0:00
You were telling your friends in the Labour Party about this scandal years ago and nobody wanted to listen
0:07
Yeah, that's exactly right. I was the MP from 2010 to 2017 in Rochdale
0:12
The Rochdale grooming scandal broke as a story in 2012. I quickly came out saying that ethnicity and religion were a key factor in the abuse
0:24
The perpetrators had a very low opinion of the victims because they were Christian, because they were white
0:30
because they were working class, perhaps. And they used that as an opportunity to groom them and to rape them
0:37
And I made this clear. I was warned off by a couple of significant members of the Labour Party
0:44
I was told not to mention the ethnicity or the religion of the perpetrators
0:48
but I ignored that and continued to do so. So you came under pressure from senior figures within the Labour Party
0:54
not to mention ethnicity. Why were they doing that? Well, there's no doubt about it
0:58
I mean, the most senior figure was Tony Lloyd, who was chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time
1:04
And I wrote to the National Inquiry in 2017 saying that he'd warned me off it
1:12
And he was concerned about votes. I mean, that's quite clear. They thought it would upset the voting of Pakistani communities and they didn't want to lose the vote
1:22
I was quite clear about that. The previous MP for Rochdale not immediately before you was Cyril Smith who was himself a major abuser So Rochdale has a long history of covering these sorts of things up
1:35
Yeah, that's right. Cyril Smith had abused children. His modus operandi was to become a school governor, so he was a school governor of many schools, and he would abuse children
1:45
I outed him as a paedophile in 2012. I wrote the book, Smile for the Camera, The Double Life of Cyril Smith
1:52
And in that book, I make the point that because people in the community knew of Cyril Smith being an abuser, it also almost made it acceptable to some people in the community
2:03
It sort of normalized it. And I think that, you know, that is a real concern
2:08
The good news now is because of what's gone on since since 2010, 2012, is that everybody is quite clear abusing children is totally unacceptable
2:19
and that's something that's more commonly talked about now. It's more talked about, but one of the things that's come out of the report
2:25
is some of the abuse is coming from people who are illegally, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants
2:30
who once they've broken one law, they've got much less sanction against them if they break other laws
2:35
because they're already in a criminal world. Yeah, that's right. And because a number of people in authority, the police and in social services
2:43
have deliberately ignored or covered up the abuse by these particular perpetrators
2:48
I think they feel emboldened. I think Smith was the same. They feel emboldened and continue to commit these types of crimes
2:56
There's no doubt about that
