Why Britain's claims to protect women demand a reckoning with the violence, institutional protection and racial hierarchies embedded in its own history.
There is something historically extraordinary about the ease with which Western societies continue to position themselves as guardians of civilisation, gender equality and moral progress while presenting the violence of others as evidence of cultural inferiority. This contradiction is particularly visible in contemporary British political discourse, where immigration has increasingly been associated with threats to women and children, and where the racialised male outsider is repeatedly constructed as a figure of sexual danger. Such representations do more than express concern about crime. They reproduce a much older ideological division between a supposedly civilised West and populations whose cultures, religions and social practices are presented as inherently threatening.
What troubles me about this discourse is not the insistence that sexual violence must be confronted. It must be confronted wherever it occurs, irrespective of the identity of the perpetrator. Rather, it is the selective historical consciousness through which certain forms of violence are treated as evidence of collective cultural pathology, while others are individualised, explained away or detached from the institutions that enabled them.
The recent allegations against David Walliams, the criminal convictions of Russell Brand, the historical record of Jimmy Savile's abuse and the continuing revelations concerning sexual exploitation within British society expose the limitations of this racialised understanding of danger. Yet these contemporary examples become even more revealing when situated within the longer history of European colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade and the systematic sexual domination of enslaved African women and girls.
European imperial societies did not simply encounter sexual violence as an unfortunate feature of human behaviour. They constructed and sustained political, economic and legal systems in which the bodies of enslaved and colonised people could be appropriated, exploited and subjected to coercion. Sexual domination was embedded within these systems of power, sometimes through direct physical violence and sometimes through the conditions of dependency, ownership and racial subordination that made meaningful consent impossible.
The central historical question is therefore not whether Europeans were inherently more sexually predatory than other populations. Such an argument would reproduce the racial essentialism that requires criticism. The more substantial question concerns how European imperial power institutionalised sexual domination on an enormous scale while subsequently claiming the authority to judge the moral development of the very societies it had colonised.
This contradiction is inseparable from contemporary questions of whose vulnerability matters, whose testimony is believed, whose reputation is protected and whose humanity remains conditional.
Colonialism and the institutionalisation of sexual domination
The history of the transatlantic slave trade cannot be understood solely through the movement of labour, the accumulation of capital or the expansion of European commercial networks. It must also be understood as a history of bodily appropriation in which sexual violence formed part of the organisation and exercise of racial power.
From the coastal trading settlements and holding facilities of West and West Central Africa to the Atlantic crossing and the plantations of the Americas, enslaved African women and girls were exposed to conditions in which their bodily autonomy was systematically denied. European traders, ship personnel, enslavers and colonial authorities occupied positions of power that enabled sexual coercion and exploitation, often with little prospect of meaningful protection or legal redress for those subjected to abuse.
The violence was not confined to isolated acts committed by particularly cruel individuals. It emerged from a system in which human beings were legally and economically transformed into property, and in which racial hierarchies determined whose bodily integrity would be recognised and whose could be violated with relative impunity.
In plantation societies, the reproductive capacities of enslaved women became entangled with the economic interests of enslavers. In the United States, particularly following the prohibition of the international slave trade in 1808, the reproduction of enslaved populations acquired increased economic significance within the domestic slave economy. Enslaved women's children inherited enslaved status through legal principles that made maternal status central to the reproduction of slavery.
The historical significance of this arrangement extends beyond the economic value assigned to childbirth. It concerns the denial of women's authority over their own bodies, sexual relationships and reproductive lives. Sexual coercion could operate through direct assault, threats, punishment or the pervasive power of ownership. The distinction between sexual desire, economic calculation and domination was not always clear, nor did it need to be. Where one person possesses the legal and practical authority to control another person's movements, labour, punishment and survival, the possibility of freely negotiated consent is profoundly compromised.
This is why the sexual exploitation of enslaved women cannot be adequately described through the language of relationships alone. Some relationships across racial and legal hierarchies involved affection, negotiation or forms of social recognition, but these circumstances must be distinguished carefully from coercion. The presence of an enduring relationship, the birth of children or the provision of material benefits does not establish that sexual participation was freely chosen.
Historical scholarship on Atlantic slavery has demonstrated how sexual exploitation operated within broader structures of racial capitalism and colonial governance. Jennifer L. Morgan's work on gender and reproduction in the Atlantic world, alongside the scholarship of Deborah Gray White, Stephanie E. Smallwood and Saidiya Hartman, makes it difficult to separate the economic history of slavery from the gendered violence through which enslaved populations were controlled.
The experiences of African women were not merely secondary consequences of European expansion. Their exploitation was part of the material and ideological organisation of the Atlantic world.
Portuguese expansion, religious authority and the contradictions of Christian civilisation
The Portuguese presence in Africa and the Atlantic world offers a particularly important historical context for examining the relationship between sexual power, religious legitimacy and colonial domination. Portuguese commercial and imperial expansion brought European merchants, settlers, soldiers, administrators and religious authorities into sustained contact with African societies across West Central Africa, the Atlantic islands and later the Americas.
These encounters were neither uniform nor reducible to a single pattern of violence. African political authorities exercised agency, negotiated commercial arrangements, resisted Portuguese intrusion and shaped the terms of regional interaction. Relationships between Portuguese men and African women could also form part of political alliances, commercial partnerships and processes of cultural exchange.
Nevertheless, the existence of negotiated relationships cannot obscure the broader structures of coercion that accompanied slavery and colonial occupation. Enslaved women were especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation by those who exercised authority over their labour, movement and legal status.
Religious institutions introduce another dimension to this history. European imperial expansion was frequently justified through Christian conversion and claims of spiritual civilisation, even as Christian institutions and individuals participated in, accommodated or benefited from systems of enslavement.
The contradiction between religious authority and sexual exploitation is particularly troubling where clergy or other religious figures used positions of spiritual trust to exploit women. Such allegations and documented abuses must be examined within their specific historical settings rather than generalised to every priest or missionary. Yet the wider question remains unavoidable: how could institutions claiming moral authority participate in systems that denied the bodily autonomy and humanity of African people?
The institution of confession, for example, placed religious authorities in relationships of considerable spiritual influence over those seeking absolution or guidance. Where that authority was abused, the resulting exploitation involved not only sexual coercion but also the misuse of religious legitimacy. Historical evidence of clerical sexual misconduct, including abuse associated with confession, demonstrates why religious office cannot itself be treated as proof of moral innocence.
The same principle applies to colonial power more broadly. The language of civilisation did not prevent European participation in sexual violence. In many circumstances, it helped establish hierarchies through which domination could be justified, minimised or concealed.
The history of Portuguese expansion, therefore, should not be presented as a story of European men acting upon passive African populations. African women and communities resisted, negotiated and survived within these unequal encounters. But recognising African agency must not become a means of diminishing the coercive structures through which European imperial power operated.
The Middle Passage and the denial of bodily autonomy
The Middle Passage remains one of the clearest historical demonstrations of the relationship between racial domination and the denial of bodily autonomy. Enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic under conditions of confinement, deprivation, physical punishment and extreme vulnerability. Women and girls faced additional risks of sexual assault and exploitation by those responsible for their captivity and transportation.
The significance of this violence lies partly in the conditions under which it occurred. Captives were deprived of freedom, separated from communities and subjected to the authority of people who controlled their physical survival. Within such circumstances, sexual access could become another expression of the power exercised over enslaved bodies.
The historical record is uneven. Much of what survives was produced by traders, administrators, ship personnel and colonial officials rather than by enslaved women themselves. The resulting archival silences are not evidence that violence did not occur. They reflect the unequal conditions under which experiences were recorded, preserved and made available to subsequent generations.
This is an important methodological problem. Historians must resist the temptation to invent experiences where direct testimony is absent, while also recognising that the archive was produced within the very structures of domination under examination.
The absence of a woman's testimony cannot automatically be interpreted as the absence of coercion, particularly where the social and legal conditions of enslavement systematically denied her the ability to refuse, report or obtain redress.
The Middle Passage was therefore not merely a route through which enslaved labour was transported. It was a space in which the racialised ownership of human beings was enacted through physical confinement, punishment and vulnerability to sexual violation.
Any contemporary account of European moral superiority that neglects this history is necessarily incomplete.
From imperial domination to the contemporary politics of sexual danger
The relevance of colonial sexual violence to contemporary Britain is not that present-day British men can be held personally responsible for the actions of historical enslavers. Such collective moral inheritance would be analytically unsound. The relevance lies in the historical construction of racial categories through which European authority was associated with civilisation while African and other colonised populations were represented as morally deficient.
These hierarchies did not disappear automatically with the abolition of slavery or the formal end of colonial rule. Their assumptions continue to shape political discourse, institutional credibility and public representations of danger.
When far-right demonstrators gather outside accommodation housing asylum seekers and claim to be protecting British women and children, the underlying message is not simply that sexual violence is unacceptable. It is that danger has arrived from outside the national community.
The immigrant man becomes a symbolic threat whose presence supposedly transforms an otherwise safe society into a place of vulnerability. Yet Britain is not a society without men, without sexual violence or without histories of institutional abuse. Its population already includes men who commit serious sexual offences, just as it includes men who reject violence and support women's safety.
The claim that immigration introduces sexual danger into an otherwise protected national space is therefore historically and sociologically untenable.
This does not mean that offences committed by migrants should be minimised. Every allegation of sexual violence deserves appropriate investigation, and every perpetrator should be held accountable according to the law. The objection concerns the transformation of individual offences into evidence against entire racial, religious or national communities.
When a racialised man commits an offence, his identity is frequently made explanatory. When a white British man commits an offence, his conduct is more readily understood through individual pathology, personal circumstances or institutional failure.
The same principle of individual responsibility should apply to both.
David Walliams and the institutional management of vulnerability
The investigation into David Walliams by The Guardian and ITV News raises serious questions about the relationship between celebrity power, sexual exploitation and institutional protection. Following approximately three years of investigative reporting, multiple women described alleged experiences involving unwanted sexual advances, grooming and exploitative conduct. Particularly concerning were accounts involving women who first encountered Walliams at the age of 15.
These allegations are supported in the published investigation by interviews, documentary material and accounts from people with knowledge of relevant events. They deserve serious examination, particularly because of the age and vulnerability of some complainants and the substantial imbalance of power between a celebrated entertainer and young women or girls seeking access to professional and social opportunities.
Walliams denies the allegations, and the High Court proceedings concerning publication did not determine whether they were true. Yet neither the absence of criminal adjudication nor the existence of a denial should be used to diminish the significance of the women's accounts.
What makes this case particularly relevant to an analysis of institutional power is the legal process through which publication was delayed and contested. Walliams sought an injunction preventing the investigation from being published, with his representatives presenting evidence concerning serious psychiatric difficulties and risks associated with publication.
The court examined those risks, and the media organisations obtained independent psychiatric advice. Publication was delayed while legal and safeguarding questions were considered. The High Court ultimately refused the injunction, and Walliams did not pursue an appeal before the deadline.
The judge's decision was not a determination of guilt or innocence. It concerned the competing responsibilities associated with protecting life, safeguarding mental health and preserving freedom of expression.
The question I wish to raise is not whether Walliams should have received psychiatric care or whether his mental-health difficulties deserved recognition. They did. The question is why the recognition of vulnerability appears so unevenly distributed across public institutions.
The women who reported alleged exploitation also possessed psychological vulnerabilities and legitimate interests in being heard. Their experiences should not become secondary to the institutional management of a prominent man's reputation.
A commitment to safeguarding must include the women and girls who report harm, not simply the individual whose public standing is threatened by disclosure.
Jason Arday and the unequal distribution of institutional compassion
The death of Professor Jason Arday in August 2026 raises a different but equally significant question about the institutional recognition of vulnerability.
Arday, a Black British academic whose appointment at Cambridge had attracted considerable attention, became the subject of intense public scrutiny concerning his academic record and professional biography. Following his death, Cambridge announced an independent review of its handling of his circumstances, including the support and protections available to him.
The terms of that review are particularly revealing. They include examination of whether his known disability and personal circumstances were considered when decisions were made concerning institutional investigation, public communication and welfare provision.
These are precisely the questions that should be asked when an individual becomes the subject of sustained public scrutiny.
The comparison with Walliams does not require the circumstances to be legally identical. Walliams was seeking to prevent publication of serious allegations concerning the treatment of women and girls. Arday was facing questions concerning academic qualifications and professional representations. Both situations involved legitimate public-interest considerations, but the nature and potential consequences of the alleged conduct differed substantially.
In Arday's case, the central issue was not whether scrutiny should occur at all. Academic institutions have responsibilities to investigate credible concerns. The issue was whether those responsibilities were exercised alongside adequate consideration of the individual's known vulnerability.
When an academic's wellbeing is already a matter of concern, institutional accountability cannot reasonably be separated from safeguarding. Nor should public scrutiny be treated as inherently harmless merely because the allegations concern academic rather than sexual misconduct.
The contrast raises an uncomfortable question: why was the potential psychological impact of publication so extensively examined in one case, while the adequacy of protective measures in the other has become a matter for review following a death?
The available evidence does not establish that racial discrimination caused the difference in treatment, and it would be premature to assert that the conduct of particular journalists or university officials caused Arday's death. Nevertheless, the disparity provides legitimate grounds for examining whether race, disability, professional standing and access to institutional resources shape whose vulnerability becomes actionable.
For Black professionals, recognition often comes accompanied by exceptional scrutiny. Their qualifications, achievements and public standing may become subjects of repeated examination in ways that reflect wider histories of racialised doubt.
The issue is not whether Black academics should be exempt from accountability. They should not. It is whether accountability is exercised consistently, proportionately and with equal regard for human dignity.
A society that can mobilise extensive legal and medical consideration for one individual's wellbeing must be prepared to ask whether comparable institutional seriousness is afforded to others.
The violence already within British society
The recent case of Laura Bishop further exposes the inadequacy of the claim that sexual danger is primarily imported into Britain. In an ITV investigation published in November 2026, Bishop described how her former husband, Daniel Bishop, drugged and sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious and enabled other men to abuse her.
Daniel Bishop admitted rape and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offence and was sentenced to imprisonment. Laura has subsequently sought to identify other men involved in the abuse she experienced.
The case bears disturbing similarities to the sexual violence exposed in France through the case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose former husband orchestrated repeated assaults while she was drugged and unable to consent.
These cases reveal the profound dangers that can exist within domestic relationships, where intimacy, trust and apparent respectability may conceal coercion and exploitation. They also demonstrate that sexual predation is not confined to unfamiliar public spaces or encounters with strangers.
The threat may emerge within the home, through the conduct of a spouse or partner, and within relationships that outsiders perceive as ordinary.
The history of Jimmy Savile offers another example of abuse occurring within established British institutions. Savile's celebrity status, charitable activities and relationships with respected organisations contributed to an environment in which serious concerns were inadequately addressed.
Russell Brand's November 2026 conviction for rape and sexual assault likewise demonstrates the capacity of celebrity power to become entangled with sexual exploitation.
These cases differ in their circumstances and legal outcomes. Yet collectively they challenge any attempt to construct British society as a morally secure space threatened primarily by the arrival of foreign men.
The problem of sexual violence cannot be solved through racial suspicion. It requires sustained attention to power, gender, institutional accountability and the circumstances through which offenders gain access to vulnerable people.
Sexual morality, homosexuality and the selective memory of Western progress
Western moral exceptionalism is also evident in the treatment of sexual diversity and the historical development of laws concerning homosexuality.
European societies now frequently present the recognition of LGBTQ+ rights as evidence of their democratic and moral advancement. Yet many of these same societies criminalised same-sex relationships within living historical memory, and European colonial administrations exported legal frameworks that contributed to the criminalisation of homosexuality in colonised territories.
Britain provides a particularly important example. Oscar Wilde's prosecution and imprisonment in 1895 remain a powerful illustration of the state's historical punishment of same-sex intimacy. Male homosexual acts were not partially decriminalised in England and Wales until 1967, with different legislative developments occurring later in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
These changes did not arise because British society possessed an inherent commitment to sexual freedom. They emerged through political struggle, activism, legal reform and changing social attitudes.
The history matters because contemporary Western criticism of African societies often proceeds as though acceptance of sexual diversity were a timeless European value rather than a relatively recent and contested achievement.
In Zimbabwe, for example, Robert Mugabe's rhetoric contributed to a hostile political environment for LGBTQ+ people. That history deserves criticism, particularly where discriminatory laws, intimidation and social stigma have restricted individual freedom.
However, it is also necessary to recognise the colonial histories of sexual regulation, the diversity of African experiences and the continuing efforts of African activists to challenge exclusion. Same-sex relationships and gender diversity are not simply Western imports, nor can African societies be understood as culturally static.
It would be equally mistaken to assume that changes in public visibility necessarily demonstrate a recent emergence of LGBTQ+ identities. Greater visibility may reflect changing social conditions, new forms of activism or increased willingness to speak publicly.
Societies develop through conflict, negotiation, resistance and transformation. Western countries underwent these processes themselves and continue to experience disagreement over gender and sexuality.
This does not mean that discrimination should be tolerated indefinitely in the name of cultural development. Human rights remain important, and violations should be challenged. It means that moral criticism should be historically informed, consistent and attentive to the ways Western colonial power helped shape some of the legal and social conditions it now condemns.
The language of progress becomes hypocritical when it erases the historical struggles through which Western societies acquired rights they now present as evidence of inherent superiority.
Black achievement and the presumption of suspicion
The unequal distribution of credibility is not confined to allegations of misconduct. It also appears in the treatment of Black intellectual achievement.
The recent controversy involving Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza provides a revealing example. Following his success in winning the 2026 Caine Prize for African Writing for The Blue Fighter, allegations emerged that his work had been generated using artificial intelligence.
The allegations prompted an investigation, after which the Caine Prize confirmed that the evidence supported the conclusion that the story was human-written. His award was upheld.
The case raises important questions about the authority assigned to technological detection tools and the consequences of publicly questioning a writer's authorship before the evidence has been adequately established.
It also invites consideration of the conditions under which Black achievement becomes subject to suspicion. The fact that a Black writer was accused does not, by itself, establish racial motivation. Nevertheless, the controversy belongs within a wider discussion about the credibility of African intellectual production and the historical tendency to question whether Black achievement can be recognised without external validation.
For racialised scholars and writers, professional success may become accompanied by demands for verification that are experienced as disproportionate or intrusive. Such experiences require careful empirical examination rather than automatic assumptions about individual motives.
Yet the underlying question remains significant: who is permitted to succeed without being treated as an anomaly requiring explanation?
This concern connects with the experience of Jason Arday and with broader questions about whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate within institutions historically shaped by racial exclusion.
It also raises questions about the authority of those who interpret racial injustice in public life. Black people should not need their experiences to be translated or validated by prominent white commentators before those experiences become intelligible to wider audiences.
White journalists and broadcasters can make valuable contributions to public understanding of racism. The problem arises when their institutional visibility becomes the primary means through which Black testimony acquires credibility.
The question is not whether figures such as James O'Brien should discuss racism. It is why the direct testimony, scholarship and analysis of Black people so often struggle to command comparable attention without the intervention of established media intermediaries.
The hypocrisy of civilisational judgement
The wider problem exposed by these histories is the tendency of Western political discourse to interpret wrongdoing differently depending upon where it occurs.
When violence, discrimination or authoritarianism emerges within African or other non-Western societies, it may be presented as evidence of cultural backwardness or civilisational failure. When comparable harms emerge within Western societies, they are more frequently treated as deviations from otherwise progressive institutions.
This asymmetry allows Western societies to maintain an image of moral superiority without fully confronting their own histories of slavery, colonial domination, sexual exploitation and institutional abuse.
It also overlooks the historical conditions under which contemporary states developed. Many African countries achieved formal independence only during the second half of the twentieth century, following extended periods of colonial rule. Their political and institutional trajectories cannot be evaluated responsibly without consideration of colonial extraction, externally imposed borders, unequal economic relationships and the challenges of postcolonial state formation.
This does not absolve contemporary African governments of responsibility for repression, corruption, discrimination or human-rights violations. Nor does it mean that independence alone determines a society's capacity for democratic development. Several African states have longer histories of sovereignty, while others continue to navigate forms of external economic and political dependence.
Rather, it means that comparisons between Western and African societies must account for unequal historical circumstances instead of presenting European institutional development as a universal standard detached from colonial power.
The history of European sexual domination is especially relevant here. Societies that accumulated wealth through systems involving the coercion, trafficking and exploitation of African bodies cannot credibly erase that history when presenting themselves as the natural protectors of women's dignity.
The problem is not that Western societies lack legitimate achievements in human rights, democratic accountability or legal reform. The problem is the transformation of those achievements into claims of inherent moral superiority.
Progress is historical, contested and incomplete. It does not belong naturally to any race, nation or civilisation.
Conclusion: The violence within and the limits of selective humanity
The contemporary politics of sexual violence cannot be understood adequately without examining the historical and institutional conditions through which power determines whose bodies are vulnerable, whose testimony is credible and whose suffering receives recognition.
The sexual exploitation of enslaved African women, the coercive structures of colonial domination and the abuse of authority within religious and political institutions reveal that European societies possess extensive histories of violence that cannot be reconciled with simplistic claims of civilisational innocence.
The contemporary allegations against David Walliams, the convictions of Russell Brand and the established history of Jimmy Savile's abuse further demonstrate that sexual exploitation is not an external phenomenon introduced into British society by immigration. It is a problem that has existed within British institutions, domestic relationships and structures of social power.
The treatment of Professor Jason Arday raises a related question concerning the unequal recognition of vulnerability. His death and the subsequent independent review of Cambridge's actions demand serious examination of how institutional accountability and safeguarding responsibilities are balanced, particularly when racialised and disabled individuals experience sustained public scrutiny.
The controversy surrounding Simbarashe Kundizeza's literary achievement similarly invites reflection upon the conditions under which Black intellectual authority is recognised, challenged and publicly validated.
These examples should not be collapsed into a single accusation of deliberate racial discrimination. Their circumstances differ, and each requires its own evidential assessment. Nevertheless, they illuminate a wider social problem: the uneven distribution of credibility, compassion and institutional protection within societies that profess universal commitments to equality.
The far right's invocation of women's safety must therefore be examined against the actual historical and contemporary record of violence. A commitment to protecting women cannot be measured by hostility towards immigrants or by the racial identity of those accused of wrongdoing. It must be measured by the willingness to confront sexual violence wherever it occurs, including within the institutions and communities that enjoy the greatest public legitimacy.
Similarly, Western criticism of non-Western societies must be grounded in historical accountability rather than civilisational self-congratulation. European societies did not arrive at their contemporary legal and social arrangements without histories of persecution, coercion and exclusion. Their achievements in equality and human rights were contested and remain incomplete.
The central issue is not whether one racial group is more capable of evil than another. Human beings across societies are capable of violence, exploitation and abuse. What differs are the institutional arrangements through which such conduct becomes possible, the mechanisms through which it is concealed and the political narratives through which responsibility is assigned.
The enduring hypocrisy lies in treating violence committed by racialised outsiders as evidence of collective cultural inferiority while interpreting violence within Western societies as isolated misconduct detached from national identity.
A genuinely universal commitment to justice would reject that distinction. It would recognise the humanity of women reporting sexual violence, the vulnerability of individuals subjected to institutional scrutiny and the historical experiences of populations whose bodies and knowledge have been systematically devalued.
It would also require Western societies to relinquish the assumption that moral authority follows automatically from their geographical location, economic power or historical dominance.
The measure of civilisation cannot be the confidence with which a society condemns the wrongdoing of others. It must be the seriousness with which that society confronts the violence embedded within its own history, institutions and structures of power.
Until that principle is applied consistently, the language of protecting women, defending civilisation and upholding universal values will remain vulnerable to the very hypocrisy it claims to oppose.
Dr Abigal Muchecheti
@Chronicled Truths | November 2026
