ANTI-RACISTS will be mobilising outside Downing Street today in a counter-protest against Football Lads Against Grooming Gangs’ bid to exploit sexual abuse scandals to foment division.

The far-right group and rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) plan to march in London.

Stand Up to Racism co-convener Sabby Dhalu said the anti-racist movement “stands with survivors and victims of sexual abuse and exploitation.”

But it was “vital we mobilise against cynical attempts to seize the ‘grooming gangs’ issue to stir up Islamophobia and racism and build a fascist street movement,” she warned.

“This has not been helped by the government’s concession to the far right with the announcement of a grooming gangs inquiry with a focus on ethnicity of perpetrators. Crimes committed by grooming gangs are a tiny minority of all child sexual abuse and exploitation. There is no link between such crimes and race, ethnicity and nationality.”

Public & Commercial Services union president Martin Cavanagh, who will address the counter-protest, said the far right “do not offer solutions to fix chronic low pay, job insecurity, poor-quality housing, NHS waiting lists or a fairer social security system. Instead, they seek to scapegoat.

“This protest is nothing to do with protecting the vulnerable. It’s about the protesters’ racism and Islamophobia, and ignoring the fact that the majority of those convicted for these abhorrent crimes are white men.”

Louise Raw of Survivors Against Fascism told the Morning Star: “I don’t need anyone to tell me that child sexual abuse is a problem. I was a victim from age four to 12 and received no support when I disclosed it.

“My abuser was a white, churchgoing Christian man.

“I will particularly take no lectures from the far right, who have nurtured a recorded 103 and counting convicted sex offenders in their ranks.”

Ms Raw said far-right groups had never addressed or held an inquiry into why ”such a small group has a disproportionately high number of abusers within it.

”When EDL and BNP member Robert Ewing murdered 15-year-old Paige Chivers there was no outcry. Ewing’s EDL friend Gareth Dewhurst told police he had raped Paige’s dead body before helping Ewing dispose of her remains — the pair have never told family or police where she is.

”The far right held no rallies for Paige. In fact they have never mentioned her.  

”Nearly half a million kids are abused annually according to estimates, and 85 per cent are the victims of white adults. But the far right found a way to weaponise their racism and Islamophobia to claim there is something specific about Muslim men that makes them abuse. Media and politicians have gone along with this disgracefully, knowing it is untrue

”Inquiries and reports have proved it is untrue.

”But the grooming gang grift is too lucrative for men like Tommy Robinson to give up, even though the had to abandon his Telford ‘campaign’ because his team were caught having sex with victims.

”We rarely if ever see ‘grooming gang’  applied to white perpetrators. For them, ‘paedophile network’ might be used, perhaps ‘child sex ring’. And no-one asks whether something specific in ‘white culture’ or Christianity made them do it. Nobody demands that all white people condemn them, or swears allegiance to British values.

”Lock up ALL abusers, Support ALL victims.”

Ms Raw will be speaking about the issue at the feminist Matchwomen’s festival in Bow, east London, today; tickets available at tinyurl.com/MatchFest25.