Even as ‘Grooming Gang’ Scandal Rocks UK, British Activists Plan Women’s March To Protest Trump Presidency

While the United Kingdom faces an internal reckoning over a decade-old grooming gang scandal, UK women’s rights groups are planning marches across the country to protest — President Trump’s inauguration. The demonstrations, organized by UK Women’s March, will take place on Saturday at several UK cities, including London, Liverpool, Canterbury, and Birmingham, and are expected to draw thousands of attendees. The march, according to the group, is meant to be on behalf of “the rights of all women worldwide.” The first cause mentioned in the group’s mission statement, though, is Trump’s presidency: “With Donald Trump set to return as US president in January 2025 and Nigel Farage picking up the anti-abortion mantle here in the UK, it’s time to make our voices heard,” the group says. In their statement the organizers also pledge to march to protest rising “discrimination and violence and against trans women and girls,” threats to reproductive rights and abortion access in the United Kingdom and America, and on behalf of women in Afghanistan and Iran whose freedoms have been stripped away. They finish their statement with the mantra that “women are not free until all women are free.”Notably absent from their cri de coeur? Any mention of the hot-button grooming gang scandal that involves thousands of child sex abuse incidents in the early 2000s perpetrated by gangs of predominantly Pakistani men. These so-called “grooming gangs” operated across several UK towns and sexually exploited and trafficked vulnerable young women, many of whom were underage. The scandal regained national attention after billionaire businessman Elon Musk recently began posting about the issue on his social media platform, X, accusing Prime Minister Starmer and other Labour party members of allowing “rape gangs” to “exploit young girls without facing justice.”Although the sex abuses were investigated via earlier internal inquiries, some members of Parliament are now arguing that heightened cultural concerns regarding racism prevented the abuse scandal, which involved predominantly Pakistani abusers and young white victims, from being properly investigated. The uproar reignited a series of debates in the United Kingdom surrounding race and immigration. The leader of the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch, championed the effort to launch a new national inquiry into the issue, claiming that “no-one has joined the dots or has the total picture” of the abuse and that “it is almost certainly still going on.” However, her proposed amendment was shot down by the British Parliament, which holds a Labour party majority, last week. Conservatives, including Mr. Musk, suggest that Mr. Starmer is opposed to launching a national inquiry because it would shed renewed light on his time as director of public prosecutions during the years when the scandal was first unfolding. The prime minister has, however, defended his record. He has in turn accused the Tories of jumping on a “bandwagon of the far-right.”

Even as ‘Grooming Gang’ Scandal Rocks UK, British Activists Plan Women’s March To Protest Trump Presidency

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