Where the government has chosen silence, our campaign is choosing to act. As Westminster quietly abandons its promises to the victims of the grooming gangs, the Great British PAC is stepping into the breach with a project designed to do one thing the state has refused to do: tell the whole, unflinching truth.
The trigger was a decision that MPs and campaigners have condemned as “utterly shameful”. Days before the Easter recess, the Labour government quietly scrapped five long-promised grooming gang inquiries — a move critics have branded a “cowardly betrayal” of thousands of survivors.
With just 45 minutes’ notice on the Tuesday afternoon, Jess Phillips, Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, slipped into the Commons to announce that the £5million earmarked for those investigations would instead be redirected. Under the new arrangement, any local authority can now bid for “bespoke” work — audits and victims’ panels among them — stretching an already thin pot perilously across the more than 50 towns scarred by the scandal.
Anger erupted from every corner of politics. Leading the response was shadow safeguarding minister Katie Lam, whose forensic intervention has since gone viral on X, stating plainly the facts that so many in office still shy away from.
“The girls we are talking about are predominantly white. The men who preyed on them were predominantly Muslim… Does the Minister accept that in many cases these crimes were racially and religiously aggravated?”
Phillips, seemingly unmoved, retorted that Lam was “prioritising one sort of victim” over others and maintained that “there should be no hierarchy.”
And yet, for a great many, a hierarchy plainly exists — one shaped by political convenience and a reluctance to upset particular voting blocs. Speaking on Times Radio, former EHRC chair Sir Trevor Phillips was blunt: “They are not [holding the inquiries] because of the demographic… largely Pakistani/Muslim background… and Labour-held seats and councils who would be offended by it. It is utterly shameful.”
Survivors silenced, justice sabotaged
The human cost of this retreat is severe. Many survivors — some only 11 years old when first targeted — still live in fear, encountering their abusers on the very streets where they live. Others have abandoned their hometowns altogether, unable to bear the trauma.
Raja Miah, who has spent years exposing Labour’s failures in Oldham, cast the government’s climbdown not merely as a scandal but as “a reckoning”. His relentless investigations have laid bare what he describes as a “systematic cover-up” reaching senior Labour figures, Deputy PM Angela Rayner among them.
Whistleblowers within Oldham Council share his alarm. They allege that a bargain was struck between Labour leaders and sectarian Muslim councillors to derail a long-awaited judge-led inquiry — itself already diluted after ministers declined to call a full public inquiry.
“This isn’t just the council marking its own homework,” Miah said. “It’s writing the questions, marking the answers, and publishing whatever suits them.”
A ray of hope
With Labour all but slamming the door on justice, one effort is determined to ensure the truth is not buried. Led by Donna Edmunds, West Midlands Regional Director for the Great British PAC, a new grassroots project is being launched to achieve what the government will not: to expose the full scale of the scandal and secure justice.
The National Archive for the Survivors of Grooming Gangs will become the UK’s first comprehensive repository of survivor testimonies, police records, court documents and witness accounts, drawn together into a public, historical record.
“This period must be studied like other atrocities, such as the Holocaust. We must never again allow suicidal compassion for the outsider to get the better of us.”
Those are the words of Edmunds, who insists the Archive is far more than a memorial. It will be marshalled to build legal cases — including private prosecutions of complicit police officers and council staff who looked the other way. Money raised will also fund proper therapy for survivors, rather than the meagre six hours currently offered by overstretched NHS services.
The public response has been overwhelming. Former MEP Rupert Lowe has already raised more than £500,000 for an independent national inquiry into the scandal. Running in parallel with the Archive, that inquiry will feature live-streamed public hearings and culminate in a full, uncensored report.
“We will ask: What happened? How did it happen? Why was it allowed to happen? ” said Edmunds. “And if it really does go to the top, as Raja Miah suggests—it could bring the government down.”
The fight for justice starts now
For the estimated one million survivors living among us, justice has been denied for far too long. Yet the verdict of the British people could not be plainer: enough is enough. A cover-up on this scale cannot — and will not — stand.
Labour may hope to bury this scandal, but because ordinary Britons are stepping forward, the truth is forcing its way back into the light.
Those wishing to support the National Archive for the Survivors of Grooming Gangs can back Edmunds’ fundraiser on GoFundMe or contact her directly at donnarachel@proton.me. Because justice delayed is justice denied — but justice will be done.