Lord Blunkett

Sarah Champion is aptly named. Having been forced to resign from a Shadow Cabinet post she filled so very ably and following her brave stance on sex-grooming gangs, she's certainly a true Champion in my book.

I first got to know Sarah when she was the chief executive of Bluebell Wood children's hospice, outside Sheffield. I respected her then as I do now.

I have been aghast to see the completely unacceptable treatment meted out to her. My party, the Labour party, has always sought to stand up for those who are exploited, damaged or treated badly – whatever their position in life.

In other words, to coin a phrase, to 'Champion' equality.

Equality is not only about creating a fair economy. It is just as important to face down misogyny and the male domination of women. It is therefore extremely sad and quite unacceptable that it should be the Labour party seeking to portray genuine debate as somehow equivalent to racism. It is not.

The party's male-dominated leadership, ever mindful of political correctness, is currently unforgiving of dissension. In the past, our great party has always been open to critical thinking. It has welcomed debate from all sides.

Yet now the Labour party has seen one of its outstanding female MPs take a stance against evil that was widely acknowledged as brave and coherent – and then suffer demotion under undoubted pressure to recant her words.

Sarah Champion has a lot in common with a great heroine of mine, Ann Cryer, who was Labour MP for Keighley in West Yorkshire between 1997 and 2010.

She stepped up to serve her town after the death of her MP husband Bob because she wasn't prepared to let his good work end. That took huge courage. But even more heroic was her stance against the systemic abuse of white girls, some as young as 12, in her constituency.

In almost all cases, the perpetrators were men of Pakistani heritage, whose families originally came from the rural regions of that country where medieval attitudes prevailed towards women.

Ann wrote a superb piece for the Mail last week in the wake of the successful conviction – this time in Newcastle – of another predatory gang who'd been exploiting and abusing vulnerable girls. In her customary forthright and unflinching style, Ann explained that it was almost 15 years since she first warned about the plight of young white girls in some Asian communities in Britain.

Too many people were 'reluctant to state the basic facts about who the abusers are, for fear of appearing racist or Islamophobic', she said.

Sarah Champion

The criminals, she said, were 'mainly British-born from Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Iranian, Iraqi, Turkish and Indian communities where there is a deep-rooted misogyny that perpetrates this form of abuse'.

She went on: 'Reluctance persists among some on the Left to accept that these are culturally-rooted crimes. No doubt, I will be called racist for pointing this out.'

Ann started to speak out in 2003 after being approached by seven mothers whose adolescent daughters were in the grip of a paedophile gang.

I was Home Secretary at the time and, when she first came to talk to me about it, I found it hard to comprehend the enormity of the offences. It was too horrible to be imagined.

But she persuaded me that there was a real issue to be tackled, a truth to be faced that was so abominable that people scarcely dared speak of it.

To do this, political correctness had to be laid aside.

I will always be thankful that I was in a position to help Ann's campaign, by introducing changes in the law to facilitate prosecutions and to make grooming a specific offence. Ann Cryer and Sarah Champion have two things in common. First, they were brave to take on an issue that so many have ducked for so long. Second, they were both attacked for doing so.

The question we have to ask ourselves is why their courage attracted so much condemnation. Their campaign was not targeted at any one nationality nor, for that matter, at a specific religious faith.

But it did face up to the bitter truth of the situation.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a well-known journalist and author who is Muslim, has described this abuse as being 'an Islamic phenomenon'.

This is not because the whole of the Islamic faith is involved in a conspiracy to exploit young white women, but because a small but significant number of Muslim men, particularly those of Pakistani heritage, hold young white women from an underprivileged background in contempt.

This therefore confronts a crucial issue – the way faith, culture and misogyny come together in an unholy combination. The principal of the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford, Dr Taj Hargey, himself an imam, has been clear: the issue must be addressed and tackled directly by Britain's Muslim community. For it is an unacceptable blot on the good name of Islam and a slur on the many decent, loving, family-orientated men of a South Asian background.

What Ann Cryer highlighted, all those years ago, was the way in which vulnerable young women in her constituency were groomed and then exploited, in a perverted culture that believed they were second rate – and therefore less worthy of respect than women of the same ethnic background or faith as the men perpetrating the abuse. Sarah Champion was addressing the same facts. Whatever she now feels might have been a 'poor choice' in the language she used, her right to speak out has to be upheld.

Her decision to stand down from the Shadow Cabinet should be regretted by all of us who value open and honest debate.

Let me spell it out. Widespread paedophilia has become a serious problem in many British cities over recent years. At last it is being taken seriously, not only by the police but by wider society – helped in large part by outstanding TV dramas and documentaries such as Three Girls (about an Asian sex abuse ring preying on white teenagers in Rochdale).

These crimes are not predominantly rooted in the Islamic faith. They are specific to a cultural attitude towards women.

We have to oppose that attitude. Modern values must take precedence over misguided, outdated and grossly perverted historical culture.

The conflict between modernity and medievalism is something which needs to be addressed on a global scale – but in Britain we must tackle those incidents in our own communities head on. Ann Cryer first spoke out almost 15 years ago.

Today, the Sarah Champions of our world should be applauded, not silenced, when they seek to protect the most vulnerable people in our society from exploitation. All of us, of every faith and background, must be willing to stand alongside her.

Let's hope that events over the past few days will cause the Labour leadership to think again and return the party to its long-held values of open thinking and genuine debate.

If this doesn't happen, immense damage will be inflicted not just on Labour – but on democracy itself.