by Kevin Meagher

By suspending four party members in Rotherham this morning, Labour is showing its intent to get tough with its councillors who, it suspects, have failed to protect vulnerable children in the public roles they held.

The four, Jahangir Akhtar (the council’s former deputy leader) and councillors Roger Stone (the council’s former leader), Gwendoline Russell (Rotherham’s former cabinet member for social services) and Shaukat Ali will now face investigation by the party.

A Labour party spokesman said: “As Ed Miliband made clear last week large numbers of young people in Rotherham were systematically abused and then let down by those who should have protected them. It cannot be allowed to stand.”

So far, so good. But Labour has to be ready to do the same in other local authorities, if the same failings are revealed elsewhere. Rotherham, depressingly, does not seem to be an isolated case.

The Mail on Sunday quoted a Greater Manchester Police source the other day who claimed they were close to a “day of reckoning” with the force poised to make a spate of arrests of gang members involved in child sexual exploitation:

“In Greater Manchester, 180 suspects have emerged from an operation codenamed Doublet, which has ranged across Rochdale, Oldham, Bolton and Bury.

“The operation is understood to cover offences that have taken place in the past six years.

Virtually all of the suspects are expected to face justice in up to a dozen separate trials. They are likely to be held at Manchester Crown Court next year.

“One detective said: ‘A lot of these guys have thought for years that they are above the law. They’re in for a very rude awakening.’”

Even allowing for a degree of hyperbole, the scale of this investigation is staggering. Meanwhile, the four towns named in the Mail piece are all Labour-controlled, yet none of the councils has publicly disowned the story.

The party needs to brace itself to hold any of its representatives – councillors and MPs alike – to account if they have allowed child sexual exploitation to take place, especially if they have done nothing about it, having been told it was going on. Today’s suspensions may just be the start of things.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut