chris northover

CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 12 WERE BEING GANG RAPED AND SOLD BY PAKISTANI MEN IN OLDHAM. GIRLS OF 13 AND 14, KNOWN TO THE POLICE, WERE BEING DRAGGED OFF THE STREET INTO THE TOWN'S SHISHA BARS WHERE ROOMS WERE RENTED OUT BY THE HOUR. THE POLICE AND THE COUNCIL KNEW WHAT THOSE PREMISES WERE. Instead of closing down a network of child rape dens and rescuing these children, the 2011 police strategy for tackling Oldham's Pakistani rape gangs listed managing the force's reputation and the far right among its priorities. The specialist team set up to protect these girls was kept out of the operations against the shisha bars. Police intelligence placing exploited children inside those premises was not passed to the officers responsible for them. In 2014 the leader of Oldham Council wrote on his blog that the abuse of children in the town was predominantly Pakistani men targeting white girls. He knew, and he was prepared to say it on his blog read by a handful of people. He never stood up in Oldham's council chamber and confronted what was being done to those children. Anyone surprised why the rapes carried on regardless? RIVENDELL HOUSE WAS A CHILD BROTHEL BUILT BY OLDHAM COUNCIL In 2007 Oldham Council took the girls most at risk from these men and put them together under one roof, in a six-bed home called Rivendell House. The council's own staff admitted its location was not ideal. Burnham's reviewers accepted that housing girls already being exploited in the same building could draw the abusers to it. A former care worker reported that in 2010 Pakistani men drove round and round the home waiting for the girls to come out, and that staff were not allowed to stop them leaving. The worker passed this to the police and the safeguarding board. Nothing was done. The state gathered sexually exploited children in one building. The men knew where to find them. What Oldham Council built was a child brothel, staffed and paid for by the taxpayer. When the care worker went public in 2014, the council hired a consultant to investigate the allegations. Burnham's reviewers relied on the consultant's report and the word of the staff who had been accused of complicity. It dismissed the whistleblower. THEY LIED TO THE BBC ABOUT THE SHISHA BARS In 2013 a chief inspector warned that the risks in the shisha bars were massive. When his email reached the BBC, the reaction at the top of the council and the police was alarm at how much the journalist knew. They told the BBC there were just two pieces of intelligence. This was a lie. Their own officers had filed several intelligence reports in 2011 and 2012 tying exploited girls to those premises. The police held intelligence naming the children and the places they were being taken. They kept it from the specialist officers whose job was to protect them. Senior police officers, senior council officers and the politicians agreed among themselves that the danger to these children was being exaggerated and would be used by the far right. Some admitted the council was also worried about scaring off investment in the town. Children were being raped in those buildings while the people responsible for them discussed the town's reputation. The journalist, whose father was a senior figure in the Labour Party, then participated in the cover up. ANDY BURNHAM'S REVIEW WAS BUILT TO CLEAR OLDHAM COUNCIL AND THE POLICE In 2019, as a direct result of the work of former councillor Warren Bates working alongside Raja Miah and the first of the rabble, the council leader asked Andy Burnham for a review. We published what we had. The shisha bars, the children's homes and the taxis were our allegations, and Burnham's review was built around them. Its authors admit they began by reading our evidence. When they asked to interview me, I agreed on one condition. That my testimony be given in Oldham's council chamber and streamed live to the public. They refused, because they would only hear it in private where they would take selective notes. Five years later, they published a report that filed everything we had exposed under allegations made on social media, and told Oldham there was no cover-up. Burnham put his name to it and told the people of Oldham there had been no cover-up. At the time we called Burnham's Assurance Review a cover up. In 2025, under immense pressure, even Andy Burnham was forced to admit to his review's failings. THE COVER-UP MUST BE INVESTIGATED UNDER OATH The national inquiry must examine Oldham with its full statutory powers, and it must not be confined to the boundaries Burnham's review accepted. It must cover the schools, the youth clubs, the children's homes and every year the gangs were operating. Greater Manchester Police must hand over every record it kept from Burnham's reviewers. Oldham Council must release every document it redacted. Andy Burnham, the former council leaders and the senior officers who handled the shisha bar intelligence must be called to give evidence under oath. The girls of Rivendell House, the girls in the shisha bars and the girls dragged in to cars outside school gates were failed by every institution that should have protected them. Then they were told by a review that could not see the evidence that nobody covered anything up. They are owed the truth, and only a statutory inquiry has the power to get it. THE PRIME MINISTER ANDY BURNHAM MUST BE SUMMONED BEFORE THE NATIONAL INQUIRY. ANYTHING LESS THAN THIS JUST CONTINUES THE COVER UP. _________ Unfortunately, we are reaching the end of the road where I can continue working this way. The paid subscriptions have stalled. Worse, tens of thousands of people are now reading these articles without even joining the free mailing list. The audience is growing, but the number of people actually standing behind the work is not growing with it. This is becoming impossible to sustain. You know what we are up against. The mainstream media will not touch my work. Institutions I investigate do not volunteer their records. Politicians do not suddenly decide to hold themselves to account. And yet, despite all of that, we forced the national inquiry. We did that because enough ordinary people refused to go away. But getting the inquiry was never the end of this campaign. In many ways it was only the beginning. Now we have to watch where it goes, what it investigates, which places it avoids, which witnesses it calls, which records it obtains and whether the same institutions that failed these children are allowed to control the story again. Nobody else is going to do that work for us. And I cannot do it indefinitely working on my own. That is why I keep talking about 50,000 committed subscribers. It is not a vanity number. I did not pluck it out of the air. With fifty thousand people with me means when we uncover something important, it does not depend on a newspaper editor, a television producer or an algorithm deciding whether you are allowed to see it. It gives us reach they cannot easily shut down. But there is another reason. I need to build a proper backroom operation around this work. At the moment I am investigating, researching, writing, publishing, producing the videos, running the newsletter, dealing with the technology and then starting again. It is unsustainable. I need people behind me who can take care of the technical and production work so that I can spend my time doing the thing I do best. That is why we have been pushing so hard for new paid subscribers. 🔴 SIGN UP HERE 👉 redwallandtherabble.co.uk If you read my work and want it to continue, I need your help. Sign up for free. There are no paywalls to access any of my work. If you can afford the £3 a month or £30 for the year, please become a paid subscriber. We forced the inquiry. Now we need the numbers to make sure they cannot control what happens next. Raja Miah MBE