Image: Police & far right protestors in Rotherham a month after the publication of the Jay report. Credit: Lynne Cameron/PA Images, all rights reserved.
Rotherham is a town whose very name has become synonymous with the horrific cases of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) which have occurred there in recent years. The media narrative around these cases - appalling crimes committed by a tiny minority of the population - is so powerful that it has been extremely difficult to challenge or even question. However as Islamophobia escalates to an unprecedented level with Boris Johnson's comments emboldening the far right and racists and poisonous tropes of Muslims as terrorists and sexual predators sweep the country, it becomes particularly important to do so.
Once a thriving town built round coal mines and steel, Rotherham today is a bleak place. The coal mines are closed and the steel industry is in decline. Unemployment is high. However, as many people emphasise, until six or seven years ago, racial violence had never been an issue. The comparatively small Pakistani community had lived cheek by jowl with white people. As playwright Emteaz Hussain puts it, “we were a working class community struggling to make ends meet, everyone lived in close proximity, and we naturally found a way of getting on.”
