There has been a steady drumbeat, in right-wing and liberal media alike, about the failure of British Muslims to integrate. This drumbeat warns of self-segregated lives insulated from mainstream values. This is often fed by official reports that are occasioned by media “scares” and used to align public policy with media-driven concerns highlighting threats to public safety.
Among the most potent of such concerns are those involving children and young people. On the one hand, there is the claimed risk of “radicalisation” and involvement in “Islamist” terrorism to which some young people may be vulnerable (because, we are told, of a deficit in “British values”).
On the other hand, some Muslim men allegedly pose a threat to white girls through group-based sexual exploitation, or the activities of “grooming gangs” as recently set out in Baroness Casey’s recent rapid review although the available data doesn’t warrant that conclusion.
Both issues generate a discourse directed at different responsible authorities – whether local government, social workers, or police – and their failure to act because of what they claim to be “a fear of being thought ‘racist’”.
This was a feature of the early reports (by Peter Clarke and Ian Kershaw) on the so-called Birmingham Trojan Horse affair, and was used as an explanation of why the perceived inappropriate demands of Muslim governors and teachers had been acceded to in the past.
Decisive action followed, in the introduction of the Prevent duty in 2015 as a safeguarding measure and the requirement of all schools in England and Wales to “promote fundamental British values”, a controversial addition to the curriculum for its assumption that people not of a British background (“people of colour”), somehow did not naturally embody these values, when in fact research has shown the opposite to be the case.
Surveys show increased suspicion toward Muslims and Islam, especially among middle class professionals responsible for implementing public policy
The main social attitude surveys – such as those conducted on an annual basis by the National Centre for Social Research – have consistently shown that British Muslims were the group closest to the average of the nation as a whole in terms of adherence values deemed to be “fundamentally British”. Despite this, the surveys show increased suspicion toward Muslims and Islam, especially among middle class and professional respondents responsible for implementing public policy.
Now, “British values” are increasingly decried in favour of a new “cultural nationalism” drummed by Reform, with large sections of the Conservative party and those Labour politicians seeking to appeal to Reform voters.
In the area of child sexual exploitation, fear of being called racist has also become a convenient excuse for past inaction. In the current media focus on “grooming gangs”, for example, the focus is upon the ethnicity of the perpetrators (who should, of course, be prosecuted and punished with all the severity the law allows), rather than the victims, and, importantly, the root cause: the failures in care that underlie child sexual exploitation.
As Baroness Casey set out, multiple reports on child sexual exploitation have identified systemic failures by responsible authorities without the recommended remedial action being taken. Despite this core highlight, the consistent call has been on identifying the ethnic and religious identity of the perpetrators.
Systemic failures vs identity obsession
Significantly, both issues – safeguarding children and young people from the risks of radicalisation, and safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation – fall under the responsibility of the Department for Education. This has been the case since the 2004 Children’s Act, when local authority children’s services departments were made responsible for child protection and schooling.
The Police Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) published a report in 2011 to which the DfE responded with an “action plan”, albeit, according to Baroness Casey, little came of it. Another report on group sexual exploitation was submitted to the DfE by the Children’s Commissioner in 2012 and it was followed up by a comprehensive Ofsted report into children’s services at a sample of five local authorities in November 2014.
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There have been multiple reports since then with the last major report – that of Dame Alexis Jay in 2022 – stating that what was needed was action on previous recommendations on improving child protection, not a focus on the identity of the perpetrators.
The Birmingham Trojan Horse affair involved accusations of extremism by parents and governors, and were directed at “successful” headteachers amid a claim of a “plot” to take over schools.
However – and crucially – media reporting and the official reports neglected the fact that the only mechanism for taking over a school was through the government’s flagship academies programme, where a “successful” school would be encouraged to leave local authority control and incorporate failing schools into a “multi-academy trust” and implement its policies for school improvement.
The school at the centre of the affair – Park View – was identified by the DfE as just such an outstanding school that would absorb others. It was in fact, the same teachers who had improved it from a failing school over a remarkable period of four years prior to the alleged “plot”, who lost their jobs despite the case against them collapsing.
Despite the Prevent duty being introduced in 2015 as a direct response to the Trojan Horse affair, the following year, when professional misconduct cases against teachers were begun, it was accepted that no extremism was involved in the Trojan Horse affair. At least we must infer that to be the case; no charges of extremism were involved in any of the legal cases, notwithstanding the claims of the Clarke report and media reports.
In fact, there were no instances where the practices of the schools in Park View Educational Trust (PVET) were in conflict with statutory requirements or guidelines. Indeed, all the evidence suggested otherwise – here I am referring firstly to the nature of the findings of fault in the court cases that did conclude, and, secondly, the fact that the primary set of cases against the senior leaders at PVET collapsed due to misconduct by lawyers for the government.
Trojan Horse narrative
Nonetheless, the government acceded to a moral panic about Muslim-led schools, despite (perhaps, because of) the situation in Birmingham being a direct consequence of its own policies on schooling.
Whatever the reason, this laid down a pattern; the Trojan Horse affair became the emblem of government claims of a “failure of multiculturalism”. An example of this is Dame Louise Casey’s 2016 Review into Integration and Opportunity, which cited the affair and attributed the problems it had supposedly revealed, in particular to education leaders who acceded to the views of a minority of parents claiming to represent the school community:
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“Many of the individuals involved deny the allegations against them and continue to this day to maintain they were acting in the best interests of pupils. We heard wider views in Birmingham that sought to underplay the seriousness of the issues or to deny the extent of the problem, portraying the whole episode as a conspiracy and the letter a fake. Professional misconduct and legal proceedings are underway against the individuals involved, so we will only have a complete picture when these conclude.”
They did not conclude; the cases collapsed, and the DfE did not take up the call to relaunch them.
It is easy to understand why they did not. They had been designed specifically to keep the Clarke inquiry and its evidence away from scrutiny. This would have revealed serious flaws in the inquiry, including a failure to disclose the role of the team at the DfE that was involved in managing the takeover of failing schools by Park View and, indeed, the expansion of Park View Educational Trust.
I will return to Louise Casey, but this indicates a pattern: the setting down of a narrative that ‘multiculturalism’ and Muslim participation is associated with excess demands, and reluctance to counter them is identified as deriving from fear of being regarded as “racist”.
Why did the DfE not act as decisively to protect children at risk of sexual exploitation?
While the government did act in the Trojan Horse affair, it did so by forcing Prevent into education – not just secondary and tertiary education, but also into nurseries and primary schools. It continues to ensnare thousands of innocent children and young people, with disproportionate numbers of Muslim children represented. At the same time, the government presented its action as “fearless” and “without favour to ‘group interests’ or ‘identity politics’”.
Systemic failures in child protection
Why, then, did it not act in the same way with regard to the recommendations of reports on child exploitation?
Significantly, the issues relate to local authority departments of children’s service. Of course, since the financial crisis of 2008, local authorities have been under serious financial pressures and requirements to cut services. Children’s services were also disrupted by the expansion of the academy schools programme. By 2014, around a quarter of primary schools and three-quarters of secondary schools had opted out of local authority control.
This had the consequence of disrupting the relationships between child protection and schooling for many children. For example, most of the reports on group-based child sexual exploitation associate it with looked-after children going missing from their care provision and children missing from school.
There was a major failure at the heart of government to take the needs of vulnerable children seriously, and to safeguard them from sexual exploitation
There was a major failure in data-gathering and to act where problems were perceived. In other words, there was a major failure at the heart of government to take the needs of vulnerable children seriously, and to safeguard them from real risk of sexual exploitation. At the same time, overtly strenuous efforts were made to “safeguard them” against spurious risks of “radicalisation”.
In this context, it is clear why the present government should have resisted a national inquiry into grooming gangs. Dame Louise Casey has declared that the topic should not be politicised and the focus should be on the victims. But then the answer would have been the rapid and full implementation of Dame Alexis Jay’s recommendations.
Instead, acceding to the call has reinforced the same false narratives about the integration of British Muslims. Dame Louise Casey already showed herself to be sympathetic to that narrative. In fact, her recent report contributes to it.
If national politics and the policies that follow it are driven by a common disrespect of British Muslims and the child victims of group-based sexual exploitation, what kind of future are we creating?
