Stories of gangs grooming vulnerable girls for sex have been very prominent in the media recently, but it was easy to miss a recent court case in Derby, where eight men were convicted of sexual and other offences against teenage girls, mostly in the Normanton and Pear Tree areas of the city. All but one of the men are white.
There was relatively little coverage of the case in the mainstream media, in contrast to the big headlines given to a similar case in Rochdale in May involving a group of Asian men (or to an earlier case in Derby also involving Asian men). An interesting analysis of this difference in media coverage can be read here, but it’s also worth pointing out the notable difference in the way the far right have reacted to the convictions of these various sexual predators. Various fascist groups were very keen to attempt to hijack the Rochdale case for their own ends, with frantic activity including demos outside the court in Liverpool, and a general attempt to increase tensions in the area resulting in mob violence in Heywood.
Drips in the rain in Liverpool
Derbyshire Blackshirt-in-Chief Paul Hilliard (above, with Nick Griffin and friends) was outspoken on the case, and travelled north to join BNP demos outside the court against the Rochdale grooming gang. It’s notable that Hilliard hasn’t felt the need to organise his BNP cohorts to mobilise against the more recent paedophile trial on his doorstep. There has been a similar lack of comment or action from the EDL groups in the region, or from the Infidels, or any of the groups who were so keen to “take a stand” against the Rochdale paedophiles. It seems that fascists are only interested in the grooming of vulnerable girls if the perpetrators are non-white.
There is no surprise there; we have critiqued the far right’s warped attitude to these grooming cases before, and their silence on this Derby case speaks volumes about their opportunism and hypocrisy.