She knew but did and said nothing.
The Labour minister in charge of safeguarding, Jess Phillips, has said that she knew that police officers were involved in the crimes of the Rape Gangs, which are made up in many cases of Muslims, that have scarrred Britain for decades. Whilst answering a question in the House of Commons Ms Phillips said that she had heard a number of stories from complainants that police officers were involved not just in covering up these rapes and the rape gangs, but took part in these offences as well.
Ms Philips stated that over the years she had been spoken to by those who had complained about rape gang activties and who alleged that they were victims of such gangs and some of them had said that police had been involved in the crimes. In response to a question in the House (link below) Ms Phillips said:
“I would be lying if I said that over the years I have not met girls who talked to me about how police were part of the perpetration, not just the cover-up.”
The alleged involvement of police officers in these crimes may come as a surprise to many but it’s not that much of a surprise to those of us who have observed this story for years. The scale of these crimes, with figures of 250,000 victims of these gangs over the decades being bandied about, is so huge that it is unlikely that there was not some police involvement in them. Sometimes the involvement of the police has been to turn a blind eye to the offences in order to not disturb ‘community cohesion’ and keep separaist Islamic communities ‘on side’ and not out of the street causing trouble. But as police officers are human it would be almost inevitable that some of these officers would be corrupt and would take part in these offences using their social position and their ability to use the law to make trouble for people as a means of coercing women and girls into sexual activity. Police corruption raises its ugly head every now and again in Britain and the motivations for such corruption are many. Back in the 60’s the vast amounts of money sloshing around the sex industry, much of it then illegal, such as porn, prostitution and drinking clubs in places like London’s Soho created both an impetus for those in charge of such businesses to corrupt police officers and for officers to take corrupt payments. Later on in the 80’s and 90’s equally vast amounts of money from the drug trade and from armed robberies of cash in transit vans also provided both the resources and the reasoning for criminals to corrupt police and for police to become corrupt. The British police might not be as corrupt as some police forces in some countries but it is naive beyond belief to take the view that the British police are immune to corruption.
In her answer to the question posed in the Commons Ms Phillips did at least admit that some police forces should not be allowed to investigate their own officers for misconduct and that the National Crime Agency should be the entity responsible for investigating those forces most closely associated with Rape Gang activities. This is also an admission that some police forces cannot be trusted to act either honestly or impartially over the issue or the Rape Gangs, which to be quite frank is a terrible state of affairs.
If Ms Phillips knew of the allegations about police officers involvement in the crimes of the Rape Gangs then the question is why didn’t she say anything earlier? Was it the case that she didn’t believe these allegations or thought that there was a lack of evidence to follow them up? I know from my journalism days that not every allegation that is made has sufficient grounding to be true and enough of the sort of hard evidence that would stand up in a libel court. For example: I was once sent out, by a ‘red top’ newspaper, to babysit a source who claimed that he knew the identity of a particular former pop star’s cocaine dealer (subject is still alive and litigious so no names). I had to spend a week with this source driving him around to various places, using my expense account to buy him food and drink etc but all to no avail. Neither me nor my colleagues who were also working on this story found enough evidence to warrant publication, it was all ‘he said, she said’ with no evidence trail that could be uncovered or used. It was only when the source demanded a large amount of forged currency, ‘funny money’ as he put it, in order to facilitate a ‘deal’ that would involve the pop star that we finally called ‘bullshit’ on this story and dropped it and the source like a stone. I wonder if something like this was in the mind of Jess Phillips when she encountered those saying that this officer or that officer did or said this or that? I’m not defending Jess Phillips here, I believe that she is an awful person, a woman who screams like a fishwife when it’s OK and safe to do so but not when it might be difficult or challenging to speak up. However I do need to ask what evidence these complainants brought to Ms Phillips? It might have been enough to raise suspicions but not enough to take action against either the individual officers or the police forces themselves.
However, in the current circumstances the statement by Jess Phillips looks bad. It looks as if she could have done something but did not. The statement raises a whole lot of questions such as what did she do with this information? Did she properly minute or record these meetings with complainants and did she refer such information up the heirarchy to those who could have done or said something? If she didn’t do this then we need to ask why. We know from the last General Election that Islamic interests were hassling Ms Phillips and her election workers and it’s not beyond the bounds of possiblity that such harassment or the fear of it might have been an influence on Ms Phillips’s prior silence on these issues? Did violent or potentially violent Islamic interests have an influence on Ms Phillips’s previous failure to speak up? On the other hand did she decide unprompted and unthreatened to put her own career and her own party above everything and everyone else? At this point we don’t know but it might be worth investigating. It might even be the case that she suspected that the question of who knew what and when would come out as part of some future inquiry about the rape gangs and she’s getting her admission in early rather than have it dragged out of her by an inquiry?
What we do know is that Jess Phillips position as safeguarding minister is now almost completely untenable. How can any Briton have confidence that Jess Phillips will stand up for those women and girls who have been let down and let down for decades? The problem is we cannot. We will always be thinking about what Jess Phillips knew but didn’t apparently speak out about.
Jess Phillips needs to retire to the back benches and be replaced by a minister who is not allegedly tainted in this manner. The question as to who would replace her is a very difficult one as any potential replacements might also be tainted by their previous silence on this issue. It’s also the case that with so many Labour MP’s coming into Parliament after being Labour councillors that they also are in unenviable positions with regards to knowledge of rape gang activity and police corruption but who said nothing or who were pressed to say nothing. Labour’s clear lack of political talent and talent with functioning moral compasses is also a problem here. Labour don’t have the sort of political big beasts that could step in and do the job of safeguarding minister with any sort of efficiency or honesty and it’s unlikely that whoever replaces Jess Phillips will be much better than Jess Phillips herself. When the history books are written about this time in British politics I very much doubt that future historians will view Jess Phillips with anything like the high regard that Ms Phillips seems to have for herself. She may quite well be viewed as yet another rotten person serving a rotten party with rotten aims and policies.
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