council fluff. These leader’s blogs were routine internal bulletins. They were never intended as public warnings or policy interventions. They were political padding read by a very small number of staff and party loyalists. It was never promoted to residents, never raised in full council, never linked to any change in policy or practice. McMahon never used it to demand accountability from Greater Manchester Police or his own officers.
The blog post proves nothing except his complete failure to act when children needed protection. McMahon wants people to believe that this forgotten internal memo represents leadership. It is political theatre designed to salvage his reputation a decade too late.
McMahon now claims he was ahead of everyone. He even claimed that he was calling this out a decade before others were even talking about it. This is false. It insults the residents who fought to expose what he helped to hide. While he now pretends to have sounded early warnings, the record shows the opposite. He denied the truth. He attacked anyone who raised concerns. He smeared whistleblowers as extremists. He worked with officials and broadcasters to control the narrative. His supposed decade of action amounts to nothing more than a single internal memo that no one saw and no one acted upon.
Any council leader who genuinely cared about child sexual exploitation had real power available. His failures fall into two categories. What he had the power to do and what he had the responsibility to do.
Dan O’Donoghue
McMahon could have ordered immediate internal reviews, commissioned independent investigations and demanded full police disclosure. He could have called emergency council meetings, challenged the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub and required scrutiny committees to take evidence in public.
He could also have provided moral and political leadership. He had the authority to warn parents, protect whistleblowers and establish specialist CSE task forces. He could have stood with survivors and refused to allow identity politics to silence them. He could have confronted senior officers, raised national alarms, forced council votes and exposed the missing minutes that revealed what officials already knew.
McMahon chose to do none of these things. A forgotten newsletter stands in for his leadership because the truth is worse. This was not simply neglect. It was active cooperation in shaping a narrative that hid the truth. Formal reviews and information disclosures have shown how coordinated messaging operated between local leaders and national broadcasters. McMahon worked with the BBC to help conceal what was happening in shisha bars. His team did not stop at hiding these events. They celebrated the fact that they had succeeded.
Powerful adults negotiated narratives while children faced the consequences alone. Institutions concealed the truth while the real cost was borne by the children of this town.
Children Paid the Price
While McMahon was writing newsletters, children in Oldham were being exploited in shisha bars. Offenders approached vulnerable girls outside school gates. When children went missing, teachers had to collect them from addresses already known to the authorities.
These failures are now part of the documented record. They have been confirmed in formal reviews and are no longer disputed by any agency. The system failed completely under McMahon's tenure. Agencies refused to intervene. Political leaders discouraged scrutiny at the moments when children most needed protection.
The truth emerged in spite of McMahon and his allies. Ordinary residents exposed what happened while those in power tried to silence them. McMahon spent years attacking anyone who spoke out.
Even now, McMahon will not allow public scrutiny. He has disabled and deleted comments on his Facebook post. The instinct has not changed. Control who can speak. Shape the narrative. Keep criticism out of sight.
If the public does not challenge this behaviour, history will be rewritten by the very people who helped bury it.
Children feared coming forward because they knew they would be dismissed, disbelieved or branded racist for telling the truth. This was the culture that kept survivors silent. McMahon and politicians like him created that environment. They found it easier to destroy whistleblowers than confront their own failures.
Public trust in Oldham’s institutions has collapsed for this reason. Not because of critics but because leaders put politics above the safety of children.
The Evidence Was Always There
For years McMahon insisted there was no evidence of a cover up.
The scale of the investigations now underway shows how outrageous those denials always were. The evidence is overwhelming. The National Crime Agency is reviewing more than one thousand two hundred files across twenty three police forces going back to 2010. Greater Manchester has two hundred and thirty six cases under reassessment. Operation Beaconpoint is active. Operation Sherwood exists only because even Andy Burnham’s rigged Assurance Review finally accepted the evidence.
Sherwood has produced no arrests, no charges and no form of accountability.
The scale of the ongoing review is not progress. It is an indictment of a decade of denial.
McMahon’s reaction follows a familiar pattern. When evidence surfaced he denied it. When critics spoke out he attacked them. When survivors came forward he used identity politics to discredit them. When accountability was demanded he shifted blame. Now that the truth cannot be denied he attempts to rebuild his image with selective history and social media spin.
Justice, Not Revisionism
McMahon is now engaged in an extraordinary attempt at revisionism. He wants to present himself as the hero of a story in which he acted as the villain. He and his allies spent years trying to silence, discredit and destroy anyone who exposed the truth. If they had succeeded the abuse would still be hidden. Survivors would still be voiceless. The cover up would be intact.
He attacked those who exposed the truth. He protected the system that failed children. He enabled a culture of silence and intimidation. He did everything except protect the children.
The fight is no longer about proving what happened. The evidence is beyond dispute. The fight now is ensuring that McMahon and those like him face consequences for their failures.
Children were gang raped while he produced blog posts. Communities were betrayed while he managed his image. Survivors were silenced while he protected his political career.
McMahon believes he can escape accountability through Facebook statements and political spin. He believes voters will forget what he did and what he refused to do when children needed him most.
What happens next depends on whether the public honours the truth or accepts the rewrite. Oldham deserves the truth and it deserves accountability. That begins by refusing to let politicians rewrite the past.
The failures seen in Oldham were repeated across the country. More than one hundred thousand children were affected in towns and cities nationwide. McMahon is not the only political figure involved. There are countless others, all now struggling to rewrite their roles as heroic rather than complicit. The pattern is identical in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, Newcastle and many other places. Deny the truth. Attack the critics. Protect reputations. Claim credit when the truth finally emerges.
This is not only a CSE scandal. It is a crisis of truth, trust and governance in modern Britain.
The country is beginning to wake up. The truth is no longer theirs to control. They will all try to rewrite history to make themselves the heroes. Only if we let them.
They'll Rewrite History to Make Themselves the Heroes. Don't Let Them.
This inquiry didn't happen because the government suddenly found its moral compass. It was dragged into existence by survivors who wouldn't shut up, whistleblowers who refused to disappear, and a public tired of being lied to.
For years, they fought against it. Now they'll fight to control it.
Watch how it unfolds. Limited scope. Sanitised language. Politicians rewrite history as if they are the saviours. Meanwhile, evidence will mysteriously vanish. Key witnesses will develop sudden memory loss. And when it's over, they'll package it all up as "lessons learned."
The whitewash has already begun. The only question is whether we let them get away with it. I am Raja Miah. For six years, I led a small team that exposed how politicians protected the rape gangs.
So now the question is: will you stand with me and help make sure the National Inquiry we have all fought for is not a whitewash?
We’re running out of time. Without the numbers, they will win. It’s as simple as that.
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