This article is taken from the June 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
This is a tale of two Lucys.
Lucy Connolly, a childminder and mother, is currently serving a 31-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to distributing material with the intention of stirring up racial hatred.
Lucy Powell, an Oxford graduate who has enjoyed a smooth ascent through the gilded corridors of public policy and politics, is now Labour MP for Manchester Central and Leader of the House of Commons.
After Axel Rudakubana murdered three young children in July 2024, Lucy Connolly posted a furious, ill-advised tweet about deporting asylum seekers and setting fire to their hotels. A few hours later she deleted it. Two-tier Keir’s justice system went into overdrive, and she was swiftly arrested and imprisoned. It’s unclear if she was able to watch Groomed: A National Scandal, Channel 4’s shocking, enraging and at times nauseating investigation.
The programme details how for decades gangs of mostly Pakistani men raped and trafficked thousands of vulnerable young girls whilst the authorities stood by and watched. The state tolerance of mass sexual crime committed against its own citizens is the worst failure and biggest scandal in modern British history.
But there is still no national statutory public inquiry. The rape gangs seem to be an embarrassment that triggers a myriad of unwelcome questions — especially as the Pakistani/Muslim vote eats steadily into Labour’s majorities in once safe seats.
Lucy Powell recently appeared on the BBC’s Any Questions. There Tim Montgomerie, a former editor of ConservativeHome, asked her if she had seen the programme. She sneered: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we, yeah? OK, let’s get that dog whistle out shall we, yeah?”
Her words caused widespread revulsion, especially amongst rape gang survivors. That should have marked the end of Powell’s political career, but after saying she was “very sorry for those remarks”, she remains Leader of the House of Commons.
Groomed is heart-rending but utterly necessary viewing. Anna Hall’s forensic but always humane investigation exposes both the rotten core of the British state and the catastrophic failure of those institutions that were supposed to protect vulnerable children.
The programme shocks on multiple levels. Firstly, with the savagery of the assaults. Barely pubescent girls were subjected to sustained sexual attacks lasting hours or sometimes days by groups of mostly Pakistani men. They emerged bruised, traumatised, covered in bite marks.
Some were anally raped. One child was raped simultaneously in her vagina and anus by two men, screaming in agony during the attack. The rapes often took place in hotels. Did nobody ask at reception why a child was being escorted by a group of much older men and what she was doing there for days on end?
Other victims recounted how they were picked up after school whilst teachers watched but did not intervene. The rape gangs targeted the most vulnerable girls. The methodology was finely-honed: find a child without a family looking for love, ply her with drink and drugs, persuade her that her abuser was her boyfriend, then demand that she sleep with multiple men, pass her around to be used and abused.
Some were trafficked across the country. Again and again the victims recounted how they asked the police, social services, anyone in authority for help. Social workers often regarded the children as little more than prostitutes, overseeing their cases as though they were adults with agency, instead of young girls.
The programme details how a report on “Erin” (not her real name) noted, “She hangs around with a number of men who take her money. She is a very promiscuous girl.” On one occasion Erin’s mother took her to a police station. The child was covered in bite marks, and her knickers were full of semen. The police took no action.
Victoria Agoglia, a 15-year-old, wrote a heart-rending letter, passed to the authorities, detailing how she was being raped and drugged, but the abuse continued. In September 2003 she was injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man and died.
He was cleared of manslaughter and sentenced to three and a half years — eleven months more than Lucy Connolly. Greater Manchester Police then went into action and set up Operation Augusta. It soon identified 97 suspects. But Augusta was closed down in 2005.
After the release of Groomed, Greater Manchester Police said: “We’ve fully accepted and apologised for the extent of our past failings in tackling this horrific abuse. We badly let down vulnerable young girls when they needed us the most. It is vital this never happens again.”
I wonder if Lucy Powell has watched the programme. She certainly had time to attend an interfaith Iftar in Manchester in March, to mark the end of Ramadan and celebrate the contribution of Manchester’s Muslim community.
As for Lucy Connolly, perhaps when she is released she might stand for Parliament. She could target Lucy Powell’s seat.
The Bible recounts how Joshua and the Israelites conquered Jericho by marching around the city for seven days whilst the priests blew their trumpets until the city walls collapsed. Manchester Central is a Labour bastion.
But as the book of Joshua records, the thickest walls are no protection against a righteous army — especially one led by a mother armed with a dog-whistle and a “little trumpet”.
