Charlie Peters is fast becoming one of Britain’s better investigative journalists. He has been instrumental in exposing the recent various Labour Party shenanigans over candidate selection for the Rother Valley seat. By doing so he helped to create the groundswell of righteous anger in public opinion that saw a former Labour Councillor in Rotherham dropped as candidate when it was revealed that he had refused to accept the truth of the first external report into the Rotherham Islamic Rape Gang scandal.

Mr Peters strikes me as one of those journalists who are similar to the old school journalists who dug and dug into stories, who checked and rechecked information in order to expose wrongdoing. Some of the stuff he’s done recently would not be out of place next to some of the great scoops of the past such as those of the Insight team at the Sunday Times who investigated the Thalidomide scandal in the 1970’s, his work really is that good.

The latest story from Mr Peters concerns Rotherham again and has been published by GB News. Mr Peters has discovered that Mahroof Hussain one of the disgraced Labour councillors from Rotherham, who had been in post during the period when Islamic Rape Gangs were involved in the mass rape of children and young women and who had been instrumental in ‘pushing back’ at discussions surrounding the ethnicity of the rape gangs, was hired as a diversity panjandrum for the NHS. Now I know that it’ s pretty easy for those with the right gift of the gab to become a diversity grifter in Britain’s public services but I’m very surprised that the NHS didn’t look at his background, noted the criticism that had been made of him in the Casey Report and told him to ‘go forth and multiply’. Even a cursory glance at Mr Hussain’s record at Rotherham as outlined in the Casey Report should have given any competent human resources manager pause for thought.

Mr Peters said in his GB News piece:

A former Labour Party politician who resigned his cabinet position at Rotherham Council in 2015 amid reports that he ‘pushed back’ discussions on the ethnicity of grooming gangs now works as a senior diversity and inclusion manager in a major NHS body, GB News can reveal.

Mahroof Hussain was embroiled in the Rotherham grooming gangs scandal in 2015 when Dame Louise Casey’s review into the council named him and went on to conclude that the authority was in ‘denial’ and warped by a culture of bullying, sexism and cover-ups.

The article went on to say that Mr Hussain denied that there was any cover up of Islamic Rape Gangs and rejected the Casey Report at a similar time as he resigned as council cabinet member.

Mr Peters added:

Although Hussain resigned, he rejected that conclusion of the Casey report, and at the time issued a joint statement alongside then-Council Leader Paul Lakin saying “In our view, none of those appointed to the new cabinet at the full council meeting on September 10, 2014 was in denial.”

Casey’s report named Hussain and then Deputy Leader Jahangir Akhtar as it criticised senior Pakistani members of the council for wielding “disproportionate influence”.

The Casey Report was so damning of the council that it should not have been rejected by the council or its members. Hussain had been a councillor for several years before being appointed to the Cabinet and I find it difficult to believe that he and other councillors had heard nothing, not even any rumours about what was going on with regards to the issue of Islamic Rape Gangs. Councillors are elected to represent ALL of their constituents not just one section of their constituency demographic and the claim in this article that senior members of the council who were of Pakistani Muslim background had ‘disproportionate influence’ on the council’s activities is a matter of extreme concern.

Mr Peters continued to quote the Casey Report by saying that Hussain and another Muslim councillor rebuffed a police officer who wanted to put in place an initiative to target abusers who drove minicabs. This action by councillors looks particularly bad when set against latterly revealed information that Pakistani Muslim cab drivers were heavily implicated in the abuse of children. Mr Peters also quoted from Times journalist Andrew Norfolk who alleged that Hussain and had tried to steer reporters and other councillors away from the Islamic Rape Gang story by making false allegations of racism against Labour councillors who may have tried to speak up.

Hussain is the sort of councillor who gives the distinct impression of being a thoroughly bad egg and not the sort of person who should be employed in any taxpayer funded position. In addition to his involvement with the Rotherham Islamic Rape Gang Scandal GB News has also uncovered video footage of him promoting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories on an Urdu speaking news channel after his resignation from Rotherham’s council cabinet following the Casey Report fall out.

Since leaving his council cabinet position Hussain has been pressing down hard on the diversity grifting accelerator. He’s been promoting himself as an ‘Islamophobia’ advisor and consultant and has been used in this position by both two high profile groups pushing the ‘Islamophobia’ narrative namely Faith Matters and Tell Mama, two groups that this blogger has written about extensively (please use the search function here to find out more about these groups). Mr Peters said that in 2016 Hussain was engaged by Tell Mama to give a talk at a ‘Schools Hate Crime Workshop’ which was organised by Birmingham Council.

Hussain said Mr Peters has also not been as arms length as he should have been regarding Islamic extremists. Mr Peters said that despite being given an MBE by her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 and working with the Home Office on countering extremism, Hussain had ‘cultivated contacts’ with extremists.

Mr Peters said:

But Hussain has cultivated relationships with extremists since he was forced out of local government politics in 2015, with the CEO of Iman FM Mohammed Shabbir attending his daughter’s wedding in Sheffield in 2016.

Iman FM was suspended and then banned by Ofcom in 2017 after it broadcast a series of speeches by Al-Qaeda preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki advocating violence against non-Muslims.

I’ve written about Iman FM before on here a few years back and the reason that they were banned from broadcasting by Ofcom wasn’t merely a matter of broadcasting a few speeches by an Al-Qaeda extremist, but broadcasting 25 hours of them. More details on this story via this link. Iman FM is just one of several Islamic community radio stations that have been sanctioned by Ofcom for misuse of the radio spectrum either for promoting religious extremism or religiously inspired nutjob medical advice to diabetics. One such station is Dawn FM which was caught by Ofcom promoting the Afghan Taliban.

For his part in trying to divert the attention of journalists, police and fellow councillors away from Rotherham’s appalling Islamic Rape Gang problems as well as his close association with the sort of extremists that get radio stations shut down Hussain should have become persona non grata when it came to public sector employment. Unfortunately that has not been the case and this disgraced and disgraceful Labour councillor has been free to fill his pockets with taxpayer cash courtesy of the National Health Service and allowed to whine about, often non-existent, ‘Islamophobia’ via taxpayer funded identity politics grievance mongers.

Mahroof Hussain is a shameful individual whose conduct in office appears to have been equally shameful. I don’t believe that Hussain has in any way repented for his conduct in office nor his rejection of the Casey Report in any sort of manner that could constitute any form of redemption. In a sensible country someone like this would never have been appointed to any of the post Rotherham Scandal public sector posts that he has occupied, but then Britain is no longer a sensible country when it comes to stuff like this.

I’d like to conclude this piece by saying, as a former court reporter and photojournalist, that Mr Peters piece for GB News and his Twitter feed on the subject of Hussain and his activities is a first class bit of journalism and the sort of reporting that we need to see more of. Congratulations Mr Peters on a fabulous piece of work.

Postscript.

For the sake of completeness, accuracy and fairness I have taken a look at the Twitter feed of Tell Mama to see if they’ve commented on the story by Mr Peters and as expected there is nothing, just the normal ‘woe is me’ whining about ‘Islamophobia’ and self promotion even though I looked back to late December to see if TM had made any comment on this group’s relationship with Hussain. I have also looked at the Faith Matters feed and there was no other comment on this issue other than to ask for a correction in Mr Peters piece that said erroneously that Hussain was a director of Faith Matters. Whilst it is correct to make such a correction as to Hussain’s relationship and position with Faith Matters there is no comment from FM as to whether Hussain was a suitable character to act as a consultant for them.