



Some stop to applaud Sarah Champion in the street for having the courage to speak out. Others who thought they knew their MP are left wondering.

Taiba Yasseen, a Labour councillor for Rotherham town centre, has been a staunch ally of Champion since she pitched her hat into the parliamentary ring. But Yasseen never anticipated Champion writing a piece for the Sun that has left some in the South Yorkshire town, with its significant British Pakistani population, feeling betrayed. “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls,” said the story’s introduction.

Yasseen, exasperated with the former shadow equalities minister, said: “People are asking where this has come from. Has she always had these views? It was unwise, in the most extreme sense, to betray an entire ethnic group and I still have no idea why she said it.

“Sarah’s been an amazing advocate for Rotherham, she’s worked very hard for the town, but this is inappropriate on every level.”

Others have found it entirely appropriate. Standing outside a secondhand electrical store in College Street, John Keenogh, a 60-year-old factory worker, said: “She’s spot on. People are too scared about saying the truth these days; everybody knows that.” Keenogh, who was born in the town, said: “It’s ridiculous that she was sacked for saying the truth, what’s happened to freedom of speech?”

Champion’s views appeared in the Sun on 11 August after 17 men and one woman were convicted of forcing vulnerable women and girls in Newcastle-upon-Tyne to have sex. Her words immediately polarised opinion, with some lauding her for speaking out on a politically awkward issue while others denounced her as racist.

Similarly, the piece caused convulsions within her party, a handful of Labour MPs venting their anger over claims that she had been forced to quit. Jeremy Corbyn had announced that she resigned from the shadow cabinet over what she had described as an “extremely poor choice of words”.

Few could have predicted that Champion would write what she did in the Sun. She was a prominent figure on a counter-demonstration against an English Defence League march in the town earlier this year, the latest far-right protest designed to whip up hostility towards Asian men over revelations about child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. Those who marched with her, many from the town’s British Pakistani population, considered their MP an informed ally, a Westminster politician who was fighting their corner against the “racialising” of the debate on child sex grooming.

Among those who marched beside Champion that day was Zaiban Alam, a barrister born 43 years ago in Eastwood, one of Rotherham’s main Asian neighbourhoods. Alam believes that Champion has a keen grasp of the debate’s nuances, making the MP’s intervention all the more unfathomable.

“Sarah knows the issue and she knows the dangers of racialising the issue; such comments are astonishingly unhelpful,” said Alam. Rotherham has been a repeat target of the far right after a 2014 report by Professor Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, concluded that failures of political and police leadership had contributed to the sexual exploitation of 1,400 children by Asian men in the town.

Sarah Champion admitted using a poor choice of words in the Sun. Photograph: crichardson/The Sun

Alam, who represented a group of Asian men cleared of violent disorder after attending an anti-racism protest in Rotherham, said: “We ought to expect our politicians to be held up to higher standards in the way they convey things. We’d also like our MPs not to convey things that aren’t right.”

Many in the town point out that Champion’s statements are contradicted by official reports into child exploitation, further undermining her credibility among some constituents. Others claim that such comments from the Labour MP, who resigned from the shadow cabinet last week, amounted to further evidence that Islamophobia was becoming respectable.

Standing outside the town’s Game store a British Pakistani student, Tayab Sadiq, 20, said: “It’s an absurd comment to make. She’s basically calling me a rapist, that I was born a rapist. I could get beaten up over this, or bullied.”

Alam also points out that Champion knows well the ramifications of racism and was MP of the town when 81-year-old Mushin Ahmed was murdered in a racist attack in August 2015.

Zlakha Ahmed, chief executive of Apna Haq, a Rotherham group tackling violence against women and girls, said the MP had offended her three sons. “My sons are British university educated and they have read that piece and said that Sarah is saying that anybody who is of Pakistani male heritage is a rapist. How does the Pakistani community now feel that they can approach Sarah? Her article and the way it was written is something that will take hold and has taken hold.”

Yet some in Rotherham firmly back their MP’s intervention on the issue. Shop worker Maureen Holgate, 53, said: “She’s right to call them out on this. If I see her I’ll stop her and give her a round of applause. The only way you’re going to stop them is outing them.”

Nearby, in Church Street, call centre worker Chris Holden, 27, said that Champion should have stayed in the shadow cabinet: “She could have worded the piece better but I don’t think she should have been sacked.”

But Alam argues that already Champion’s wording has reinforced a prejudiced view of British Pakistani men. “How on earth are we going to expect impartial juries here? We are in a situation now where there is a complete abrogation from the executive, the legislative, in relation to the issue of Islamophobia and we need a strategic response from government. Thinking about the things Sarah has said, it’s almost like lighting the touch paper.”