Quilliam Imploding…But Still No Answers

By J. Spooner & J. Stubbs

Chase a rat and it will flee. However, corner a rat and it will instinctively lash out in every way it can to survive. Similarly, after months of fleeing from questions regarding its supposedly evidential Dissecting Grooming Gangs report; Quilliam were backed into a corner by an unlikely duet of the outspoken popstar Lily Allen and the heroic criminology expert Dr Ella Cockbain. Unfortunately for them and the other academics, celebrities, journalists or members of the public wanting specific answers to the report’s conclusions, none were forthcoming.

The responses of Maajid Nawaz, in particular, will have bought Quilliam’s report a stay-of-execution but will have won them few friends. Nawaz’s reaction was a mixture of temper tantrums, smokescreens and a self-styled production of theatrical victim-playing. This bizarre and quite incredible reaction from the Quilliam representatives has done nothing to progress any understanding on a highly emotional and sensitive issue, instead only serving to further entrench their lack of accountability for the report’s questionable results and their subsequent impact on public discourse.

Depressingly, now that the dust has settled there are still no answers. Maajid Nawaz, has employed the Jose Mourinho strategy of distracting the spotlight away from his failing team by acting outrageous and hysterical. His scurrilous smearing of both Allen and Cockbain, two dedicated anti-racists, as racists was especially deplorable. Meanwhile, Muna Adil, the “British Pakistani” who was born and raised in Middle East and one of the reports co-authors, was playing good-cop to Nawaz’s bad-cop. In this new role she demonstrated a similar nous to her talents at producing academic reports on child exploitation i.e. none whatsoever.

Taken in combination, it becomes increasingly unlikely that Quilliam representatives are capable of defending their report from regular criticism, nevermind the expert critique of Dr Cockbain. If so, they should withdraw the report, apologise for its very real effect on public discourse and simply leave this field of study to the experts.

Abuse and Ad Hominem

One of Nawaz’s main weapons of mass deflection towards critics of Quilliam’s research has been a combination of grotesque abuse and ad hominem attacks. Bearing in mind that Nawaz himself considers ad hominem “the last recourse of the scoundrel”, let’s take a look at how he, the public face of a nationally publicised CSE report, has conducted himself:

Mixed in with the foul-mouthed rants were the distateful personal attacks on Allen (who set this whole chain of events off, simply by questioning the research of Quilliam) and CSE expert (herself cited in the Quilliam report) Cockbain. Adopting the role of the “scoundrel” during his meltdown, Nawaz labelled the pair:

• “Vicious”
• “posh”
• “privately educated”
• “slacktivists”
• “socialists”
• “regressive”
• “fascists”

In a desperate attempt to discredit their critics and divert as many onlooking eyes away from the actual substance of the report as possible, Nawaz and Adil then began incredibly accusing Cockbain and Allen of racism:

Despite Lily Allen or Dr Cockbain never once bringing up the authors’ race or aiming any personal attacks at Nawaz or Adil, the Quilliam pair continued to act out the role of victims whilst simultaneously launching into below-the-belt personal attacks which they consistently projected onto Allen and Cockbain:

A Running Stream of Misinformation

One of the most astounding things about this whole affair is that Adil, in all her protests, is still putting out flawed terminology and getting her basic facts incorrect. Here, during her one brief attempt at actual reasoned discussion with Dr Cockbain, Adil asks the question:

Yet, as Cockbain well knows and soon corrects her, there is no “specific crime of group-based CSE”:

When responding to another tweet, Adil again ends up basing her arguments on flawed claims:

The “Casey Report” (actually the Casey Review) makes no mention of crimes that police “looked the other way & did not report”. In fact, the review clearly states that its remit covered the Rotherham Council only and makes special mention that the sections regarding the police are thus only general observations. It’s just this type of loose language and disregard for basic facts that Cockbain and the like were calling out Quilliam’s report for in the first place.

Shifting the Goalposts

The final aspect to this rather gratuitous display from Quilliam has been perhaps the most telling. Instead of engaging the very legitimate critiques of the alleged research, both Adil and Nawaz have been backtracking from the claims made in the report in addition to strawmanning their critics.

Firstly, neither on television or live radio has Maajid ever stated that the reports conclusion is that “more research is needed”. It certainly wasn’t the conclusion mentioned in the newspaper headlines following the report’s release. Yet now he states:

It must also be noted here that, although the report’s conclusion does in fact state that “more research is needed”, it was not calling for more research by means of better data and clearer methods of recording, but instead the report calls for “more research” into why “Asian ethnicity men are more likely to appear in this crime profile”.

Furthermore, and opposed to Nawaz embracing the results of the report over national television or live radio programs, Adil now plays down the infamous 84% figure, claiming her report repeatedly stresses that the data is incomplete:

However, as stated by Cockbain, even this is confusing:

In perhaps a sign of things to come, the intellectual dishonesty continues unabated, now being accompanied by veiled threats and Nawaz’s promise to offer himself up to act as a human shield between his ill-qualified report authors and its highly-qualified critic:

Of course, the report doesn’t merely state that “over-representation’ is undeniable”, nor does anybody take issue with the authors’ right to speak about this. What the critics rightly do have issues with is the lack of transparency and blatant structural flaws that underpin the entire report. Yet, after having months of requests to address these issues in private with Nawaz’s LBC colleague Matthew Stadlen and still refusing, it has become blatantly obvious that Quilliam will desperately do what they can to avoid any serious discussion about their work.

We now have a responsibility to keep the focus of this debate within the realms of the report and not be distracted by the web of deflections being spun by Nawaz and Adil. Please show your support to critics like Dr Cockbain who have shown they will not be browbeaten or intimidated into dropping this and simply moving on. The victims of CSE (or any type of abuse) deserve, in the very least, to have transparent and accountable research done on their behalf. Such transparency includes open and frank discussion of the flaws that any report may have. By muddying these waters through furthering offender/victim stereotypes without justification or explanation, the Quilliam report fails these victims.

The pressure on Quilliam must be intensified. If not, then we run the risk of losing further control of the national ‘grooming gang’ narrative to an organisation who have done nothing to earn it. Dr Cockbain’s response to Quilliam’s report, by way of Twitter thread, will be out very soon. Please follow her and when it comes, share it far and wide.