She Who Knew Better
Paywalled postscript; Where were we?
This article was first published in The Critic. Everything I publish elsewhere is shared here for free, as a gift to the nation. But if you want the full picture, become a paid subscriber. It’s just a few quid a month; such is the price genius is reduced to.
Britain’s rape gangs will, I believe, come to play a defining role in modern British history. In time, they will come to assume the same importance as the Dreyfus Affair or the murder of Emmet Till, in the sense of being crimes that shape the nations that follow them — not solely because of the horrors of the crimes themselves, but because of what they reveal about what the society had allowed itself to become, and what acts it had allowed in its name.
It is that facing up to the society we have become that makes the continued obfuscation around the rape gangs so human, and so evil. One must be careful drawing comparisons with the Holocaust, of course, but the extent to which ordinary, “decent” people ignored and obscured horrific crimes reminds me of what Burt Lancaster’s Ernst Janning, a Nazi judge, says in a mesmerising speech in Judgement at Nuremberg:
What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part?
I believe that the Tom Holland Defence — that politicians were telling some sort of noble lie in the name of race relations — is wrong, but I also believe that many people in positions of power – those who were not wilfully evil – hold to it, or were bullied into it by those who were wilfully evil. They thought they had a duty to maintain harmonious race relations, and that this was a worthy and principled aim. So, the state lied, bullied and committed treason against its own citizens to prevent the truth from being known, all in the name of “community relations”. That repression is exactly how a brutal totalitarian regime operates, and how what might have seemed like a passing phrase becomes a way of life.
As Janning’s speech continues, “If there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it —- whatever the pain and humiliation.” The same is true for Britain; that is why it is so vitally important that we not only conduct an inquiry into the gangs, but establish new RICO-type laws to enable prosecution of anyone engaged in the cover up, and legal trials in the style of the épuration légale trials for wartime collaborators in France. This cannot be limited to regional public officials, social workers and police forces; it must also include Whitehall and Westminster. Kemi Badenoch has rightly identified the need for this. And here we come to the issue at hand.
The one-man wolf pack Charlie Peters — whose unflinching work on the rape gangs is as admirable for its pursuit of justice as it is its relentlessness — recently asked Badenoch about a new piece of analysis contained within the Casey Report. That was that in 2020 the Home Office, published a report which claimed “there was not a disproportionate overrepresentation of British Pakistanis”. He asked Badenoch whether, given the department was then led by Badenoch’s current Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel (who even wrote the foreword to the report), Patel and the Conservatives “were to blame for advancing this racial myth about the grooming gangs scandal”.
Badenoch responded that she didn’t know “about the report that was put out by Priti Patel”. Well, who better to explain than Baroness Casey:
The 2020 Home Office paper, ‘Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation: Characteristics of Offending’, which we discuss in chapter 4, reached a conclusion that “it seems most likely that the ethnicity of group-based CSE offenders is in line with CSA more generally and with the general population, with the majority of offenders being White.” It is quoted and requoted in official reports, the media and elsewhere as proof that claims made about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ are sensationalised or untrue, although this audit found it hard to understand how the Home Office paper reached that conclusion, which does not seem to be evidenced in research or data.
Media reporting at the time the Home Office paper was published included headlines that “most child sexual abuse gangs made up of white men” and the report continues to be referred to in the media as proof that the claim has been ‘debunked’. One 2020 article published in a newspaper and written by academics said the report meant that “a powerful modern racial myth has been exploded” by quoting the paper and going on to say that “research has found that group-based offenders are most commonly White”.
Badenoch also said, now she was leading the party, “it’s either we spend time trying to prosecute reports that have gone on in the past, or actually look at the people who actually covered things up.” But, given data released in an official report published under a Conservative Home Secretary was fabricated, then used quickly laundered by the media to discredit widespread public concern, counter previous findings and shut down further inquiry, the question is — what was this report, if not a cover-up?
A megaphone to overcome Kemi’s incurable deafness — Patel’s continued presence in the party is an insult, not just to the Tories, but to the nation. It is already insulting enough that you have tried to stick a blue rosette on this inquiry. Trying to do that with Priti Patel as a key figure on your team is absolutely grotesque. If Britain is to reckon with the truth of the grooming gangs, it cannot do so while those who actively participated in concealing it remain in positions of leadership. Patel’s role, and your unwillingness to hold her accountable, makes you an accessory after the fact. Kemi must ask herself the same question Janning does as he turns, not to defend himself, but to confess;
What about she who knew better, she who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did she sit silent? Why did she take part?
Paywalled postscript; Where were we?
To return, finally, to Judgement at Nuremberg. There is another section that should chill the spine of any who hold public office – particularly those involved in this scandal. As Lancaster’s Janning turns - not to defend himself, but to confess - he says;
My counsel would have you believe we were not aware of the concentration camps. Not aware. Where were we? Where were we when Hitler began shrieking his hate in Reichstag? Where were we when our neighbors were being dragged out in the middle of the night to Dachau?! Where were we when every village in Germany has a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children being carried off to their extermination?! Where were we when they cried out in the night to us. Were we deaf? Dumb?! Blind?!!
My counsel says we were not aware of the extermination of the millions. He would give you the excuse: We were only aware of the extermination of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn't know the details. But if we didn't know, it was because we didn't want to know.
That speech is not just an indictment of the German officials of the 1940s, but of any public official who turn a blind eye to monstrous crimes. This time, too, they have made their excuses: they didn’t know it was happening. They didn’t realise how horrifying it was. They didn’t understand the scale. It was culturally sensitive. And yes, many didn’t know the details. But too many didn’t want to know.
I have included the Drefus Affair and the murder of Emmet Till in the top of this article, because we must always be careful using the Holocaust as a comparison. As I wrote elsewhere, the horrors of Nazism are the defining moral event of the modern age;
The Nazis were such a perfect evil and revulsion to them is so universal that it creates a black-and-white sense of good and evil that plays perfectly to the all-or-nothing nature of contemporary debate: other definitions of evil necessitate context, and, if they aren’t well known, become diminished through explanation. The commonality of abhorrence to Nazism, however, has given us what Alec Ryrie describes as “an all but universally accepted definition of evil, a fixed point on our moral compass”.
But all three carry some similar qualities. The fear of standing against the machinery of state was greater than the fear of complicity in the crime. Cowardice was therefore rationalised as moral subtlety, and the discomfort over having to confront the crime - and what it says about us as a nation - meant too many were happy to let the institutions speak for them, and stood by them when those institutions lied - comforting lies, perhaps, but lies nonetheless.
What Janning understood, too late, is that the lie is never merely personal. It becomes national. It infects a country’s self-understanding, and it rots out its moral core. Until Britain can say, with clarity and courage, we knew what was happening, and we failed to act, it will continue to live inside the lie. The grooming gangs - like Till’s murder or the Dreyfus Affair - are not a dark exception to our history. They are part of it, now. What we do in response will determine whether they remain an open wound, or become the start of national reckoning.
When we find ourselves in the dock, like Janning, we must ask ourselves a similar question.
Where were we, when girls begged for help and were told they were lying? Where were we, when men trying to rescue their daughters were arrested and the perpetrators allowed to carry on their hideous crimes in plain sight? Where were we, when the truth was buried to protect careers, reputations, illusions?
We must know. Even if we don’t want to know.