The Real Taboo

It is not race or immigration. Nor is it Islam.

We have talked about race and immigration in this country for as long I can remember. For the last 15 years, at least, we have talked about almost nothing but race, immigration, and Islam.

Pakistani taxi drivers have lately joined Catholic priests as the only people who can expect any media disapproval if they have sex with 13 and 14-year-olds, and sometimes with children even younger than that.

Even in the case of teachers, that disapproval is extended only if the perpetrators are male and the victims are female.

Sex between men and teenage boys, especially, is otherwise the stuff of acclaimed television drama and of the novels of a National Treasure.

Sex between women and teenage boys is treated as a joke even when it goes to court, as it almost never does.

From Rotherham to Newcastle, this is not about "Pakis" (a word that Sarah Champion as good as used) or what have you, but about middle-class white neglect of working-class white girls.

Apologies "for any offence caused" are always worthless. And Labour continues to extend its whip to its very own Anne Marie Morris. Why are avowed anti-racists prepared to take that whip while Champion is in receipt of it?

The point is not race. Nor is it Islam. It is class.

And the taboo is not against mentioning race. Nor is the taboo against mentioning Islam. The taboo is against mentioning class.

The 11 or 12-year-old daughter, indeed the daughter several years older than that, of a Councillor, a social worker or a Police Officer would not be allowed by such figures to stay out all night with older men.

But the attitude of those white stalwarts to these white girls was, "You came from the gutter, anyway." 

This was, and throughout the country tonight it still will be, an internal white thing. And that thing is class.

He may not thank me for saying this, but if I were George Galloway, then I would be preparing to contest the Rotherham by-election.

Yes, there are people who want to shut me up.