MUCH of the left may prefer to ignore the “grooming gangs” scandal. That would be a mistake. Socialists should have something to say about all the major issues agitating public opinion, as this question undoubtedly is.

Moreover, now Labour has capitulated to popular pressure and established a national inquiry into the crisis, we can be sure that it will be in the headlines for years to come.

Silence cedes the ground to those who want to use the crimes exposed to advance a far-right, racist agenda.

The widespread concern over child sexual exploitation is entirely understandable. Thousands of girls have been subjected to appalling abuse, which the authorities showed too little interest in stopping.

Socialists should be pointing out first of all that this is a class question, a point entirely ignored by the race-baiters. On the evidence available, the great majority of victims appear to come from working-class communities and to have suffered high levels of material deprivation.

These are the marginalised casualties of capitalist crisis, living in towns and cities devastated by the closure of industries, living in poverty and vulnerable to all forms of social pathology. All of this has been compounded by austerity and the destruction of welfare provision and social services.

The right likes to speculate that the police avoided tackling group-based sexual exploitation because of concerns about appearing racist.

Given that the police are often indifferent to being racist, never mind appearing so, it is more likely that their attitudes were informed by an ingrained contempt for working-class people, and young working-class women in particular.

Perpetrators likewise are drawn heavily from among the poor, often working on the fringes of the economy in insecure and poorly paid jobs.

That is not to say that there is a straight, simple line between these signifiers of deprivation and child sexual exploitation. Clearly, the vast majority of those working in such sectors never contemplate, let alone commit, such offences.

Nor is it to deny that child abuse occurs in very different parts of society, too, including among the rich and powerful.

But it takes a wilful blindness not to see in the current scandals a story of poverty, alienation and powerlessness, abetted by an official class-based contempt for working-class people. This is a crisis of a decaying society.

Insofar as ethnicity is an issue, the picture is complex. A lack of statistical evidence does not stop the right reaching for sweeping generalisations to reinforce their prejudices.

Such figures as are to hand, from the National Police Chiefs Council, show that in 2024, where ethnicity was recorded, 85 per cent of group-based child abusers were white, with under 4 per cent of Pakistani heritage.

If you adjust the statistics to remove institutional and family-based abuse, the latter figure rises to over 13 per cent. This is ahead of the Pakistani-heritage population share in Britain, but still a small minority.

It must also be noted, to state the obvious, that the great majority of child sex abusers are male, including almost all those who have Pakistani heritage. This is another factor the right ignores, busy as it is celebrating primitive concepts of masculinity.

One factor that is entirely irrelevant is religion. Those trying to whip up Islamophobic hatred should pause and reflect on the conduct of the main Christian churches on these questions before casting the proverbial first stone.

This scandal cannot be separated from the politics of class and gender. The exclusive focus on a purported racial element not only advances neofascist propaganda, it is profoundly counter-productive for all those wanting to protect children from sexual violence in the future.