ANDY BURNHAM'S REVIEW DECLARED THERE WAS NO COVER-UP OF CHILDREN BEING GANG RAPED IN OLDHAM. THE POLICE FORCE HE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR NEVER GAVE HIS REVIEWERS FULL ACCESS TO ITS RECORDS. HE CALLED THEIR WORK THOROUGH. Within 32 days Labour had used it to shut down the scandal. Burnham stood by it for two and a half years. BURNHAM'S REVIEW CLEARED OLDHAM WITHOUT THE EVIDENCE IT NEEDED In November 2019 the Labour leader of Oldham Council asked Andy Burnham, then Mayor of Greater Manchester and the region’s Police and Crime Commissioner, for a review into the rape gang scandal in the town. Burnham commissioned it. It took 31 months and was published on 20 June 2022. Burnham’s own review held the evidence of a cover-up and explained it away. It found that the police told the BBC there were just two pieces of intelligence on the shisha bars, when their own officers had filed several. That was a lie told to a journalist to kill a story about children being raped, and the review called it proportionate. It found the council had put the girls most at risk under one roof, where the men could find them. When a care worker reported men circling the home waiting for those girls, the review sided with the council and dismissed the worker without ever interviewing them. Greater Manchester Police, the force Burnham was responsible for, never gave his reviewers full access to its underlying records, and Oldham Council redacted key information. The cases of the ten children it examined were locked away in confidential appendices. Then Burnham's so called expert team declared there was no evidence of a senior-level cover-up. LABOUR USED BURNHAM'S REVIEW TO SHUT DOWN THE SCANDAL IN 32 DAYS Labour politicians seized on its conclusions the day it was published. Jim McMahon, 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 publication, McMahon attacked me by name in Parliament. On 13 July, the opposition brought a motion to Oldham Council demanding an independent public inquiry, with its terms set independently of Greater Manchester and Oldham Council. Its title called for an inquiry "including the actions and knowledge of Council Members and Officers." The motion said the council could not move forward until the unanswered questions were addressed. Oldham's Labour council leader Amanda Chadderton moved an amendment that cut all of it. The demand for an independent inquiry went, and so did any scrutiny of council members and officers. In their place she wrote "We must move forward." The council adopted her amended motion by 32 votes to 20. The review had been public for 23 days, and Oldham Labour had already used it to strike out any investigation of themselves. The council offered Operation Sherwood, survivor support and oversight groups instead. On 22 July, Burnham wrote an open letter to the people of Oldham. He told them he was very grateful to his reviewers for the thorough way in which they had undertaken their work. His reviewers had written in their own report that they could not examine the police source records, and that this limited their conclusions and the assurance they could give him. Burnham's letter said nothing about it. He made no admission that they had no power to compel witnesses, and he gave no explanation of why the children's cases were locked in confidential appendices. He presented Operation Sherwood as the way forward. BURNHAM STOOD BY IT UNTIL HE HAD NO CHOICE For another two and a half years, Burnham maintained his position. Only in January 2025, under extraordinary public pressure, did he acknowledge the need for an inquiry with powers to compel evidence. Even then, he proposed a limited national inquiry drawing on the same assurance reviews. The national statutory inquiry was finally conceded in June 2025, almost three years after his Oldham report. Had Burnham and the Labour politicians who used that report to close down the scandal succeeded, the National Inquiry would not exist. My position is clear. Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is neck deep in the cover up of the Pakistani Rape Gangs. THE PRIME MINISTER MUST BE DRAGGED BEFORE THE NATIONAL INQUIRY Andy Burnham leads the government responsible for the National Inquiry. His review was used to hold it off for almost three years. The National Inquiry must call him to give evidence under oath. He must explain why he called a review thorough when his own police force had kept its records from it, why he said nothing while Oldham Labour used it to vote down an inquiry into its own members and officers, and why he defended it for two and a half years while his Labour colleagues used it to attack the people exposing what was done to these children. The girls raped in Oldham's shisha bars and children's homes were told in 2022 that nobody had covered anything up. The man who told them went on to become Prime Minister. He must answer to them under oath. So must every other Labour Party politician involved in Oldham. Raja Miah MBE _________ 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. This is becoming impossible to sustain. Raja Miah MBE

CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 12 WERE BEING GANG RAPED AND SOLD BY PAKISTANI MEN IN OLDHAM. GIRLS OF 13 AND 14, KNOWN TO THE POLICE, WERE BEING DRAGGED OFF THE STREET INTO THE TOWN'S SHISHA BARS WHERE ROOMS WERE RENTED OUT BY THE HOUR. THE POLICE AND THE COUNCIL KNEW WHAT THOSE PREMISES WERE. Instead of closing down a network of child rape dens and rescuing these children, the 2011 police strategy for tackling Oldham's Pakistani rape gangs listed managing the force's reputation and the far right among its priorities. The specialist team set up to protect these girls was kept out of the operations against the shisha bars. Police intelligence placing exploited children inside those premises was not passed to the officers responsible for them. In 2014 the leader of Oldham Council wrote on his blog that the abuse of children in the town was predominantly Pakistani men targeting white girls. He knew, and he was prepared to say it on his blog read by a handful of people. He never stood up in Oldham's council chamber and confronted what was being done to those children. Anyone surprised why the rapes carried on regardless? RIVENDELL HOUSE WAS A CHILD BROTHEL BUILT BY OLDHAM COUNCIL In 2007 Oldham Council took the girls most at risk from these men and put them together under one roof, in a six-bed home called Rivendell House. The council's own staff admitted its location was not ideal. Burnham's reviewers accepted that housing girls already being exploited in the same building could draw the abusers to it. A former care worker reported that in 2010 Pakistani men drove round and round the home waiting for the girls to come out, and that staff were not allowed to stop them leaving. The worker passed this to the police and the safeguarding board. Nothing was done. The state gathered sexually exploited children in one building. The men knew where to find them. What Oldham Council built was a child brothel, staffed and paid for by the taxpayer. When the care worker went public in 2014, the council hired a consultant to investigate the allegations. Burnham's reviewers relied on the consultant's report and the word of the staff who had been accused of complicity. It dismissed the whistleblower. THEY LIED TO THE BBC ABOUT THE SHISHA BARS In 2013 a chief inspector warned that the risks in the shisha bars were massive. When his email reached the BBC, the reaction at the top of the council and the police was alarm at how much the journalist knew. They told the BBC there were just two pieces of intelligence. This was a lie. Their own officers had filed several intelligence reports in 2011 and 2012 tying exploited girls to those premises. The police held intelligence naming the children and the places they were being taken. They kept it from the specialist officers whose job was to protect them. Senior police officers, senior council officers and the politicians agreed among themselves that the danger to these children was being exaggerated and would be used by the far right. Some admitted the council was also worried about scaring off investment in the town. Children were being raped in those buildings while the people responsible for them discussed the town's reputation. The journalist, whose father was a senior figure in the Labour Party, then participated in the cover up. ANDY BURNHAM'S REVIEW WAS BUILT TO CLEAR OLDHAM COUNCIL AND THE POLICE In 2019, as a direct result of the work of former councillor Warren Bates working alongside Raja Miah and the first of the rabble, the council leader asked Andy Burnham for a review. We published what we had. The shisha bars, the children's homes and the taxis were our allegations, and Burnham's review was built around them. Its authors admit they began by reading our evidence. When they asked to interview me, I agreed on one condition. That my testimony be given in Oldham's council chamber and streamed live to the public. They refused, because they would only hear it in private where they would take selective notes. Five years later, they published a report that filed everything we had exposed under allegations made on social media, and told Oldham there was no cover-up. Burnham put his name to it and told the people of Oldham there had been no cover-up. At the time we called Burnham's Assurance Review a cover up. In 2025, under immense pressure, even Andy Burnham was forced to admit to his review's failings. THE COVER-UP MUST BE INVESTIGATED UNDER OATH The national inquiry must examine Oldham with its full statutory powers, and it must not be confined to the boundaries Burnham's review accepted. It must cover the schools, the youth clubs, the children's homes and every year the gangs were operating. Greater Manchester Police must hand over every record it kept from Burnham's reviewers. Oldham Council must release every document it redacted. Andy Burnham, the former council leaders and the senior officers who handled the shisha bar intelligence must be called to give evidence under oath. The girls of Rivendell House, the girls in the shisha bars and the girls dragged in to cars outside school gates were failed by every institution that should have protected them. Then they were told by a review that could not see the evidence that nobody covered anything up. They are owed the truth, and only a statutory inquiry has the power to get it. THE PRIME MINISTER ANDY BURNHAM MUST BE SUMMONED BEFORE THE NATIONAL INQUIRY. ANYTHING LESS THAN THIS JUST CONTINUES THE COVER UP. _________ 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. This is becoming impossible to sustain. 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. Raja Miah MBE

BIRMINGHAM WAS FIRST WARNED IN 1985. GIRLS IN ITS CARE WERE STILL REPORTING RAPE IN 1991. COUNCILLORS VOTED AGAINST AN INQUIRY IN 1995. AND IN 2015, POLICE HAD IDENTIFIED MORE THAN 700 CHILDREN AT RISK AND 372 SUSPECTS. Now consider this. Jess Phillips was Birmingham City Council's appointed Victims' Champion when Jill Jesson publicly alleged that evidence had been removed from her report and copies ordered destroyed. She was still in post when Birmingham went to the High Court over men suspected of sexually exploiting a girl in its care. And when the police produced their confidential assessment identifying hundreds of potential victims and suspects. She later became the government's safeguarding minister. She rejected Oldham's request for a government-led inquiry. She fought against a national inquiry. Only after leaving ministerial office, she signed a letter calling for Birmingham to be investigated. - What did Jess Phillips know? - What did she do? - And what representations did she make while she held those positions of responsibility? I've brought together TEN KEY DATES spanning forty-one years of Birmingham's rape gang scandal. The documents, the decisions, the allegations of destroyed evidence, the police intelligence and the questions Baroness Longfield's statutory inquiry must answer. The girls deserved protection. They deserve the truth. THE FULL INVESTIGATION WILL BE RELEASED ON RED WALL AND THE RABBLE 🔴 Sign Up Here 👉 redwallandtherabble.co.uk For years, we have challenged the official accounts and pursued the evidence others failed to confront. Now Birmingham is on the national inquiry's list. We must ensure the inquiry goes all the way. Please read, share and help fund the investigations. Every paid subscription helps keep this work available to everyone. Raja Miah MBE