January 14, 2025 - 4:00pm

Kemi Badenoch’s most recent comments on the grooming gangs scandal have caused quite a stir. In an interview with GB News this week, the Conservative leader claimed that many of the men who commit group-localised child sexual exploitation (GLCSE) are “peasants” from “sub-communities”. She also called for closer investigation into cultural factors to find out why some men from particular countries engage in a “systematic pattern of behaviour” of grooming.

When looking at the perpetrators of GLCSE, a 2020 academic paper co-authored by two professors, Kish Bhatti-Sinclair and Charles Sutcliffe, concluded that “Muslims, particularly Pakistanis, dominate GLCSE prosecutions” (based on data consisting of 498 defendants in 73 prosecutions between 1997 and 2017). This corresponds with the findings of reports on industrial-scale GLCSE in English towns such as Rotherham. The 2014 Jay report on grooming gangs in the South Yorkshire market town concluded that “the majority of known perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage.” A similar finding emerged from a recent independent local inquiry focusing on the Shropshire town of Telford.

Despite being branded “shockingly offensive” by Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer, Badenoch’s comments have touched on an important point. She has implicitly raised the question of whether referring to “Pakistani grooming gangs” risks overlooking important socio-cultural differences based on region of origin. While her use of the term “peasant” may be unpleasantly snobbish to some, it is one that has been used before to refer to migration to the UK from rural parts of northern Pakistan.

Back in 1987, British sociologist and race relations expert Professor Roger Ballard wrote on a particular body of migrants, namely “peasant farmers” from the Mirpur District in Azad Kashmir who had arrived in the UK over the previous three decades. Much of this migration was accelerated by the 1962-7 construction of the Mangla Dam, which submerged over 280 villages and displaced 110,000 people. At the time of writing, Ballard noted that at least 75% of British-Pakistanis could trace their origins back to an area no more than 600 square miles, lying mostly in Azad Kashmir and particularly focused on Mirpur District.

The history of Pakistani migration to the UK and the ethnicities traditionally associated with GLCSE perpetrators in Northern English towns means that any national public inquiry into grooming gangs should take a “granular” approach.

The findings of the 2020 paper on GLCSE prosecutions show that the phrasing of “Asian” and “Muslim” grooming gangs is unhelpful. Its regression analysis demonstrated that the proportion of Indian-origin people in an area had no significant effect on GLCSE prosecutions. The same result emerged for people of Bangladeshi heritage, a near-universally Muslim ethnic group in the UK. Having a relatively high proportion of Pakistani-origin residents in an area, however, had a significant effect.

But looking at cases of GLCSE involving perpetrators of Pakistani heritage through the lens of ethnicity risks overlooking migratory, educational, occupational, and religio-cultural variations. Investigating the region of origin — in Badenoch’s terms, the “sub-communities” — is crucial. To what extent are Pakistani-heritage perpetrators of GLCSE originally from relatively modern and developed cities such as Karachi in Sindh province, or Lahore in central-eastern Punjab? How many educated white-collar professionals in office-based roles are directly implicated in street-based grooming? Or is Pakistani-driven GLCSE in the UK ultimately rooted in biraderi-style Mirpuri clannishness among men who operate in segregated and low-skilled parts of the night-time economy?

As the push for a national public investigation into grooming gangs intensifies, these are the kinds of questions that should collectively act as a guiding light. It is a recognition that the portrait of modern British ethnic minorities — and modern Britain itself — is a deeply complex one.


Dr Rakib Ehsan is a researcher specialising in British ethnic minority socio-political attitudes, with a particular focus on the effects of social integration and intergroup relations.

 

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