The so-called ‘populist’ far right does not express a specific xenophobic passion that emanates from the depths of the body of the people. Rather, it is a satellite that trades on state strategies and distinguished intellectuals’ campaigns, to its own advantage. Jacques Rancière
The political entrepreneurs of the far right have always viewed the exploitation of women and children as an issue on which to build popular support. Their approach tends to reproduce two themes. Firstly, a racialised ‘Other’ is singled out as the single cause of the problem. Secondly, public institutions are accused making that problem worse by failing to protect the vulnerable, because they have been undermined by an excess of liberalism. In this way a widespread social ill can be repackaged as the consequence of a coalition of alien minorities and a politically correct, morally relativist ‘enemy within’. Analogies with fascism are cheap, but this way of describing, and explaining away, social problems was very much a feature of the Nazis’ anti-Semitic propaganda in the 1930s.
After a series of scandals about child sexual exploitation (CSE) British mainstream political culture actively collaborated in a narrative that reproduced the structure of this Nazi propaganda. In 2014 the then Home Secretary and future Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that the disaster of child sexual abuse in Rotherham was a consequence of ‘institutionalised political correctness’. In 2017 the Labour MP Sarah Champion complained in an article for the Sun that ‘for too long we have ignored the race of these abusers’. By 2018 UKIP were emboldened to appoint Tommy Robinson as an adviser on ‘grooming gangs’. Throughout this period politicians were feeding, and feeding off, mainstream media accounts that blamed the supposed cultural backwardness of Muslim communities and political correctness for CSE.
Now the Home Office has finally published its report on ‘Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation.’ Its authors make clear that all the central tenets of media coverage in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and elsewhere were incorrect. While the data is incomplete they conclude that ‘it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending.’ The main report makes no mention of ‘political correctness’. They do note that ‘some research suggests that some financially-motivated groups are involved in drug dealing and organised crime with CSE being seen an [sic] extra way to profit.’ While the current Home Secretary Priti Patel does find space to mention ‘political correctness’ in her preface, she ignores the fact that many of the offenders were gangsters.
There is no doubt that the abuse in Rotherham took place on the scale that it did, and for as long as it did, because the state failed to protect its citizens. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997-2013) led by Alexis Jay makes that absolutely clear. The inquiry report described a ‘grubby’, sexist and bullying culture at the Council. (13.65) It said that councillors were at best ‘naive’ and at worst they were ‘ignoring a politically inconvenient truth’ when they said that they thought the convictions for child sexual exploitation in 2010 were ‘a one-off, isolated case.’ (11.12)
But the key institution in Rotherham was not the Council or social services. It was South Yorkshire Police. Jay writes that ‘there were very many historic cases where the operational response of the Police fell far short of the what could be expected.’ But, and this is the crucial point, ‘the reasons for this are not entirely clear.’ (8.1) The report could not establish why the police failed to act. The report quotes one witness who says that ‘the Police refused to intervene when young girls who were thought to be victims of CSE were being beaten up and abused by perpetrators. According to him, the attitude of the Police at the time seemed to be that they were all “undesirables” and the young women were not worthy of police protection.’ (8.2) In other words, to the extent that police inaction is explained at all, it is put down to a mixture of class contempt and misogyny, the very opposite of ‘political correctness’.
We might have discovered more about why the Police hailed to act had it not been for the untimely death of one PC Hassan Ali in February 2015. At the time of his death at least two people had complained about his ‘unwillingness to pursue complaints of exploitation’. Ali was killed by a hit-and-run driver while he was under IPCC investigation for his alleged links to organized CSE. As it is, we can only repeat that many of those belatedly tried and convicted for CSE were members of criminal gangs, whose activities would not have been a complete mystery to local law enforcement.
The report did note that several council staff were nervous about raising the issue of ethnicity for fear of being called racist, and that others remembered being told by managers not to do so. (Executive Summary, p.2) Nevertheless, the inquiry team ‘were confident that ethnic issues did not influence professional decision-making in individual cases.’ (11.8) The root of the problem resided, and resides, in the structure of the state. Again, Jay spelled it out:
Over the first twelve years covered by this Inquiry, the collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham. This came from those working in residential care and from youth workers who knew the young people well.
Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the Police gave no priority to CSE, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime. Further stark evidence came in 2002, 2003 and 2006 with three reports known to the Police and the Council, which could not have been clearer in their description of the situation in Rotherham. The first of these reports was effectively suppressed because some senior officers disbelieved the data it contained. This had led to suggestions of cover-up. The other two reports set out the links between child sexual exploitation and drugs, guns and criminality in the Borough. These reports were ignored and no action was taken to deal with the issues that were identified in them. (Executive Summary, p.1)
Local government has been hollowed out in England. Its activities are inadequately covered by the media. In some councils this has led to a collapse of accountability. Meanwhile, some police officers have a contemptuous and dismissive attitude to those they should protect and the internal procedures that are intended to regulate their conduct are not working properly. In Rotherham the police permitted criminal impunity by gangs involved in drugs and firearms as well as CSE. When parents and carers pleaded with them to take action they were ignored.
The result was an uneven application of the law. Some people were treated as if they were disposable. They did not deserve the protections afforded to others. Some crimes, when committed by some people, were not treated as crimes. The real cause of this impunity remains mysterious. As ever, those who suffered most were those who were already most subject to contempt and spite – in this case women and girls, especially those in care and from working class backgrounds.
No doubt many local authorities and other public authorities do a good job in many ways. But the existing array of elected councils and public bodies, including the central state, has failed often enough to point to a systemic failure. Too often the state is unaccountable and its conduct is inadequate when it is not flagrantly sinister. The only sure remedy is constitutional reform that compels the state to conform with the wishes and interests of the citizen body as a whole.
In the context of local government we could do this by introducing a system of political juries. Each local authority area in England would be served by a group of people appointed by lot with specific powers to hear complaints, interview public officials, and secure access to publicity via the BBC. The juries would be sufficiently large to ensure that they were broadly representative of the populations from which they were drawn.
These juries would be available as a venue for people who feel that they have been failed by the police or by other public bodies. They would also act as a last resort for whistle-blowers within these bodies. They would meet regularly and receive modest payment for their service. They would serve for a year and during that time would be in contact with other juries. They would also be able to form a ‘grand jury’ with other juries to highlight shared concerns. During the year they would publish their proceedings and at the end of their period in office, they would produce a report and a television documentary, which the BBC would be required to broadcast. They would also have an opportunity to brief their successors.
These juries would have powers to advise public bodies of the need for action and to express misgivings about the conduct of public officials, even when there was insufficient evidence to launch criminal proceedings. Their official speech, when it consisted of the settled view of a majority or super-majority, would be legally privileged and so its members would not be vulnerable to libel actions. They would be given defined powers to begin impeachment proceedings, subject to a ratification by the relevant electorate.
In this way after a few years each local authority area would have a body of serving and former jurors who are familiar with the institutions of the state. People who currently have few opportunities to meet and confer in a civic capacity would come to form networks outside their own immediate social spheres. These networks would in turn contribute to a better informed public opinion, and to a citizen body better placed to invigilate, and where necessary direct, the institutions of a democracy.
The introduction of citizens in numbers sufficient to embody and reflect the populations they serve would make local government more responsive. It would do so by providing both individuals and organisations with a forum to raise concerns about failures of governance and grand corruption. This would change the incentives of elected officials and employees. Similar juries could be established act as a local check on the conduct of national institutions like the BBC, large charities, and other public and quasi-public bodies. Political juries would be an extremely important element of a reformed Bank of England, for example.
The criminals in Rotherham and elsewhere did what they did because the state did not stop them. If we have a right to the protection of the law then the means to enforce this right must be built into the state. At the moment many of us are considered expendable or unworthy of protection. The challenge for reformers is to describe the problem clearly and to devise a remedy adequate to it. If we do not do so, the political culture will talk about anything other than the real dynamics in play in order to protect the status quo. And narratives that protect the powerful can be refined all too easily into fantasies of racial and cultural purification.
The enemy of fascism is not the UK’s media-political mainstream. Its enemy is radical democracy.
(For more about the role random selection can play in supervising political elites, see Oliver Dowlen’s book, The Political Potential of Sortition.)
The Return of the Public 