One of the most disturbing aspects of the sex gang trial verdict last week was the amount of denial by both police and politicians. The facts of the case were truly brutal and disturbing and anybody who followed the trial could not fail to be simultaneously angered and sickened.

The undisputed facts were that a gang of nine Pakistani Muslims systematically raped and abused forty seven young white girls in Rochdale over a period of several years. The ringleader was jailed for 19 years with others receiving varying sentences.  Investigations continue and it is feared that the number of perpetrators and victims could be even greater. This predatory sexual grooming of vulnerable underprivileged white girls by gangs of Pakistanis is not just limited to Rochdale either.

The problem then is what to make of those facts and what to do about them. The first step is surely to accept the facts and to accept that the crimes are indeed racial in spite of what the mouthpieces of political correctness may say to the contrary. All of the men convicted, bar one (and he was evidently an Afghan asylum seeker) were Pakistani and all of the victims were white.  That is fact.

Of course, we are strangled by political correctness in this country and the feeling that we must somehow treat non-white criminals differently from white criminals. Much of this arose from the MacPherson report into the police following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in the 1990s and to an extent it is understandable. The Metropolitan Police undoubtedly made some grave errors in the Lawrence case and they were rightly castigated for it.

Whilst the police should always be careful to be completely open and not show favour or prejudice to any person or group they should not go so far as to treat any person or group with kid gloves. A criminal is a criminal irrespective of the colour of his skin, his religion or his political leanings. To accept anything else goes against everything that our legal system has ever stood for.

Many people, white and non-white, Christian and Muslim were outraged by the comment of the Labour MP Keith Vaz that the problem “is not a race issue” and one leading Muslim, Mohammed Shafik, chief of the Ramadhan Foundation accused Vaz of “playing an insidious game”. One of the problems with exponents of political correctness is that they are so blinkered by their warped principles that they cannot see beyond them, or maybe they just see what they want to see. By denying the facts they are creating unnecessary racial tension and are inflaming feelings against all Muslims. They are playing into the hands of the far right who need no excuse to attack ethnic minorities such as Muslims, the vast majority of whom are no doubt law abiding citizens equally outraged by the Rochdale case.

A final thought, what would Vaz and his politically correct supporters have to say if the situation was turned on its head and white gangs of sexual predators were raping and abusing  innocent young Pakistani girls. Would it be racial then, I wonder? I think we know the answer.