In 2015 the film Spotlight was made, it was a great success and was nominated for an Academy Award as best film for 2016. It told the story of the newspaper The Boston Globe's moral determination to uncover the story of the abuse of young children by Catholic Priests in 2001. Initially, it seemed that a few priests in Boston were exploiting children in the area. The refusal to deal with this properly and the attempts to suppress it by the church upset some of the reporters and set them digging. What they eventually uncovered was almost beyond belief, a network of abusers damaging thousands of children, working under the cloak, or cassock, of the Catholic church.
Many senior people were implicated directly in the abuse or made efforts to cover it up. It may still finally ruin that organisation.
Say anything but not the truth
It is a great shame those same reporters cannot be unleashed on the Labour party and grooming gangs in the UK today. The latest outrage by this once honourable party involves the hounding out of the Shadow Cabinet of Sarah Champion the former Shadow Women and Equalities minister. This MP for Rotherham has campaigned for many years against the child grooming in her constituency and no wonder, at least 1,400 children in the area were found to have been abused from1997 to 2003.
Miss Champion clearly thought we lived in a time when speaking the truth in order to protect the most vulnerable victims of society would at least be allowed even expected from the sitting MP, even if it was not universally applauded within her party.
But she was wrong. She said among other things that "Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men abusing white girls."
It is clear she tried to be cautious. She highlighted Pakistani men often born in Britain, but we all know that was not the defining link. Iraqi, Iranian, Indian and Turkish men were also involved operating over a range of towns and cities - Derby, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Aylesbury, Peterborough, Bradford and Newcastle as well as Rotherham.
They were almost exclusively, however, Muslim men. That fact certainly would not have been allowed to be highlighted by the Labour Stasi, so she toned it down slightly, but not enough for the thought police.
Supported by equality advocates
To their credit, many people, not necessarily to the right of the political spectrum, have spoken up for Miss Champion.
These include Trevor Phillips former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who reportedly said he was "Gobsmacked." He reminded people that only last week he had spoken praising Miss Champion for abandoning the "Bland evasion of child abuse found in every community." The present Chief Executive of the EHRC, Rebecca Hilsenrath, said it was wrong that a respected MP had been hounded out for speaking candidly about child exploitation and called her a respected advocate of equality. Nigel Farage noted that it is now impossible, to tell the truth about tough issues in the Labour Party.
Miss Champion had increased her vulnerability by sometimes going against Corbyn in the past. She was one of the many to resign previously over his leadership and now in the momentum days, where tolerance of individual views is nonexistent, she was something of a sitting duck.
Soon after her election to Parliament, (she has been MP for Rotherham since 2012), she was asked if she was a Blairite or a Brownite? This was in the heady days before Corbynistas. She said she was neither, just in Parliament to do a good job. That attitude is no longer acceptable in the party of Corbyn and McDonnell.
Catholic priests but not Muslim men?
The ham-fisted attempts to stop any real honesty by the Labour party will rebound of course upon the very community it is designed to help. Suppression only convinces ordinary people that most politicians and much of the media are trying to hide the truth. And they are! It is very interesting that in the Spotlight film and on pretty much every occasion subsequently that the abuse uncovered in Boston has been discussed; every news outlet has used the phrase CATHOLIC priests. The people know what is going on and who is responsible. Trying to hide it like sneaks only make their outrage even hotter.
