Did you hear about the gangs of white taxi drivers in the market towns of Southern England who over a period of decades have been grooming, drugging and serially raping under-age girls of Pakistani Kashmiri heritage?

No of course not. It hasn’t happened and it couldn’t happen for any number of cultural reasons, the main one being this: the very second that the social services or the police or the victims’ community got even a whiff of what was going on there would be all hell to pay.

There’d be riots in inner cities, urgent questions in the House, demands for immediate action which would swiftly translate into a number of arrests. The Prime Minister would issue a grovelling mea culpa that such hideous crimes could have been allowed to take place in tolerant, multicultural Britain. Ministerial deputations to sundry mosques would reassure “Community leaders” that the issue was being given the highest priority. New concessions would be made to the Muslim community. The Guardian and the BBC would work themselves into ecstasies of righteous pontification. Special reduced sentences would be given to the rioters found guilty of arson, criminal damage or causing injury on account of the mitigating circumstances of the vile crimes that provoked their rage. And so on…

Not so, though, when the victims are white working class, as we’ve seen yet again, in the latest official report, by Louise Casey, into the Rotherham rape gang scandal – in which, over a period of decades, at least 1400 mostly underage, predominantly white girls have been groomed, drugged and raped by local Pakistani Kashmiri Muslims.

What emerges very clearly in the Casey report is the callous indifference of the local police to these poor girls’ plight.

Here’s a particularly grim example:

‘Child 3, aged 13, was found by the police at 3am…in a semi-derelict house alone with a large group of adult males. She was drunk, the result of having been supplied with alcohol, and there was evidence that her clothing had been disrupted. She alone was arrested for a public order offence, detained, prosecuted, appeared before the Youth Court and received a Referral Order for which the YOT arranged ‘reparation’, drug and alcohol counselling, art psychotherapy and victim awareness sessions.’

Yep, you read aright. The only person to be arrested when police found a child, three years below the age of consent, drunk and surrounded by her adult abusers was the child!

And no wonder with police attitudes like this:

In one victim’s account, a police officer told her: “Nothing good will come of it. I’ve seen your files. You lied about that man all those years ago.” He then pulled the police car over and persuaded her to drop the charges against a perpetrator. After ripping up some paperwork, he dropped her off at a restaurant where girls, including victims of CSE, and suspected perpetrators used to gather. Inspectors wondered if some of this inaction was rooted in the attitudes of some South Yorkshire Police officers to the victims. They did not seem to believe the girls or their families or those who reported problems. They did not treat them as victims. “The girls were blamed for a lot of what happened. It’s unbelievable and key to why it wasn’t taken seriously as an issue.” A police officer “There was no awareness. The view was that they were little slags.” A key partner “They didn’t understand the situation, and thought that the girls were happy, or complicit in it. The sense was that if there had been any offence it had been by the girls, for luring the men in.” A key partner

Can you imagine, post the Macpherson report and after well over a decade’s compulsory and regular diversity training, that any police force – even one as apparently venal and useless as South Yorkshire Police – would have been anywhere near so complacent if the perpetrators had been white and the victims from an ethnic minority?

The behaviour of Rotherham borough council in these matters was, of course, no better – which is why Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has stripped it of its powers.

“Where everyone matters” says the council’s logo, commissioned no doubt at vast local taxpayer expense from some trendy branding agency. What would have been more accurate, though, would have been: “Where everyone matters, just so long as it doesn’t involve upsetting the local Muslim community whose feelings and prejudices take precedence over everything.”

Here’s more evidence from the Casey report:

“If we mentioned Asian taxi drivers we were told we were racist and the young people were seen as prostitutes.” A former social worker “…you couldn’t bring up race issues in meetings… or you would be branded a racist.” A key partner “The number one priority was to preserve and enhance the [Pakistani heritage] community – which wasn’t an unworthy goal but it wasn’t right at the time. It was difficult to stand up in a meeting and say that the perpetrators were from the Pakistani Heritage community and were using the taxi system – even though everyone knew it.” A former key partner Frontline staff were clearly anxious about being branded racist. Whether there was an element of self-censorship or otherwise, the impact of this was clear. The Council was not dealing with a serious problem right before its eyes. Certainly this was not limited to frontline officers. There was also a clear perception among senior officers that the ethnic dimension of CSE in Rotherham was taboo. “They wanted to use any other word than Asian males. They were terrified about [the effect on] community cohesion. I got this sense from overhearing conversations between [senior Member] and [senior officer] ….they were terrified of the BNP”. A former senior officer.

We also learn from the report that it was felt within the Council that any issues regarding the city’s Pakistani community (even when, as in this case, it happened to impinge on what was being done to the white community) could only be dealt with by councillors of Pakistani heritage.

The former Deputy Leader, Jahangir Akhtar, was sometimes seen to be able to ‘deliver’ on difficult issues for the council. Inspectors were told that he had been able to stop young ‘Asian’ men coming out on the streets when the EDL wanted to march in the town. “Given the town’s problems with the EDL, someone with this kind of reach and influence into the local population was extremely helpful.”A former senior officer Pakistani heritage Councillors had and have (whether acquired or taken) a disproportionate influence in the council, particularly on issues which appeared to affect the Pakistani heritage community such as the taxi trade. “I think what we’re probably talking about [is] the disproportionate influence one particular community has, how it punches above its weight and the power these politicians have.” A Councillor Some claimed that Jahangir Akhtar’s influence extended to the police: “There was once a situation where a girl from a Pakistani heritage family went missing, they [Asian Councillors] went straight to the Chief Superintendent and that influenced our operations, they held a lot of power.” A police officer

It ought not to need explaining – but clearly does – that all this contradicts one of the most fundamental principles of the British justice system: that everyone is equal before the law.

You see the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) being cited regularly in the report by police and council workers as the bogeymen who justify the need to treat the Pakistani community with kid gloves.

But actually this playing up of the “far right” threat is yet another example of the entrenched cultural and political bias that have allowed Muslim rape gangs in Rotherham and elsewhere to operate, with virtual impunity, for so long.

Sure, the BNP’s and EDL’s core membership may be hardcore racists. But it wasn’t their racist philosophy which was responsible for the rise in their popularity among the white community in places like Rotherham: it was the fact that, for many years, these were the ONLY organised bodies prepared to kick up a fuss about the Muslim rape-gang phenomenon – all those official bodies who should have been responsible for preventing it (the police, the town council, the social workers, the children’s homes) having more or less washed their hands of it.

Problem is, as all those poor young girls with their hideously blighted lives have discovered, if you belong to a victim group that doesn’t fit into the left’s fashionable narrative then you don’t count as a victim at all.

This is why, as both the Casey report and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles noted in evident disgust, Rotherham Council has been so continually reluctant to admit that it has done anything wrong. It’s also why South Yorkshire Police have failed to show any real contrition. It’s why the left-liberal media remains so determined to play the issue down. And it’s why what ought to be a national scandal yet remains so ill-understood that when, a few months ago I raised it on a BBC youth debate programme called Free Speech, my fellow panelists and almost the entire audience shouted me down as a liar.

Our politically correct culture made this problem. Our politically correct culture is too well indoctrinated to be capable of fixing it.