LAST April, horrified by the Government’s perfunctory approach to inquiring into the Muslim grooming gang and rape scandal, Donna Edmunds determined to set up a National Archive for the survivors. This, she said, would be in addition to, but work in conjunction with, Rupert Lowe’s independent Inquiry.
The aim of the Archive, she said, would be to record the testimony of every single survivor who can be found, to create a historical record of the atrocity which has taken place in our country over the last four decades. Records which will be freely available to the public and to researchers who want to delve in more detail into those all important questions: What happened? How did it happen? Why was it allowed to happen? Her hope is that this period will be studied in the same way as other atrocities such as the Holocaust, and the research used for educational purposes. She wrote: ‘We must never again allow suicidal compassion for the outsider to get the better of us’.
Since that announcement Donna was elected in May for Reform UK Hodnet Ward in Shropshire only to be suspended or ‘unceremoniously dumped’, as she describes it, less than 48 hours later. Regardless Councillor Edmunds she remains and she that reports her work on the archive is continuing apace. It has also made her new friends and allies. One of them is Momus Najmi, a historian and author who has his own podcast, The World Of Momus. If you have not come across him before he is a fascinating and courageously independent-minded man. He is a writer and commentator, born in Kuwait, in the spring of 1986 living there till he was 15. He then moved to Pakistan with his family where he lived for just under a decade. He told me in my email correspondence with him that his time in Karachi ‘proved to be a bit turbulent to say the least’ and that though he found it hard to adjust in that society, it moulded him into the person he is today. After a lengthy time reflecting on many aspects, he decided to leave Islam, the religion of his family. That decision, if made public in an Islamic country, he said, would have dire consequences. So he set off on the next adventure of his life.
‘A nomad all my life, not by design but by circumstances’, he made his choice to live where he could ‘discover a sense of belonging above all else’. That is England. This is where he met his wife, from Poland, and where they have been together ever since, living in Essex. ‘Over the years, my fondness for these British Isles and her people has only grown stronger.’
Here you can see him in discussion with Donna about Reform UK, her National Archive for Survivors of Grooming Gangs, her own time living in Israel and the common thread between them all.
Donna will be one of three guest editors taking over from me in coming weeks, when she will give further updates on her archive.
