“We are quick to speak out on benefits and inequality, on Israel and Gaza, on assisted dying and the care system. Why have we been collectively silent on grooming gangs?”

By Philip North, Bishop of Blackburn

Baroness Louise Casey is not a person who is afraid to name uncomfortable truths. She has a track record in East Lancashire after a 2016 report that spoke about ‘parallel communities’ of white and Asian heritage people living side by side but without interacting with each other in any meaningful way. And now she has tackled the issue of grooming gangs with such potency that a once reluctant government has caved under pressure and ordered a national public inquiry.

The data is complex. Whilst Manchester Police statistics suggest that a disproportionate percentage of those involved in gangs are of Asian heritage, when it comes to sexual abuse cases in general, a disproportionate number of offenders are white. An inquiry is therefore important to establish the facts and address any false presumptions. It will also be a means to demonstrate that the voices of survivors matter.

So Louise Casey’s fearlessness causes me to ask myself a very uncomfortable question. Why did I not publicly support an inquiry when the issue was raised earlier in the year? I have heard directly and on many occasions of the anxiety of working class families that their daughters are vulnerable to well organised gangs. Why did I so readily believe the voices that claimed that calling for an inquiry was a collusion with the far right?

And it is not just me. The Church of England prides itself on being a presence in every community. The local knowledge of our clergy and church leaders of what is happening in their neighbourhoods is legendary. There must be hundreds of other church leaders like me who had heard rumours, stories and concerns yet said nothing.
We are quick to speak out on benefits and inequality, on Israel and Gaza, on assisted dying and the care system. Why have we been collectively silent on grooming gangs?

For my own part, the reasons are twofold. First, I have close and precious relationships with members of the south Asian Muslim community in Lancashire, sincere friendships which really matter to me and which are critical as we work together for social cohesion and I feared damaging them. Second, the Church of England has rightly apologised for institutional racism and is seeking to change and become a church that promotes anti-racism at every level. Raising an issue that so directly impacts one ethnic group could appear to sit ill with our commitment to racial justice.

But when I analyse them, these reasons are unconvincing. The cause of social cohesion is undermined by failure to name the criminal behaviour of a tiny minority, especially when it is equally condemned by the vast majority of Asian heritage men and women. As Yvette Cooper said, “Ignoring the issues, not examining and exposing them to the light, allows the criminality and depravity of a minority of men to be used to marginalise whole communities.” The same argument applies to the fears around racism. The cause of racial justice is not served if we turn a blind eye to crime because of the ethnicity of the offender.

Moreover our corporate silence reflects a deeper problem which is the growing distance between a culturally middle-class established church and the needs and concerns of working class communities. Our calling as the national church is to give a voice to the economically deprived and socially marginalised. Yet our agenda as a Church is usually set by certain sections of the media, Parliament and the academy.

All too often, we are either silent or actively at odds with the issues that most trouble working class neighbourhoods: not just grooming gangs but the impact of immigration on community life, benefits dependency, the use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, energy costs and so on. Being attentive to the needs of our working class communities does not mean that we have to agree with them all. It does, however, mean ensuring that voices that are often silenced are given proper attention in public dialogue and debate. If that does not happen, we will be playing our part in creating a political vacuum that the far right will be all too happy to fill.

In February, the indefatigable Alex Frost, a Parish Priest in Burnley, put a motion to synod which required the Ministry Development Board to develop “a national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of people from working class backgrounds.” But such work can only end up raising much deeper questions. How can we call out working class vocations when our presence in working class areas is so weak? And how can we strengthen that presence without seriously engaging with the needs, fears, hopes and aspirations of working class people? We need to do more than raise up leaders from working class neighbourhoods. We need to recommit, reconnect and listen.

I am doing some serious reflection about my fear-driven silence when it comes to grooming gangs. I hope other church leaders will do the same.

+Philip Blackburn