I don’t always or slavishly agree with the feminist commentator Julie Bindel. She has her view of the world and I have mine and often our views do not coincide. However, there’s been a few things on which I do agree with Ms Bindel. For example: I’ve agreed with her on the matter of the Islamic Grooming Gang scandals when she, in 2010 (see my piece from 2012), put her head over the parapet and called out these criminals and outlined the modus operandi of these gangs.

I also find myself in agreement with her when it comes to the matter of the cult of trans and how allowing transwomen, aka men, into women’s spaces, is diminishing security and safety for women and girls. Whilst I concur that there are some trans identified males (TIM) who are not only civil but also safe for women, there are also an awful lot of TIM’s that are not. There seem to be far too many TIM’s who are not primarily interested in quietly passing as their chosen gender but instead are driven by a desire to be in places where they should not be or get a sexual kick out of making women feel uncomfortable. Any group contains those who either good or bad and no group is either completely filled with angels nor with wrong ‘uns.

Ms Bindel has pointed out that there is a danger in treating everyone who identifies as ‘trans’ as on the side of the angels. She has also pointed out, in an article for The Critic Magazine, that not only are there massive dangers in treating a whole group of people, in this case those who identify as trans, as always being victimised and always being good, but that there is a precedent showing how this sort of attitude can turn out very badly indeed.

That precedent is the Islington Child Abuse Scandal. Long ago, back in the 1980’s there was a period when a lot of Labour Party run councils went incredibly radical, so radical in fact that some in the Press dubbed these councils ‘loony left’. The Greater London Council (GLC) was notorious for its left wingery. These councils became places where groups like the ‘women’s unit’ in the GLC for example basically had an incredible amount of unelected political power over the council and how the council made appointments. This loony left attitude wasn’t just a factor in Labour regional councils like the GLC, this sort of radicalism was to be found in many other Labour councils at the time.

One of those councils was the London Borough of Islington which was led by Margaret Hodge, now the Labour MP for Barking in East London. Under her leadership Islington council decided to implement a positive discrimination policy for council employment in order to increase the number of ethnic minorities and gay men employed by the council and in particular in their Children’s Services Department. The local Labour Party at that time took the view that all gay men were oppressed and went all out to recruit gay men to work for the council. As Ms Bindel says, for Islington council, gay men were always oppressed and were therefore the ‘perfect victim’ of society and societal attitudes.

The council did not consider that in every group, including gay men, there would be wrong’uns, a minority of people who would either perform badly in the workplace or who might be abusers exploiting an opportunity to access children. Islington’s policy ended up being a disaster for the children who were cared for by Islington Council as the council’s equal opportunities policy turned the council and its children’s homes into a magnet for paedophiles.

Ms Bindel said:

In 1985, Margaret Hodge, Islington’s then leader, introduced a “positive action” drive to recruit gay and minority ethnic people into Council jobs, including sensitive roles working with children. So far so good. But an independent inquiry into the Council revealed how this well-intentioned policy heralded an end to effective recruitment checks and became a strong disincentive to challenging bad practice.

Recruitment in Islington was overseen by an Equal Opportunities Unit which set about removing the safeguards that might have stopped a prolific child abuser infiltrating a children’s home. Gone was a requirement to provide references from an employer — references from friends were accepted. Appointing officers were not allowed to challenge the status or suitability of these “friend” referees. Interview panels were banned from asking about disciplinary action or absence records. 

Under Margaret Hodge and the Labour Party, Islington council eviscerated what little defences that there were at the time against child abusers gaining access to children who had the misfortune to be under the care of Islington council. The twisted equal opportunities policies of Islington meant that it was all but impossible for any worker from a ‘marginalised group’ to be sacked or disciplined and those who raised questions about the behaviour of abusers from a group favoured by the council ended up being vilified as ‘homophobes’.

Ms Bindel added:

What followed was years of violence and abuse of exceptionally vulnerable children in Islington-run homes. The two-part Evening Standard exposé revealed pimps and predatory child abusers were both visiting, and staying in, children’s rooms. Accounts from former residents described rapes and beatings. 

Children were given drugs, introduced to porn, impregnated and abused into prostitution. Their stories were supported by staff who had tried to blow the whistle. The Standard accused Islington of a “slavish adherence to a confused ideology” which allowed abusers to shelter behind gay rights and meant that Islington could dismiss its critics as “bigots”.

Concerns about pimps of African Caribbean heritage were dismissed as racist. In contrast, Neville Mighty — a Jamaican-born whistle-blower who was one of the first to try to stop the abuse — was himself accused of inappropriate behaviour, and sacked.

When stories about what was going on in Islington started to emerge Margaret Hodge and the council dismissed the concerns that started to be voiced in the Press as ‘gutter journalism’ and did nothing to stop the child abuse disaster that was occurring in Islington’s children’s homes. Those decent workers in Islington’s children’s services who tried to highlight to their bosses the problem with nonces working for the council were basically told that by bringing this issue to light that they were ‘anti equal opportunities’.

Margaret Hodge and Islington council could not bring themselves to admit their mistakes and the reason for this is that they saw gay men as perfect and complete victims who could do no wrong. \Margaret Hodge was so wedded to her and her council’s equal opportunities policy that Ms Bindel said that during an interview on the LBC radio station Ms Hodge claimed that the children making the claims of abuse had been ‘bribed’ by journalists to make the claims in order to discredit the council.

Eventually after a series of internal and external enquiries and press investigations into the situation in Islington, the full extent of the abuse was exposed as was the part that the council’s equal opportunities policy had played in facilitating this abuse. The council, under different leaders but still Labour run, eventually admitted the part the council had played in the disaster of the eighties and early nineties and because of this and other similar scandals, the vetting system for those wanting to work with children or vulnerable people was improved. The terrible policies that allowed paedophiles to exploit equal opportunities and diversity schemes in places like Islington could not happen again. Or could it?

Ms Bindel is very concerned that in our current time the fashion for the cult of trans in national and local government and in business and the third sector could be exploited by those with ill intent just as the pro-Gay policies of Islington were exploited in the past. I can quite easily see her point on this issue.

Just as Islington in the past was paralysed by its equal opportunities policy that meant that paedophiles could not be rooted out of the council, today we have a situation where those who call themselves ‘trans’ are seen as perfect victims who can do no wrong. This is in spite of solid evidence said Ms Bindel that there has been a ‘steady stream’ of trans identified individuals, including a Tory councillor who campaigned for gender neutral toilets, who have been convicted of sexual and violent offences.

It’s worrying to me to see how so many allowances have been made for trans individuals and the cult of trans, allowances that include giving too much benefit of the doubt to those who claim to be trans, the growth and promotion by the Left of ‘drag queen story time’ events and the injection of one or more aspects of gender identity ideology into Britain’s schools. Gender identity ideology is also now very much deeply embedded in Britain’s Civil Service which gives those who promote such an ideology a significant degree of political and administrative power.

Ms Bindel continued:

At the same time, investigations into trans activists have revealed them as having deeply unsavoury habits or associations, or to have made violent threats against critics of self-ID. The Green Party candidate, Aimee Challenor, used his father as an election agent, despite knowing he was charged with raping a ten-year-old, then married a man who had posted child abuse fantasies on Twitter; Scottish Greens activist, Beth Douglas is under investigation for threatening tweets. The NUS transgender official, Jess Bradley was suspended after allegedly posting blog pictures in which he was exposing his own genitals in public. The result of the investigation was never announced.

Just as in the case of Islington in the 80’s and early 90’s, we now have governing entities at both the local, regional and national level who have swallowed the idea that those who claim to be trans are always good and can only be victims not victimisers. Going by what happened in Islington I have to say that such a view and such a policy towards trans identified men is not going to end well for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Whilst there are indeed decent individuals who classify themselves as ‘trans’ we’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded to the fact that there are a lot of individuals in this group who are not decent. By ignoring the fact that in every group there will be wrong’uns and that abusers will always look for an opportunity for victims to assault it’s likely that there is going to be another abuse scandal similar to that which will forever tarnish the reputation of Islington council. However this time the scandal of abuse will not be confined to a few loony left councils, it will be a whole nation scandal as almost the entirety of those in positions of authority have bought into the false ideas that trans women are women and that trans people are the perfect and unassailable victims of society.