The previous Pakistani rape gangs cover-up? How the Goddard Inquiry became the Jay Inquiry

When a Kiwi seemingly discovered Britain’s dirty little secret — and was sent packing

‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us!’, or so wrote Customs Officer and minor Scotch poet Robert Burns.

This gift was granted to us this month when our cousins in America learned that for years, thousands of our children had been raped by gangs of mainly Pakistani men, and that our establishment had exhibited the proverbial British Stiff Upper Lip and instructed those children to lie back and think of community cohesion. Suffice to say that these revelations did not provoke our erstwhile colonial subjects to new paroxysms of Anglophilia.

It may not, however, be the first time that a foreigner has happened upon our private national shame and blanched at the sight of it.

Let us journey back to the summer of 2016. We have voted to leave the European Union; Theresa May is Prime Minister; our late Sovereign Lady Elizabeth has celebrated her ninetieth birthday in her sixty-third Regnal year; and Major Lazer (ft. Justin Bieber & MØ) tops the UK singles charts with ‘Cold Water’.

It is reported that Dame Lowell Goddard, a New Zealand High Court judge, had resigned as chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. This comes as a further embarrassment to Theresa May, who in her previous job as Home Secretary had launched the inquiry only to see the resignation of two of its previous chairs, and who after much criticism had been forced to upgrade the inquiry onto a statutory footing. But how did we get here?

In 2011, popular television and radio presenter and pioneer of charity fundraising Sir Jimmy Savile, OBE, KCSG died. A year later, it was revealed that he had harboured private passions for paedophilia and necrophilia, and had used his positions within our state broadcaster and as a trustee of various charitable organisations to help him indulge in those hobbies. This story dominated our national scene for months, and once the lurid details of Savile’s peccadillos had lost the power to shock, the circus moved on to consider how it was possible that his abuses could have continued for so long without detection. ‘It was an establishment cover-up’, the press said in chorus.

The Savile affair had a further delicious aspect, which was that Savile’s career was in its full pomp in the ’80s, a decade of exclusively Conservative Government. The press photographic archives were therefore full of pictures of Savile shaking hands with Conservative politicians, including with the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This gave birth to a new strand of the story, and one that was vigorously pursued by prominent Labour politicians, including the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom (now Lord) Watson: namely, that during the ’70s and ’80s there had been a paedophile ring operating at the heart of British government, involving prominent figures associated with the Conservative Party. This strand of the story turned out in due course to have been the fabrication of a fantasist (and for good measure, a paedophile himself) named Carl Beech. His allegations resulted in the tarnishing of several blameless distinguished public men who were in many cases very old and on death’s very threshold. One of these men was Margaret Thatcher’s sometime Home Secretary, Leon Brittan. It did not emerge that these allegations were fabrications until the end of 2016.

And so the media and political pressure generated by the Savile affair provoked the reflex action of the British state to almost any stimuli: an inquiry was ordered. The first worthy chosen by Thersesa May to lead the inquiry was Baroness Butler-Sloss. Her qualifications were that she was both a distinguished Court of Appeal judge, and a woman, and so she appeared to be the perfect candidate. However, victim groups objected to her appointment on the basis that her brother had for many years served in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet as Attorney General (a political appointment in Britain), and so she was axed. The next chair appointed was Dame Fiona Woolf. Her qualifications were that she was both a distinguished corporate lawyer, and a woman. However, unfortunately for Dame Fiona, the victims’ groups came for her too. It turned out that she had once lived on the same street as Leon Brittan and had even invited Brittan and his wife around for dinner. Another one bit the dust.

May cast the net wider to find her next candidate and landed upon Dame Lowell Goddard. Her qualifications were that she was a distinguished New Zealand High Court judge, and a woman, and crucially, as a Kiwi she was not closely related to, nor had she lived on the same street as, any member of the British Conservative Party.

It therefore came as a further blow to May when Dame Lowell tendered her resignation as chair of the inquiry just eighteen months after her appointment. In a press statement which followed her terse letter of resignation, Dame Lowell cited the strain of being dislocated from her family and career in New Zealand as the reason for her resignation. In evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Home Secretary Amber Rudd stated that Dame Lowell had found her job ‘…too lonely… she was a long way from home’.

Alexis Jay, an existing member of the Inquiry’s panel, took over from Dame Lowell. Her qualifications were that she was both a distinguished social worker, and a woman. Jay eventually turned in a report, and when supporters of the Labour Party cite the ‘Jay Inquiry’ as the reason why a fresh public inquiry into ‘grooming gangs’ is not necessary, it is to this report that they refer. Jay’s report is as anodyne as a report on such a topic could be, and contains the sorts of managerial recommendations that one has come to expect from the British Stakeholder-State. Contrary to what is claimed by supporters of the Labour Party, Jay’s report was not concerned with ‘grooming gangs’ (albeit Jay had authored a separate report into the Rotherham ‘grooming gangs’ in 2014), and mentioned them only in passing.

Two months after Dame Lowell’s resignation and repatriation back down-under, The Times reported that Dame Lowell’s conduct of the inquiry had been mired by her racism. The Times cited sources who claimed that under Lowell’s leadership, the operation of the inquiry had been reduced to ‘near paralysis’ due to her conduct. The Times’ sources quoted Dame Lowell as saying that the reason Britain had so many paedophiles was that ‘because it has so many Asian men’, and claimed she had expressed shock at the size of the country’s ethnic minority population. The Times claimed that Dame Lowell had to be cautioned by a senior official about her use of racially derogatory language, and that concerns about Dame Lowell had been passed to Theresa May, who had failed to act on them. For good measure, The Times’ sources claimed Dame Lowell was a bully and abused the inquiry’s staff. This might be the first recorded instance of the British Civil service using grievance procedures to get rid of appointees they do not like, a modus operandi which is now in widespread use.

The Guardian added further colour to the story. They reported that the Home Office had admitted that concerns about Dame Lowell’s conduct and professionalism had been raised with them on 29 July, and they had advised those who had complained to take matters up with Dame Lowell herself, due to the inquiry being independent of government and the Home Office. Dame Lowell resigned six days later, citing homesickness.

This story is a little complicated, and Very British. That said, it would appear that a foreign judge asked to conduct an inquiry into child abuse in Britain had stumbled upon Britain’s dirty secret — that the widespread, organised rape of white girls by predominantly Pakistani men was taking place right under the noses of the authorities — and had recoiled in horror. The immune response of the British state then kicked in, and Dame Lowell was branded as a racist and a bully, and sent back to New Zealand. The most interesting question posed by this affair is as follows: did the officials who complained of Dame Lowell’s conduct fear that Dame Lowell would shift the focus of the inquiry away from the lurid but ultimately isolated case of Jimmy Savile, and towards the far bigger issue of the mass rape of white girls by mostly Pakistani men, and the state’s role in covering that up?