UK: Corbyn’s silence over child abuse in Islington is typical of how he picks and chooses his causes (Israel, US, Tory are the baddies)

Richard Scorer, a solicitor who has represented hundreds of child abuse victims, writes @ Labour Uncut (via The Times) 

No doubt, one reason why Corbyn failed to speak out more vocally about child abuse in Islington was because his local Labour colleagues were implicated in the scandal, and because, as an ex-NUPE organiser, he would have found it uncomfortable to wade into allegations of serious misconduct by care staff.  On something as serious as child abuse, that’s hardly the behaviour of a man of principle.

However, I suspect the main reason why he didn’t speak up is ideological – from Corbyn’s point of view, victims of child abuse were the wrong sort of victims. Children weren’t abused in Islington because of Israel, or US imperialism, or Tory cuts. They were abused because of the gross incompetence and probably malice of a hard left council that in the words of the journalist who broke the story “facilitated the abuse by employing known paedophiles and brazenly attempting to cover it up, shredding crucial documents, dismissing media reports about the scandal as ‘gutter journalism’, accusing staff who raised concerns of racism and homophobia, and hounding whistleblowers out of their jobs.”