OLDHAM'S LABOUR LEADER AMANDA CHADDERTON BLOCKED THE COUNCIL'S DEMAND FOR AN INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO THE RAPE OF THE TOWN'S CHILDREN. SHE REMOVED THE DEMAND TO INVESTIGATE WHAT HER OWN COUNCILLORS AND OFFICERS KNEW. SHE SAID IT WAS TIME TO MOVE ON. HAD WE MOVED ON, THERE WOULD BE NO NATIONAL INQUIRY. When she lost her seat, she said: "It's a conspiracy theory. We had a report that said in black and white there was no cover-up." That report was Andy Burnham's. They thought Burnham's review had closed the scandal down. They thought those of us demanding accountability could be dismissed. We had other ideas. BURNHAM'S REVIEW WAS PART OF THE COVER-UP The review was asked for by Sean Fielding, the Labour leader of the council that stood accused. Andy Burnham, then Mayor of Greater Manchester and the region's Police and Crime Commissioner, commissioned it. Oldham Council and Greater Manchester Police, the two bodies under investigation, helped shape its terms. The police force Burnham was responsible for never gave his reviewers full access to its records, and the council redacted key information. The review found that the police had told the BBC there were just two pieces of intelligence on the shisha bars when their own officers had filed several, and called that proportionate. Burnham's expert team also failed to interview a single one of the survivors of the town's Pakistani Rape Gangs. To clear the former council leader of protecting the Pakistani men abusing Oldham's children, the review relied on his own 2014 blog. That council leader was Jim McMahon. His defence were his words on an obscure blog back in 2014 in a town where the majority of people did not read online blogs. Burnham's team knew what they were doing. They knew a council leader had a duty to stand in the council chamber and warn people what was happening. It was published on 20 June 2022 and declared there was no evidence of a cover-up. When one of its authors was asked about my allegations, he said there was no basis for them. A review that could not see the police evidence had been used to tell Oldham that the people exposing the abuse were the ones lying. LABOUR USED THE REVIEW AS A WEAPON Labour picked it up the day it was published. Jim McMahon, by then MP for Oldham West and Royton, Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, and Angela Rayner, the party's deputy leader, dismissed the allegations as conspiracy theories and declared that a line had been drawn under the scandal. On 30 June, ten days after a review that cleared him on the strength of his own blog, McMahon attacked me by name in Parliament. On 22 July Burnham wrote to the people of Oldham thanking his reviewers for the thorough way in which they had undertaken their work. He said nothing about the police records his own force had kept from them or why his expert team had failed to interview a single survivor. CHADDERTON BLOCKED OLDHAM COUNCIL FROM DEMANDING AN INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO ITS OWN CONDUCT On 13 July 2022, Amanda Chadderton, Labour leader of Oldham Council and councillor for Royton South, stood in the council chamber and moved an amendment removing the demand for an independent public inquiry into the rape gang scandal. She also deleted the words "including the actions and knowledge of Council Members and Officers" from the motion. In their place came her declaration: "We must move forward." Labour councillors backed her, and the amended motion passed by 32 votes to 20. Burnham's review had been public for 23 days. Oldham Labour had already used it to shut down any investigation of themselves. GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE ARRESTED ME SEVEN DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION We took our campaign to the streets of Oldham to remove Chadderton from office at the May 2023 elections. We had crowdfunded leaflets and I led a small team of mostly pensioners. We were up against the Labour Party. Even Andy Burnham came to Oldham to campaign against us. On 27 April 2023, seven days before polling day, Greater Manchester Police dawn raided my home and arrested me. It was the force that answered to Andy Burnham as Police and Crime Commissioner. The allegations were false. The raid, and the attempt to fast-track proceedings and have me remanded, were designed to take me off the streets in the final week of the campaign. My legal team challenged what was happening, and the police were forced to acknowledge that I was the victim. By the next day they had released me and confirmed no further action. Undeterred, I went straight back to campaigning. WE REMOVED HER FROM OFFICE On 4 May 2023, Amanda Chadderton lost her seat in Royton South. Our independent candidate topped the poll. In a ward electing three councillors, the Labour leader of Oldham Council finished fourth and missed the last seat by 21 votes. She was the third consecutive Labour leader of Oldham Council we had helped remove, following Sean Fielding and Arooj Shah. Her answer to losing was to reach for Burnham's review and call the cover up of the gang rape of little White girls by Pakistani men a conspiracy theory. The review had been written to clear her council. She was still hiding behind it after we removed her. In 2024 Labour rewarded her with a job as campaigns manager for Yvette Cooper, then Shadow Home Secretary. Cooper became Home Secretary on 5 July 2024 with Chadderton still on her staff. She was also the Home Secretary who tried to block a national inquiry. The council leader who blocked Oldham's inquiry went to work for the minister trying to block the national one. After removing three council leaders in succession, in May 2024 Labour lost its majority on Oldham Council. We finally had the numbers to force the council to write to Jess Phillips demanding a statutory inquiry. Later that year the Labour government refused Oldham's request for a government-led inquiry. Elon Musk then got involved. On 12 February 2025 we outmanoeuvred the Labour Party and through an emergency council meeting, we forced Oldham Council to vote unanimously to demand a statutory public inquiry. Four months later, the government conceded the National Statutory Inquiry. None of this happened because those in power suddenly decided to do the right thing. Every one of those steps was forced on them by people in Oldham who refused to stop. WE PAID FOR IT The arrest seven days before the election was not the only attempt. I was already facing separate charges on earlier allegations. For three years, under house arrest, I waited for a trial on allegations I knew were false, while I carried on exposing what had been done to Oldham's children. Every night, I barricaded my front door whilst Labour Party aligned Pakistani gangsters and Islamists, under the protection of Andy Burnham's police force, openly boasted of what they were going to do to me. They tried to frame me, and they failed. They tried to scare me into submission, and they failed. They tried to silence me. My voice only grew louder. My one regret was that my mother died before I was able to clear my name. No electoral victory, no public vindication and no national inquiry can ever give that back to me. Warren Bates was there at the beginning. He was a former councillor who refused to accept what was happening in our town. It was his evidence bundle that helped force this. Warren died before he could see how far we had come. I held his hand at his death bed. His last words to me were 'get them, make sure you get them.' I made him a promise that I would carry on, that we would not abandon the fight or allow those responsible to bury what had happened. I have kept that promise. THE PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO CLOSE IT DOWN MUST ANSWER FOR IT The National Inquiry exists because ordinary working class people from a northern mill town people refused to be silenced, refused to surrender and refused to accept that the powerful could declare the matter closed. Some of the people who began this fight are no longer here to see it. I mourn them every day. The inquiry must examine Oldham in full. It must call Andy Burnham, who commissioned the review and defended it, and Amanda Chadderton, who used it to block an inquiry into her own council. It must call Jim McMahon and Debbie Abrahams, Angela Rayner too. The same with every Labour councillor that attempted to prevent the truth from coming out. They must explain under oath why they told the children of Oldham it was time to move on. My name is Raja Miah. I am 8 years in. I am not yet finished. Are you? _________ You know what we are up against. The mainstream media will not touch my work. Institutions I investigate do not volunteer their records. Politicians do not suddenly decide to hold themselves to account. And yet, despite all of that, we forced the national inquiry. We did that because enough ordinary people refused to go away. But getting the inquiry was never the end of this campaign. In many ways it was only the beginning. Now we have to watch where it goes, what it investigates, which places it avoids, which witnesses it calls, which records it obtains and whether the same institutions that failed these children are allowed to control the story again. Nobody else is going to do that work for us. And I cannot do it indefinitely working on my own. That is why I keep talking about 50,000 committed subscribers. It is not a vanity number. I did not pluck it out of the air. With fifty thousand people with me means when we uncover something important, it does not depend on a newspaper editor, a television producer or an algorithm deciding whether you are allowed to see it. It gives us reach they cannot easily shut down. But there is another reason. I need to build a proper backroom operation around this work. At the moment I am investigating, researching, writing, publishing, producing the videos, running the newsletter, dealing with the technology and then starting again. It is unsustainable. I need people behind me who can take care of the technical and production work so that I can spend my time doing the thing I do best. That is why we have been pushing so hard for new paid subscribers. 🔴 SIGN UP HERE 👉 redwallandtherabble.co.uk If you read my work and want it to continue, I need your help. Sign up for free. There are no paywalls to access any of my work. If you can afford the £3 a month or £30 for the year, please become a paid subscriber. We forced the inquiry. Now we need the numbers to make sure they cannot control what happens next. Unfortunately, we are reaching the end of the road where I can continue working this way. The paid subscriptions have stalled. Worse, tens of thousands of people are now reading these articles without even joining the free mailing list. The audience is growing, but the number of people actually standing behind the work is not growing with it. Over a million people engaged in my content this weekend. Only a small fraction followed up with a subscription to my newsletter This is becoming impossible to sustain. 🔴 SIGN UP HERE 👉 redwallandtherabble.co.uk Raja Miah MBE