Don’t mention it
Amid escalating far-right violence across England and in Belfast over the past week, instigators and apologists for the rioting have sought to spread a pernicious myth: the idea that white far-right “protesters” are the victims of a “two-tier policing” system that treats them more harshly because of their race and political views.
That is an idea propagated by Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, as well as Laurence Fox and various other social media demagogues in the past few days. On Monday, Nigel Farage claimed that “ever since the soft policing of the Black Lives Matter protests, the impression of two-tier policing has become widespread”.
Ah the impression has become widespread – not the thing itself, but the impression of the thing. Cautious. Crafty.
Agitators point to the policing failures that allowed organised grooming gangs of predominantly Asian men to operate in Rochdale in the 2000s…
The Rochdale abuse was scandalously ignored by police. But the argument that it is a factor in policing today ignores major reforms to the way child sexual exploitation is treated in the region, including the addition of a specialist unit in Greater Manchester police and every Ofsted inspection since 2014 finding that Rochdale now responds to reported cases effectively.
The Guardian says “Asian men”; is that a euphemism for Muslim men? Is the “Asian” more or less relevant than the “Muslim”?
Wikipedia on Rochdale child sex abuse ring:
The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet and other operations to investigate further claims of abuse. As of January 2024 a total of 42 men had been convicted resulting in jail sentences totalling 432 years.[1] Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the initial police investigation.[2][3][4] The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities’ fear of being accused of racial prejudice.
So they likely were Muslims, or from Muslim families or of Muslim background or culturally Muslim or some category like that. Not necessarily devout or even obedient, but raised on Islamic views of women, which are not exactly generous.
There’s a lot of tiptoeing around this, for pretty obvious reasons. Apart from the Tommy Robinson-Laurence Fox types nobody actively wants to say that maybe importing Islam has some downsides, but then avoiding saying it leads to grooming gangs that get away with it for too long.
The two-tier claim seems to be more of the same thing. Maybe the police hold back on protests by “Asian men” more than the police hold back on other kinds of protests. Or maybe they don’t.
The Guardian continues:
Allegations of a two-tier system had gained currency even before the events of the past week, with claims about the policing of the pro-Palestinian protests in the UK since 7 October. Robert Jenrick, now a Conservative leadership candidate, claimed in March that two-tier policing had governed the police’s handling of those protests.
Cousins, you see. Islam v Judaism. Muslims v Jews. The Guardian and Beeb and so on don’t report it that way, because…what? It’s too painful to admit? It’s too dangerous to admit? I don’t know. But the result is that the religious aspect gets left out, when in reality the religious aspect is quite important (gross understatement). We’re all schooled to frame it in ethnic terms as opposed to goddy ones, but the goddy ones do in fact matter. Is it impossible to talk about this honestly? Maybe. I feel quite squeamish about spelling it out myself.
It can join the two-tier policing system that’s already in place for transactivists and women.
Damning with faint praise given how badly UK police deal with crimes against women and girls in general.
As far as policing of pro-palestinian protests goes, I’m not aware of such protestors attempting to burn down hotels or places of worship with people in them. While I do recall reports of clashes with police and injuries (deplorable), nothing on the scale and intensity of what we see when the racist far right get involved. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that if one of the extreme muslim groups in the UK tried to repeat what we’ve seen this week they would be dealt with very harshly indeed.
My guess is that reason the police in Rochdale overlooked the abuse wasn’t that the perpetrators were Muslim, it is that the perpetrators were quiet. Murder and mayhem; riots, looting and arson; disorderly conduct, overtime parking: these are the things that will draw the attention of the police. These guys weren’t even obstructing traffic. The police never noticed them.
Here’s an example of the disconnect that I’m talking about. _Tin For Sale_ is the (true) story of a crooked cop in the NYPD. He shows up for work one morning and the big news is a bank robbery overnight: someone broke into a bank, got into the vault and stole $$$.
Immediately there’s a mad dash by the cops to–wait for it–the traffic department. They pull the parking tickets that were written overnight and find one for the street where the bank is. They get the address the vehicle is registered to, go tearing across town to that apartment and barge in. Guns drawn, lots of screaming and threats, and the hapless burglar gives up the cash. Which the cops then keep for themselves.
Rob a bank? No problem. Illegal parking? You’re going down. And that stuff with the girls? Not even on the radar.
Farage is bullshitting, as usual. See this report on the policing of the Black Lives Matter protests:
I think when the UK audience reads “Asian men” it has a particular meaning (so maybe it is a euphemism, I dunno). It certainly doesn’t refer to Chinese or Indians as far as I can tell from reading their literature.
I think it’s more likely to refer to Indian people than Chinese people. The whole subcontinent was/is part of a diaspora to the home of the Empire, especially, I think, after Partition. But when the BBC or the Graun says “Asian” in the context of grooming rings it seems to mean Pakistani.
Following a quick Google – not so much after Partition as after the War, when there was a huge labor shortage and migration was easy for Commonwealth citizens.
Here’s an interview with the prosecutor who brought the Rochdale abusers to justice. They were Muslims. But so is he:
I suggest watching this video from A Different Bias on ’two-tier’ policing.
https://youtu.be/9vrbI2qivWc?si=GKEnjUsE5M4ht1qZ
I should point out, pace the comtemptible Jenrick, that the organisers of the pro~Palestinian protests agreed with the police beforehand the routes that would be taken (and these were kept to), and were largely free of violent incident.. In the Black Lives Matters protests, what violence that did take place was isolated and on a small scale – though that did not stop the police. from using mounted policemen to attack protestors. The Met police were forced to apologise and pay damages after their assault on women at a vigil in remembrance of Sarah Everard, who was raped and killed by an off-duty police officer. None of those protests involved thugs going into some city or town specifically in order to smash things up, set fire to libraries, citizens’ advice bureaus, police stations and cars, and attack hotels where asylum-seekers are housed and mosques and anything else they felt like attacking.
@5/6 – Yes, common UK usage is that ‘Asian’ means ‘south Asian’. I still find this confusing. They used to say/write ‘Oriental’ for east Asian; not sure how they specify that any more as a collective, or even if they do rather than using Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.
@3 They were overlooked because the victims were poor white girls. Someone recently circulated a memo to the police saying something like ‘no official action is to be taken because these girls have chosen to participate in these behaviours.’
Night Crow @ 8 – Nazir Afzal. Good man. We’ve encountered him often here. I’m not sure he’s right though that the vast majority of Muslims don’t think of women as lesser beings. I’m not sure that’s true of the majority of anything.
It may well be that many don’t think of women as lesser beings; but all they need to do is look around them to see that harming women and girls is largely free of consequences for the majority of perpetrators, for most of their crimes. It’s a rare assault that even gets prosecuted, let alone punished, however horrible it is for the victim.