It’s odd being lionised for something you did so long ago you’d almost forgotten you were there. But this is what has been happening to me on social media these last few days, as a result of clips of me on a 2014 BBC3 political debate programme called Free Speech going viral.
Free Speech was one of those slightly cringey ‘let’s make politics relevant to da yoof’ programmes once satirised on Not The Nine O’Clock News in a sketch called ‘Hey Wow’. Hardly anybody watched it at the time and I never expected it to resurface again. But it has suddenly become topical – and been seen by an order of magnitude more viewers – because of the moment where I dared to raise the issue of Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, only to be closed down by the moderator, booed by the audience and accused of ‘spreading lies’ by one of my fellow panellists.
Lots of people now are saying how terribly brave I was. But that was never part of my plan. As soon as I walked into the Manchester studio, I felt a lurch of terror. The set up was not dissimilar to the one on Hey Wow: a lively studio audience, apparently selected to reflect the vibrant diversity of British youth and two roving moderators clutching microphones with which they could gauge the opinions of the crowd. Opposite them sat the five panellists, whose affiliations I cannot remember exactly. But I was the only one plausibly right-of-centre.
Surrounded by hostiles, I formulated a self-preservation strategy. I’d suck up madly to my fellow panellists, especially the bright, nicely-spoken female next to me so that they didn’t gang up on me. And I’d be careful not to say anything too contentious or right wing so the scary people in the audience – one was wearing an ‘I HEART Sharia’ sweatshirt – didn’t physically assault me.
But no plan survives contact with the enemy. The problem was the same one you have when you’re out hunting, your blood is up and your resolution to confine yourself to the more sensible rails vanishes in a surge of adrenaline. Quite simply, everyone else in the room turned out to be so incredibly annoying, stupid and dishonest that I felt compelled to lob in a few truth grenades. This was easy enough to do when the question came up: ‘Is Britain a rape culture?’
What particularly irked me was the studio’s collective refusal to acknowledge the existence of Muslim rape gangs. I’d recently been reading all the reports on cases like Rotherham and Rochdale, familiarised myself with all the horrific details about mostly underaged girls being ‘groomed’ by leering, semi-organised gangs of revolting older men who tortured them, drugged them and gang raped them. And now here I was in a roomful of half-wits, so blinded by ignorance or political prejudice, trying to make out that this was just some kind of right-wing fantasy.
Among them was that female panellist I’d earmarked as a potential ally. Though she’d been friendly enough in earlier exchanges, she turned on me in this one with that ‘spreading lies’ accusation. The audience all booed me as if she had a point. It felt very lonely and not a little disorienting. Like the heroine in Gaslight, I was being put under extreme pressure to disbelieve something that I knew perfectly well to be true.
The moderators were no use. Instead of giving me space to enlarge upon my point they exploited their powers, in a way which I believe will be familiar to any conservative person who has ever appeared on a BBC political debate show, to close me down. How easy it would have been for one of them to have said: ‘But to be fair to James, there have been some reports in the papers…’ Neither of them did.
Then something extraordinary happened. A girl sitting in the back row somehow attracted the moderator’s attention and declared: ‘I know it’s probably an unpopular view but I completely agree that in some areas rape is largely committed by Muslims.’ The audience tried booing her into silence but she bravely continued. ‘No, I grew up in Bradford, alright? And in that kind of environment, it is mainly Asian men, not because it’s something about their culture but because they’re not getting caught. Like I’ve had friends who’ve been raped and the police have told them because it’s an Asian man that’s done it we’re probably not gonna catch them. It happens all the time.’
Talk about courage! I was so grateful to that girl, who definitely deserved a more sympathetic and interested response than she got from the moderator. Embarrassed, in damage limitation mode, he turned to the panellist (a Muslim yoof TV/comedian type with a trendy haircut and bright green trousers) he knew he could most rely on to squash the issue. ‘Do you lend any credence to that idea?’, the moderator asked. Unsurprisingly Mr Green Trousers considered the notion of police refusing to investigate rape claims where Asians were involved utterly risible. The audience laughed and clapped their agreement.
The whole experience was so embarrassing and awkward I wanted to forget it as quickly as possible. But one Friday evening, a few weeks later, I realised my ordeal hadn’t been totally futile. I was hurrying towards the tube stop, worried I was going to miss my train home, when a pretty young woman standing outside a pub suddenly accosted me. ‘Thank you!’, she said. Thank you for what?’ I said. ‘Thank you for speaking out for us!’, she said and gave me a warm hug.
The young woman, it turned out, was of Sikh extraction and she happened to have watched the debate. Several girls in her own community had fallen victim to these gangs. But she’d never seen anyone in the public eye speaking up about it.
Comments