We desperately need the national inquiry into child grooming gangs to get underway – both for the sake of the many victims and to hold both institutions and individuals to account.
After months of backsliding then hopeless dithering by this government we are close to getting an inquiry chair appointed. Two candidates are in the frame, one of them is Jim Gamble. Since his name has been announced, he has been the subject of completely unwarranted attempts to blacken his reputation by casting him as an unsuitable establishment stooge. I would argue he’s exactly the sort of person we need to rip the covers off this child protection scandal.
Since his name has been announced, Gamble has been the subject of completely unwarranted attempts to blacken his reputation by casting him as an unsuitable establishment stooge
Full disclosure: I’ve known Jim for years. We first met when I was circling the drain at the Home Office on secondment to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (CEOP). This was the arm of law enforcement that tracked down real world and online paedophiles who traded in child abuse pornography and sadistically exploited children. Jim had all the brilliance (and some of the defects) of a charismatic leader. He was utterly committed to leading his team relentlessly against child predators to the extent that he resigned when the then-Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May planned to merge the CEOP with the National Crime Agency. This was an unwarranted bureaucratic fix that, as he predicted, reduced its effectiveness.
In the years since he has made a national and international reputation as an independent expert in child protection. He comes from a policing tradition forged in the Royal Ulster Constabulary where he was the head of Belfast’s Special Branch in the dark days of the Troubles. Whether it is terrorists or child sex offenders or dodgy institutions, he has demonstrated through his career that he will take on predators, vested interests and bureaucracies in search of truth and justice.
We have different politics, but this is not a reason to doubt his judgment, as some have suggested. He joined the Labour party in 2015 and left it when Corbyn was elected as leader about a year later. Similarly the sly inferences that he won’t rock the boat on alleged police incompetence at the heart of the inquiry are risible. Gamble led the high-profile safeguarding review into the strip searching of ‘Child Q’, a black secondary school pupil. Gamble was critical of the Metropolitan Police, saying the search was unjustified and racism was a ‘likely influencing factor’. This is hardly the behaviour of a police establishment lackey.
Getting to the truth of the grooming gang scandal after months of government stonewalling will be hard enough as it is. At least two members of the victims’ reference group have resigned in disgust at what is perceived to be the inquiry’s watered-down terms of reference and condescending treatment of victims. The latest resignation statement claims the inquiry terms of reference have downplayed the centrality of the religious and ethnic origins of perpetrators. There is an urgent need for clarity and leadership.
Either of the candidates under consideration must demonstrate to grooming gang victims that they have the tenacity and integrity to find those who turned a blind eye to or even colluded with industrial scale child rape. I don’t know enough about the other potential inquiry chair candidate, Anne Hudson, to make any judgment about her capabilities to meet this challenge. Both candidates will surely be aware of the intense media interest and the likely toll that chairing this inquiry will exact.
There is an argument to say that only an experienced judge has the capacity to deal with what will inevitably be generously funded legal defences by local authorities and police forces under scrutiny. Be that as it may, both prospective candidates will meet with victims tomorrow. They deserve a champion who will pursue the evidence without fear or favour. Whether or not this is Jim Gamble, he will continue to be a fiercely independent and effective advocate for those without power.
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