Society structures aren't designed to lift people out of
poverty, we're just managing it. There is no poverty of
aspiration. There's a poverty of structure
to allow people to meet their aspiration.
Why did Epstein happen? Why did the Me Too movement
happen? It's all about not respecting
women. It's all about predatory
behaviour. It's all about misogyny.
It all comes back to all of these things that we need to fix
in society. How did your mum end up killing
the man who had been exploiting her and abusing her?
Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World.
I'm Krishnan Guru Murphy, and this is the podcast where we
talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their
lives and the events that have helped shape them.
My guest today is someone whose life has been defined by
survival, resistance and the decision to turn private trauma
into public purpose. She grew up in a home scarred by
violence, was forced into marriage as a teenager, and then
in early adulthood found herself caring for her younger siblings
while her mother served a prison sentence for killing an abusive
partner. Her path into politics began
through social work and a long campaign to free her mother, a
campaign that taught her how power works and how to challenge
it. Nash Shah is the author of
Honoured and has been the Labour MP for Bradford W since 2015,
winning the seat after defeating George Galloway.
She has held it through the various internal shifts of
Labour Party politics, while continuing to advocate on issues
rooted in the experiences that shaped her own life.
Naz, Welcome. Thank you.
Congratulations on this book. I have to say it is absolutely
amazing, gripping. I think anyone who is interested
in communities, patriarchy, grooming, all of the issues of
politics at the moment should read it because it's an amazing
thing that you've done and a life you've had.
Clearly, if you if you could change the world in any way in
one fell swoop, how would you change it?
Oh, I thought about that and I I just think it's education after
for me, you know, somebody who left school at 12, I didn't have
education and I know the value of education and I know that,
you know, when I visited out in with charities in places where
there is an education, education literally changes the world.
And if we got that right, we would change the outcomes for
the world. That's what I feel.
I genuinely believe we should be educating.
And I've been to places where kids just don't get that access.
They don't get, I mean, I, I, you know, if I could go back
and, or even in my future life, I'd love to go back to
university. I'd love to just study and
learn. And because it makes such a
difference to you as a human being.
Now you kind of need to unpack the people, I suppose, why you
left school at 12. You were sent off to Pakistan
really for your own protection. So I think we need to rewind
before that, don't we, to your early childhood and the kind of
childhood you had. I mean, your your parents were
Pakistani immigrants from Kashmir.
Your dad had been brought up here, but your mum came pretty
much as a as a bride. What?
What do you remember of early life?
My first memories are literally of my father beating my mum and
I love my dad, love my mom, and I talk about it in the book that
one of the chapters is Brown Girl in the Ring.
So my love of dancing was with my dad because he used to make
me dance to the Bony M song song Brown Girl in the Ring.
And so I had. But my first absolute vivid
memory is of him by her platform in her hair and literally her
looking at me saying go and get somebody to stop him to from
beating her. And I ran up the stairs.
We lived in a back-to-back in Anvil St. in in Bradford to the
street that's no longer there went up another set set of
stairs called the neighbors and the neighbors came to stop him
from beating her. That's my first memory.
So I've got, you know, I've got different memories, but that was
the most that was the very first one that I couldn't always
recall in Technicolor how it was how the room was set up, how her
eyes, the the eyes of my mother. You know, there's in throughout
the book, I talk about moments where my mother's eyes just
looked out to me just as kind of like saved me.
And I was only six years old. And and that was around the time
he abandoned you. Yep, that was just before, just
just shortly before he left us and he left us for the
neighbour's 16 year old daughter.
My mum was pregnant with my youngest sister Fazia, and I was
six years old. My brother was three years old
and we. But you know how old?
Was he? He was, he was, I think he was
32 because he was born in 52. So yeah.
And. He ran off with a 16 year old.
Girl neighbour's daughter. And he, when he left us, he
bought shame on the because he took somebody else's daughter
and it brought shame on that family.
And yet my mum carried the shame on our side.
It wasn't never, it's never in patriarchy.
It's always the man that you know, carries the burden of
honour or, or basks in Ora rather.
Yes, I mean shame and honour is obviously the theme.
I mean the type of the book is, is honoured and you explore, you
know, the demands of honour on on families, on Pakistani
families. But you describe also in there
that the shame was was was not that he had run away with a 16
year old girl, it was that he had disrespected her father.
Yes, it was because he'd taken somebody else's.
Is that somebody else's honour? Because girls are girls have the
responsibility of maintaining honour, You know, and how I
describe it to the mainstream viewer or reader is literally
down Downton Abbey. It's like the latest film.
You see the woman who's been divorced and she's not allowed
to be around the king and she's shunned from high society
because she's been bought. She's bought dishonour, which by
definition says that the honour is her burden to carry, to
maintain honour. But if she brings shame, she's,
you know, she's excommunicated, so to speak.
And that's the same thing. It's like my my father.
It doesn't matter what the man does.
It's always the woman that bears the shame and she brings the
shame or she executes it, behaves in a way which brings a
dishonour. How?
How would you describe the Bradford of your childhood?
You know, I mean, if, if you're not there, if you're not
familiar with a place like Bradford, it's very, very hard
to understand, you know, because, because even now it's
a, it's a majority immigrant population in terms of origin,
isn't it? My constituency is majority
Muslim, 60%, nearly 60% of the my constituency and the largest.
You know that Muslim majority is largely associated with Zaat
Kashmir of Pakistani heritage. Yeah.
And I should say by Kashmir you you mean the bit of the bit of
Kashmir that is part of Pakistan, which is where where
huge numbers of people in Bradford come.
From. But what, what kind of, I
suppose when I say what kind of place was it?
I'm, I'm getting at, you know, is it, is it a little Pakistan?
It has been described as such. It has been described as, you
know, a lot of people in the in the Asian media often refer it
to as mini Pakistan. That yes, they are.
How? Pakistani and how British is it?
I think it's a mixture of all things.
I think, you know, the, the, the Bradford in which I grew up in,
you know, I, I don't remember the only memories that I have of
growing up is very much about what my experience was, which
was, you know, which was unusual.
It's a very, you know, what happened to my mother, what
happened to me, you know, being shipped off to my granddad's
house because my dad, my father has had bought shame on another
family and then being shipped off with a black bin liner, all
the things in the back bin liner.
That was the start of my life from a very early, early stage,
right from the age of 6. So I don't remember the wider
Bradford. I mean, I've got some memories
of, you know, when my mum was trying to try on a bus, trying
to get to my granddad's house and the bus driver was amazing.
He came out of the bus and he helped her because she
completely broke down, because she'd lost her bearings, because
she didn't speak English and she wanted to.
She knew which bus stop to get out of that, but she didn't know
which way to go. And it was only one right And
right again to get to Kirkham Rd.
But then at that time, you know, it was really, really, it was an
alien place for her. It was not something she was
familiar with, didn't understand the language, didn't know how to
use transport, etcetera. And then you got somebody who
helped her. You know, when I was at primary
school in Hollywood Lane, I had an amazing, he's an amazing
teacher who first time took me to the seaside, think it was
Scarborough that she took me to. Mrs. Brassley.
I went to her house, you know, I discovered gooseberries, I'd
discovered a garden. Those were new things to me.
So my my experience of Bradford and my understanding in them
days was very different to what it became throughout my
campaign. I mean, as you read the book,
you, you kind of realized that almost every significant male in
your life let you down horrifically.
I mean, not, not just to do casually.
So your, your, your father that abandons you.
You go off to your grandparents, but that doesn't last.
Either No, no, because my mum really wanted.
So my mum wanted to give us, it was a 1980s, early 80's, the
idea of owning your own home wanted that security didn't want
us to be kicked out. So mum was really, really trying
to give us secure a house. Yeah, back to Britain.
I want a house that belongs to us.
So she wanted to, she wanted to sell her jewellery, the wedding
jewellery to pay the deposit. She didn't qualify for a
mortgage. She would do lots of
volunteering work, which gave her enough money, like vouchers,
looking after disabled children that didn't impact her benefits.
But she couldn't get a mortgage. And because she couldn't get a
mortgage, she went to my uncle's.
My uncle said no. And, you know, so they let her
down. And then because she was that,
you know, she was a single parent, her husband had left
her. She was the one that was, you
know, she was trying to carve her identity in the community at
the same time, but without a husband.
It wasn't she didn't have, is it or she didn't have honour.
And then when I was growing up, I couldn't have, you know, a
Christian. That picture on that, that book
is my last school picture. But the reason it's so
significant for me was because that was the time when I had a
fringe. I had to beg my mum to get a
fringe because I couldn't do anything because I didn't have a
father, because I was, you know, I was dishonoured.
I'd be because if you had a father you had much more honour
and every time I wanted to do something like, no, you can't do
that because you haven't got a father.
So people were not compassionate towards.
Yeah, no, because it wasn't as if they were horrible.
Yeah, if it was, if I was, if I was an orphan, you get lots of
compassion because, you know, there's, there's lots of
compassion towards orphans. But somehow it was like I'd
bought this on because I don't have a father.
So that idea of, you know, compassion, it would just wasn't
there. It was judgement.
So she ended up trusting A, a relative of A.
Neighbor. To get this house in his name?
Yep. Explain what happened.
So mum went to her, mum went to her brothers, they said no, went
to father-in-law, granddad. He said I'll buy it, we can buy
it. But then you know, a few years
time you can move out. So she was going to be back in
the same situation. So she then the neighbors said
look, we've got a nephew, he can do it for you.
You know, you can get it as a businessman.
What we didn't realise and what she didn't know was that
businessman was a drug trafficker.
He went to prison. He, you know, the minute he took
her to the house. So he bought this house on her
name, 251 Legren Blaine. The first time he raped her was
when he took her to the house. So now.
His quid pro quo for helping her with the house was that she
would become his. Well, it was sexual
exploitation. It was a 23 year old with three
children, 1A baby, a set now 6-7 year old.
You know and doesn't know the language is in somewhere,
doesn't have the support of the community, is very destitute,
very desperate and along comes a guy you know brings fruit for
the kids. Me and my brother both had TB
and we lived in abject poverty. We moved from pillar to post.
We had. Tuberculosis because you were
living in such. We were living in, Yeah, it was
enjoyable. Yeah, it was.
Me and my brother both had TB. Which is quite usually, you
know, in the 80s. Yeah, even I remember, you know,
the jab that they give you with us, with lots of them pins
around it, because the family had to be immunized and had to
have this jab. And even that was shameful
because you bought TB, you know, you bought tuberculosis, and it
was, umm, you know, we've all had to get these jabs.
The whole family had to get them.
The extended family had to get them and we with the houses we
lived in, we didn't have a toilet inside.
We only stayed in one room because we couldn't afford to
heat the upstairs. Legroom's Lane was the 1st house
where we used a bedroom since moving because and even then we
only used one bedroom. We had two double beds, you
know, me and my, my sister on one bed, my mother and my
brother on the other bed, the smallest bedroom in the house
because we couldn't afford to heat the rest of it.
But when we were before we had Legroom's Lane, we didn't even,
you know, we had a small kitchen which had a cooker and it had a,
a bath in bathtub in there, but the toilet was outside.
So it was like, you know, the poverty that we'd experienced.
But again, when you're living in poverty, you don't know that
you're living in poverty unless until you come out of poverty.
I mean you, you, you say in that section.
In all kinds of ways, contemporary society is
structured to sustain poverty. Too many politicians still don't
understand. Just explain that for me.
I think for me society is structured to keep the pert
though the working class persons you know back bent.
It doesn't. It's not structured.
The the structures do not exist to allow people to realise or to
to live their ambition. I had a conversation with a
friend of mine yesterday and was like there is no poverty of
aspiration. Is there a poverty aspiration?
I don't think there is a poverty of aspiration.
I think there's a poverty of structure to allow people to
meet their aspiration. And I don't think vital or, you
know, I don't think we get it enough.
And the reason I don't think we get it enough, we'd sit, we'd
sit in Westminster. We think, OK, we, we, it's not
that the intention isn't there. The intention is brilliant, You
know, giving somebody free childcare so that they can go
into into a job, you know, for university, paying for
education, you know, the idea of free school meals.
Let's just go back to that debate when I was in opposition
that we could not innovate. Marcus Rashford having to handle
leader campaign nationally around free school meals.
When a kid goes to school, they haven't had breakfast because
they're living in poverty. They're not going to absorb the
information. They're not going to get that
education that the that a kid who's had breakfast will have.
That's the structural inequalities.
So you're set up, you're already a year behind when we had show
starts. That really, really shortened
the gap between expectations or, or outcomes.
If you like, equality isn't about having, you know, the same
outcomes. It's about having the
opportunity to be the best that you can be.
Do we have them opportunities? Did the NASA was 12 years old
have those opportunities? No, she didn't.
Do kids in my constituency have those opportunities?
You know when you can't even feed, when the poverty is that
bad, But your parents, you don't even have, your parents are
having to have insecure jobs. Society has has really, when I
speak to my constituents, mum and dad don't even get time to
sit together to eat because you're working different hours
and you're managing your homes. Even the bedroom tax that came
in, it impacted so many people, you know, and it's trying to
understand what that poverty does to a person.
Your life chances are limited, your opportunities are limited,
your health chances are limited. You know, we know now from the
darted of you when you went back in, when I was working in the
NHS, you the the expectations of a person in inner city Bradford
or inner city or another city for life expectation is shorter.
You've got and the quality of life is shorter for people in my
constituency. You've got health inequalities.
You've got high chance of COPD, high chance of cancer, high
chance of stroke, high chance of heart disease, right.
Why? Because the structures aren't
there to give you equality from day dot from when you're growing
up. And those life chances start
when you're younger, start from the womb in how embarrassing is
it? How, how shameful is it that in
my NHS in Bradford, in the maternity unit in behind the
doors, there are, there are actually, you know, they've had
posters on to say if you wanted asking for a food pack, to be
able to ask whether you wanted a cold food bank pack or a warm
one. And the cold one, the one for
cold is that you could only make the warm food with a kettle
because you couldn't afford gas. How, how is that OK?
Do you see where I'm coming from?
That's where I say society structures aren't designed to
lift people out of poverty. We're just managing it and we're
not. I think so much more needs to be
done. I, I, I do feel strongly about
it because I know how it's impacted my health.
You know, I know how it's impacted my brother's health.
You know, I, I, I see the, my children, the difference between
my children and the experience that I had, you know, it's
massive. It's huge.
So, so come back to your own story.
So your, your mother is now you've got a home, but she's
being sexually exploited by the man who's helped her get it.
It gets worse because he goes to prison.
And you would think, well, that's a relief for her, but in
fact, it only gets worse. He pimped her from prison.
He had, he had pimped her literally to get favours on the
inside from prison. So she was never free of the
abuse. And then by the time I was 12,
it was, you know, he had designs on me.
It did the words that she described it as is the grasses
weaner with your daughter. So my mum shipped me off to
Pakistan to live with my grandparents, my mum's mum, her
dad and her brother and sister who lived in a village in Azad
Kashmir. I mean, so you're, you're sent
off literally to a village and it's, it's a pretty basic place.
Very basic place. It doesn't have a toilet.
It has. We were, we were very privileged
that we had a water tank at the top of the village which
serviced the water tanks in our houses.
But it was let me describe a day for you.
You get up in the morning at four O 4 AM 3:00 AM.
You've got 2 buffaloes. The Buffalo's milk is what gives
you the income because people come and buy, you know, that's
like half a pint if you like. And they used to buy quarter of
a pint of milk or a, or a whole pint of milk.
And you, you're taking the buffaloes from 1 space into an
inside place where you're feeding them, where you can milk
them and the outside overnight, all the Buffalo dung, you're
cleaning that up with them, you know, with like A and homemade
brush to, to get the, the clean bit out.
So you can go and put that on the, on the ceiling and put it
in a basket, take it up to the ceiling, turn it into patties
with your hands, taking out the beetles, if there are any
beetles in there, making it flat.
So on the roof you've got the sun that will dry it out.
And that evening or the next day, you'd bring it back down
and you turn that into the fuel. And then the, the dung that
wasn't so clean because it had maybe hay in it, etcetera.
You'd put that in another basket, walk to the end of the
street to the manure dump and put it on the manure dump
because that would then be used by farmers and farmers would
come and buy it to fertilize their fields with during the day
if you went to school. So Pakistan school in South
Kashmir was not like a British school.
So I was 12, I was teaching my head teacher how to read and
write English, you know, because she was that lovely lady Mumtaz.
And then I was teaching her. So I was still, I went to
school, but schooling is like years and years behind.
What did you think? I mean, you've been told you
were being sent on holiday. You weren't.
You weren't even told. But you.
Were going there to live. A British kid, I loved it when I
got there. It's like living on a farm,
isn't it? It's like, Oh my God, all these
chickens, you know, the, the, the chicken, the hens, if you
tried to pick up a chicken, the hen would attack you.
So you've got, you've got some seeds.
Put a basket on top of the hen. Just isolate it from its the
chickens so that you could pick up these baby chicks.
And you had, you know, you had goat and you had a dog and you
had a donkey and you know, I used to sit on the donkey.
It's like, you know, not like quite like going to Blackpool on
the donkey, but it was still, you know, sitting on a donkey.
These were exciting things to a 12 year old.
That excitement soon wore off because that holiday turned into
two years and four months. And it didn't end until I had a
forced marriage at 15. So how?
How did the forced marriage come about?
Well, I didn't even. Think a political thing you know
as well. You know George Galloway tried
to use it against you. Oh God, yeah, it.
Backfired spectacularly because you know, you had a you had a 15
year old ceremony, but then also a 16 year old ceremony.
You had to go back, which you had effectively consented to
under duress. Yeah, so here's the thing you
say to a 15 year old. You know, you've got to go back
to the story, which is my, my mother's brother's weren't,
weren't supportive because of, because my mum wanted to keep
her kids, because my, my uncle's actually told my mother to give
up her kids and we'd look after you.
And she said no. So effectively she'd lost her
brother's for the sake of his children.
This is how it was pitched to me.
So your mother has got one brother left who is here in
Pakistan and it's her son that they want me to marry.
So if you don't agree to this marry, you will separate them in
grave in their graves. Imagine telling a 12 year old
for a 15 year old that it's your responsibility to maintain your
mother's relationship with her brother by marrying her son
because his son because because of you, your mother lost two
brothers. Because of you, your mother, you
know to to for you children. So you owe it to her.
That's not a normal conversation to a 15 year old.
That's not the pressure. I mean, imagine you, you're
telling your own kid you got to go do your bedroom because
you're going to you're going to get grounded or whatever.
That's one thing of putting pressure on a 15 year old.
But having saying to somebody that you are responsible for
your mother and father, mother and her brother's relationship
to be separated in their graves, the amount of pressure that puts
on you. And I didn't recognise that as
the forced marriage until, until I was in my 30s.
I didn't actually call it out and accept it, I suppose because
A, there wasn't enough information about forced
marriages. But B is that that was coercion
and that was. Because.
Because you had a British passport, presumably.
Well, yeah, because I was British and he would come here,
these prospects would change all of those things.
But he was and it was a done thing.
It wasn't just about Britain. It was, you know, it was a done
thing of marrying, you know, she was marrying your first cousin,
marrying your first cousin. It was like it was an
expectation. So you so in my 30s, I'm fine
kind of when during my husband that you refer to, somebody went
over and posed as my dead father to the village where to be in
Midborough where they have the registration document and pulled
out when he can't. Now Mark from when I was when I
was 16 because I had to re register it because I couldn't
bring him over as a spouse because 1516 was a legal age.
So I had money car at 15. Then I had to reregister it and
go at 16. And then then that Nikonama was
what he pulled out and he said, oh, well, she wasn't forced into
a marriage. She's lying.
Her mother was there. The idea that your parent is
there and they're not forced into into a marriage is just
absurd. So.
You weren't really aware that you had been forced into
marriage. No, not at that time, no.
You were grind effectively. Yeah, because my mum, I had AI
had a 3 minute call. So my mum, one of my uncles said
your mum wants to do it and I always wanted to do what my mum
wanted. My mum was told I wanted to
marry him and so we had this call and it talks about in the
book, the call, the phone, there's only one phone in the
village and it's 2, the 2nd St. up.
So you're in this house, you've got to run out from here.
Go. The call comes from the ceiling,
from their roof. There's a phone call, come over,
you run out, cross the road, go up to another set of stairs,
down another set of stairs into the house where the phone is.
So that's taken you 2030 seconds.
There's only a 3 minute trunk call.
And then by the time you're on the phone, the rest of the
family catches up and I have 20 seconds to say to my mum, she
says whatever you want. And I said no, no, no, whatever
you want. And then the phone gets taken
off you. And in that miscommunication, my
whole life changed. But see what what's surprising
to me, you know, reading us all is that is that you did go along
with it even afterwards. So, so you know, let's skip
forward a bit. You end up coming back to
Britain and your, your husband comes back with you.
And even though you're now sort of late teens and sort of and
British, you, you stick with it, you kind of go along with it.
Yeah, because when I came back from Pakistan, first thing, my
mum was really angry. She said, why did you do it?
And I said, well, because you you said I I was told you wanted
to do it, said no. And my mum offered me the
option. At that point she went, no, I
didn't want you to do this. You can get divorced now.
But here's the thing about honour.
And here's the thing about is that it's a women that have to
maintain it. So the idea that my mother was
divorced, a single parent, my auntie was, was divorced in a
single parent. And it's like, so I'm the first
girl who's got married. I've got a sister.
That pressure is so ingrained in you that you've got to then
maintain the is that so I can't then go and get a divorce
because that would bring basity, which is dishonor.
So even that pressure. So it was like, OK, I'll go
along with this thinking he's not going to get his visa for 10
years, eight years or whatever. He got his visa first time.
So he came to the UK and then eventually in January, I think
he came in the summer and in January I left.
I thought I can't do this and I wanted to, I wanted an
education. I still crave education, you
know. So I left and I went to Watford
to stay with a friend of mine, went and got a little room and
then my mum misled me and said to me, oh, he's left and he's
gone to Germany. So I came back to Bradford and
that was in January, February, February of the April before.
And then I finally thought, OK, I'm going to go back to
university or College in September.
And then my whole life changed again in April with Azam's
murder, Uncle Azam's murder. So my mum killed the man who
abused her and that was on April the 11th.
So how, how did your mum end up killing the man who had been
exploiting her and abusing her? So I came back when I'd left
home. I'd come back in February and
then in April, my sister was now reaching a similar age.
She was reaching 12. She was going to be 12 in July.
And then he also, you know, the you, the grass is greener with
her. That conversation happened.
And the minute that happened, and I think that when I look
back at it and I tried to think what my mum must have been going
through is that I've taken one girl, sent her to Pakistan.
She's had a forced marriage. I don't agree with that.
Now the second one's growing up. What am I going to do?
So instead of, you know, I think by the time she poisoned him,
she first she poisoned him to kill his libido and that worked
for a while. And the second time she poisoned
him, I don't think she genuinely didn't care whether he lived or
died because her mental state was that bad after years of
abuse that she gave him a fatal dose of arsenic and he died.
And then it was where. Did she get the arsenic?
She got it from Pakistan because it was a remedy.
It was an old wives remedy or whatever her thinking was of
just to lower his sexual drive. But I don't think she cared
whether, I don't even think she understood that it would kill
him. I don't think she cared whether
he lived or died by the time she gave him the put fatal dose.
And you were arrested. Yeah, I was, but I was.
I was 18. Yeah, I was 18.
Got arrested. And to me, I have this idea.
It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.
You've got to understand, right? I'm thinking, well, they've got
it wrong because obviously I haven't killed him.
So they've got it wrong. They take you to a police
station. They take your clothes, they
take all your hair and nail samples.
And the police officer officer sat by the door being really
nice to me. So I'm thinking and they've
given me this white onesie suit kind of thing to wear like a Jay
clock material. And I'm laughing and joking with
the police saying, oh, this is looks sexy too foxy.
Think of the word, you know, imagine going out in a day in
this. They'll give me magazines.
I didn't realize I was really, really naive.
I'd not had a normal, you know, kind of exposure.
I, I didn't realise it was suicide watch because I'd been
arrested for such a serious thing.
But in my head it was like, well, Britain doesn't get that
wrong. You know, we don't have
miscarriages of justice are rare.
I haven't done anything that I, I was very clear about.
So to me it was all misunderstanding that get
cleared up and I'd have this experience but.
You didn't know, did you, that he had been abusing your your
mum? So so were you sad that he had
died? Yeah, I actually, I grieved for
him. I absolutely grieved for him
when when Uncle Azam died, you know, to me, he was never, I
never saw that side. Do you know what I mean?
I didn't see. I didn't see.
And I mean, now when I look back at it and hindsight, it's a
wonderful thing. And when you look at how abuse
works and how control and power works, it makes perfect sense
because the minute she we found out when Pragna Patel from
Southall Black Sisters pieced that together because the
forensics were clear. Cushion should should kill him.
The forensics were absolutely clear.
So why did she do it? Why does a woman kill a man?
It's not a done thing. It's not normal.
So when pregnant, it was, you know, when she went to see her,
she was. So she went to see her and my
mum told her the story. She said This is why, you know,
she, she counselled her and she told why she'd done it.
She accepted she'd done it. And then when she told why she'd
done it, at that point it was like, OK, we can have grounds
for appeal. And then my mum was like, no,
not talking about it, not doing this, not talking about it.
Basically. Is it all of us transition the
shame? Was it the shame of the sexual
exploitation? Yeah, the shame of, the shame of
talking about it, the shame of and that and that still applies.
You know, women in up and down our country are still everywhere
across the world abuse, but can't talk about it because of a
shame, because it's a taboo subject, because, you know, it's
just not. And that that was that is how it
works. She changed her mind though,
didn't she, and decided to to speak out.
Yeah, only because we made it. We.
We literally. I was going to say, so how, how
did you change her mind? Well, we, figuratively speaking,
literally had to grab her by the shoulder and she'd give her a
shake saying whose is it? Are you trying to protect mum or
the family who abandoned you, the community who didn't care
for you? Which is it?
Whose is it? We were left back to square one
with bin liners moving from one place to another.
We went to Leeds, we went to Sheffield to escape this idea of
our mother is in prison. You know, I remember going to
Sheffield, working in a restaurant and I told everybody,
you are parents in Pakistan because it was busy, it was
dishonourable because our mother was in prison.
And that catches up with you because somebody somewhere finds
out that actually your mother's in prison.
And my sister got bullied at school.
So we went from Leeds to Sheffield to back to Bradford,
you know, And then it was like, look, let's go back to Bradford.
Once she's spoken her truth, then we went back to Bradford.
Now, so it was taken up. I don't want to tell the whole
story in detail because I think people should read it.
But I mean, essentially it was taken up by this campaign group.
The appeal failed, yeah, but ultimately you went to the home
secretary, Jack Straw, and he reduced the sentence.
But she still had years to serve.
Yeah, she still served 14 years. Yeah.
What? What did you learn about the way
the system approached a story like hers and believed or
disbelieved a woman like her? And do you think that's changed?
I think it, I think the system doesn't get it.
I still don't think it's 100%. I think we've still got too much
work to do when it comes to women and violence.
So one of the things that I learned earlier on was that a,
when I first spoke in public, I just cried through it.
But then I realized a woman could be battered for 20 years
and one day snap and protect herself in self defence.
Kill a man and she will get lifed off.
And a man can bat a woman for 20 years and eventually kill her.
And yet he could walk with manslaughter and somebody would
actually. And a judge has been quoted
saying this. Well, she shouldn't have nagged
him. That is, that was the difference
between the justice system, between women and men.
And for three judges in the Appeal Court to say that my
mother had no honour left to salvage and she was unbelievable
that they didn't believe her. If, if Zora Shah happened today,
I don't think we'd had the same outcome.
I think we have much more of an understanding.
So in that respect we have improved a great deal.
But do we get it right? Has this, is the system perfect?
No, it isn't. Not for women.
No it isn't. What those judges said was that
she had clearly lied and so they couldn't be sure that she wasn't
still lying. Given your mum had also
effectively lied to you, kept things from you, how?
How could you be sure that she wasn't still lying to you?
Because she she when she kept her story from from no.
And I know this because of personal experience of what my
mum went through, etcetera. When you're being abused, the
whole concept of domestic violence is about power.
So whenever the abuse happens, it is vulnerability juxtaposed
with power. And the things that keeps it
there is the silence. And it's a silence that allows
it to be maintained. Because to break the silence,
you break the chain of domestic violence and you don't talk
about it. You don't tell people that
you've been if you it's, it's a, you know, the average woman at
that time took 40 attempts to leave an abusive relationship
before she left. And how it's maintained is
silence. So it's not that she lied.
It's because she kept silent. She did not talk about her
abuse. So she didn't make she didn't
she pleaded not guilty to killing.
She didn't give evidence at her first trial.
And when she did give evidence, when she did tell her story, she
it was found to be incapable of belief because the judge said
she didn't have because of the whole concept of honor.
The reason why she didn't tell the truth was because of is that
and the judges did not get the head drowned.
The idea that she had any is it to salvage was was their
response. That is why they felt that she
was incapable of belief. So it wasn't because of and that
she'd she'd lied, it was because she never told her truth to
begin with and lied that she was not guilty.
Now today we would understand when we have a victim of
domestic violence and you have so many.
You know, a woman doesn't have repeated abortions, repeated St.
DS in a healthy relationship unless there is abuse.
So all of that abuse was there and they didn't get that.
They'd absolutely didn't get that.
I don't. I think Lord Chief Justice
Bingham, in reducing his, in reducing my mother's tariff,
accepted that she was driven to do what she did, which is why
Jack Straw then reduced the tariff to 12 years.
I mean, the idea of of abused women killing is is now being
introduced in law, isn't it? What?
What do you think needs to be done to actually make that
effective? I think there's so much, I think
there's a, you know, from a political perspective, I'm
really, really grateful for the Violence against Women and girls
strategy. It's the boldest things, that
boldest and biggest thing that we've done as a society in
Parliament and that's been developing over the years.
It's not just our government, even previously known to the
previous government, this has been given the rightful
attention. It needs more attention.
The majority of women in prison have experienced abuse there.
There's lots of women who offend because they're coerced into
offending, because they're abused, because they're
battered, you know, very, very different things.
I think we need to, well, I think there's lots of
understanding still to be, you know, shared with society to,
for society to understand it and for judges to understand it.
I cannot imagine 3 judges today saying what they said about my
mother today. Do you know what I mean?
Reading that book or understand in fact, one of our then
ministers at the time when this was happening read the book and
he's one of our front benchers now actually said to me, I wish
I'd have read this book at the time.
You know, I wish you'd, this was there at the time I'd have, I'd
have be, I'd have understood more, you know.
So that's the, that's the, I suppose Nazi.
The thing for me is like, yeah, it is having an impact and we
have moved as a society. I've been Speaking of writing
the book. I mean, I suppose it's worth
saying you didn't have to take a break from it because it was too
distressing for you to carry on. Well, in, in 2017 when I wrote
once some of those chapters, I'd literally, I didn't realize that
I had so much healing and so much trauma because I just got
on with it, you know, because I've just been a fight or flight
adrenaline, you know, had my own children, had my marriage, you
know, after the first marriage ended and you got on with life,
you know, you were always fighting for 14 years, even to
get my mum out, even at the 12th year to get her parole, she had
to serve an extra 2 years because you have to satisfy the
parole board. You'll never offend again and
that you've repented and you've been punished and you
rehabilitated. Well, my mum's punishment and
rehabilitation the way it wasn't the Eurocentric model of going
on training courses. Her way was repentance by
becoming the best in your version of her, by praying to
God for forgiveness, you know, saying sorry, all of those
things. So we then had to get a
transcultural psychiatrist to do a report of her model of
repentance to show that to the parole board.
So every time it was just fighting and fighting and
fighting. And then, you know, I've just
lost my friend. Then when he came, you know,
coming through all of that, the healing that I had to do, I
didn't recognize, you know, I tried to kill myself one time,
but I tried to twice. I think first time was a cry for
help, but the second time I didn't want to get up.
I really, really, it was like it was Eid.
Eid is always, always difficult, even when I talk about it now,
you know, when you're on the end of Ramadan.
Yeah, the end of Ramadan Eid. Mum's not there.
Mum's in prison. Brother and sister in Pakistan
because mum sent me to Pakistan. Brother went to get her and I'm
literally sleeping on a, on a really, really one of my
brother's friends really kindly gave me this.
They had a little spare room, but it was for the dog.
It was the dog slept in that small room and it was they had a
mattress for the dog, but he slept on and I was sleeping on
that and I just didn't want to wake up.
It was like my cousin Penny rang me.
I talk about it in the book and it was the only blood that I
spoke to that day. And it's like Eid and it's
Christmas, you know, it's like Christmas.
It's. Supposed to be a great
celebration. And it wasn't and it was just I
didn't want to wake up and I, you know, took tried to tried to
kill myself. I.
Mean what? What happened to you, I suppose,
Was that that you, your mother's case made you an activist for
your mother's case. But from that, you know, you
became, you know, more of a sort of a public citizen and an
activist on a much bigger scale. Just explain that transition
because I think we can all understand why you would fight
for your mum. Why did you then want to go on
and fight at a different level? I think because you realise you
know you can, it's, it's when you a, you have lived
experience, a, you realize that politicians don't get it right
and you want to parliament to get it.
You realize the judges don't get it.
You want to change that system. So it's like, how do you change
it? You have to get in it to change
it. You can't change it from the
outside. You've got to be able to
systemic change it, change. So I had a very, very
privileged, huge privilege of going on to a leadership program
when I was in the NHS as part of the national breaking through
program. And I did a transformational
leadership program and adopted Eden.
And Valerie James, they were amazing.
And what they taught us was that you've got to, you've got to
have a, you've got to feel the burden of leadership and you've
got to make systemic interventions.
And when you're making systemic interventions, those
interventions for me, this book is a systemic intervention
because it'll impact on the thinking of different directors,
be it justice, be it women, be it child poverty, be it
education. So you're making those and you
can't do that from the outside. You can, you can do, you can,
you can influence in a major way, but where better to be on
the inside, talking to people, having access and to be able to
speak from a lived experience without authenticity.
So I've got 2 passions. My first passion is community
development. My second is leadership and
communities. How do you, how do you stop
another Nas being created? How do you stop?
Because that has to be, you know, it has to be a, you know,
litmus test. There can't be another Nas.
There should never be yet, but there are.
This is it. So what do you do?
So, you know, the, the, the thing that really, really messed
things up for us was the idea of patriarchy.
The idea of is that the idea of, you know, that notion of women's
behaviour and it's not, that's not what it should be.
So you have to take a community and that's what I say community
development is. You have to take a community
with you to better that society's understanding.
I mean, obviously all, all of this plays into the debate
around grooming and, you know, whether politicians and
authorities have been honest with themselves and with each
other and with communities around, whether there is
something about the patriarchy in Pakistani communities in
places like Bradford that means it is a bigger risk.
Now, everything about your story suggests it is OK.
So, so where do you stand on this in terms of grasping the
challenges you know that that are clearly out there right now?
So. So, so let's be really clear,
there is an absolute model of abuse and that's grooming that
the free CSE models that that is pertinent to Pakistani men.
That is not racist to say that it is not.
I think if we we didn't say that we'd be, we'd be doing a
disservice to the victim. That's the first thing.
So how do you then work with that community to make sure that
model of abusing abuse is eradicated and is stopped?
Could. You just before you before you
go to the next stage. Could you just explain why it
is? Because it's a that.
There is a model that. There is a model.
That pertains to Pakistani men. Why is there, Why is there a
model I, I, I, Why is there a model of familial abuse or
online abuse which is pertinent to white men?
I think the answer is simple. It's power.
It's, it's absolute predatory behaviour.
And that can come from different communities, different spaces,
just like it was in the church, just like it was in, you know,
in all spaces. And I think for me, it's down to
misogyny, it's down to hatred, it's down to patriarchy, it's
down to lots of things. You know, why did Epstein
happen? Why did the Me Too movement
happen? It's all about not respecting
women. It's all about predatory
behaviour, It's all about misogyny.
It all comes back to all of these things that we need to fix
in society. So that's not just pertinent to
this community, it's a different model of abuse, which is
pertinent the Pakistani, where men from Pakistani heritage are
absolutely overrepresented. So you speak to that community,
you educate the community, just like you educate others and you
stop it. And when I say educate, what I'm
saying is you, you treat it's like a public health campaign,
which is it's not OK. It's not OK for anybody to abuse
a woman. That's whether it's being
domestic violence, whether it's grooming, whether it's online
grooming, whether it's familial abuse, whether it's in York, in
in structures of organisations, all of it.
How? Do you do that without tipping
over almost an entire culture? You know, because because what
you are saying is that there is so much cultural here that is
wrong, that is born out of, that is not about Islam or about
Pakistan. That is often about poverty,
about tradition, about, you know, repeated behaviours just
being mimicked down the generations, but which people
hold onto as their traditions. How, How do you, how do you, how
do you, how do you break that in a respectful way?
Well, there isn't. There isn't a respectful way of
breaking the idea that's. The wrong way of putting it, I
suppose. Yeah, I mean in a way, in a way
that doesn't trash a whole culture.
So you'd not so, so when people have selective outrage and pick
a, you know, and use it because it was just one community,
that's different. That's, that's, that's not how
we dress it, how we address a culture or anything that's wrong
is you go and work with that community, you go and work with
us. So when we were addressing drink
driving, we didn't go to the churches, did we, on a Sunday
because the drink drivers wouldn't be in the church on a
Sunday because they'd been nursing a hangover from the
night before. So we went to the nightclubs, we
went to the clubs and we made it an absolute society wise.
We made it something that was abhorrent and it was, you know,
with that, that campaign was hugely successful because you
make it that it's not acceptable in society.
And that's how you tackle any form of abuse and it be it in
institutions. You you go in and you talk about
it and the same applies to that model of abuse.
You go to the community because that when that community is
tarnished, the whole community is tarnished.
The majority, the vast majority of my community, Christian, I
wouldn't be, no. I love my community.
I love parts of my culture. I'm not going to trash it just
because of my experience. I'm going to work with that
community and celebrate the best of it, but equally talk about
the uncomfortable truths that this also happens.
Because what people also say needs to be done is, you know,
is that people who know or suspect also need to do
something. Now, again, in your own example,
people knew your family knew what was going on.
People must have suspected there was something going on, but
people didn't speak up. So how, how do you tackle that
and say you've got to speak up? Because everybody knows grooming
is wrong. Everybody knows sexual abuse of
young teenagers is wrong. You know, it's not that you need
to persuade people that are socially unacceptable.
You need to persuade people to do something about it.
You've got to talk about it. It's just like anything, just
like domestic violence, you've got to talk about it.
So before I came into politics, we did, there's an amazing guy
in Bradford answerally, who set up a group called Together
Against Grooming, worked with Nazir Afzal.
He was, this is before I came into politics and we did a
massive first time ever in the Western Hemisphere.
I think it was the first time globally where we did a
structured Hutba on a Friday, Friday afternoon, the Friday
prayers with most structured, what a Hutba.
So it was a sermon, a Friday prayer, sermon in the mosques
and the sermon we got all the mosque to deliver the same
sermon condemning the abuse, condemning all of this.
That's how you change society. You talk about it, you allow you
give people the confidence to talk about it.
You tell them this is wrong. You say you have a
responsibility. You remind people of our
responsibilities. You know, that is why if we look
at the sexual abuse scandals from histories and histories,
why this was happening in the churches, We don't we, I'd like
to think it doesn't happen there anymore.
You know, what was happening in institutions.
I'd like to think it doesn't happen in, you know, it happened
in in studios like this one. You know, it happened in
Hollywood. It happened all, everywhere
where it's happened. How do you change that culture?
Because you talk about it. You talk about it and you say
this happened, this cannot happen and this must stop.
The Me Too movement is about that.
All of these movements from every time we've had an issue in
society, it takes someone to say, no, this cannot happen.
This is how we need to stop it, but we need to talk about it to
be and, and put the responsibility on people who
know to be able to have the confidence before me too, or
before all these scandals in Hollywood and you know, in the
BBC or whatever. Did people, all those people
knew, all those people knew when Saville was abusing those kids,
you know, people, OK, not all of you, but people, people were
aware. People knew what was happening.
Why didn't they speak up? Why didn't they speak up?
And they didn't speak up because there was an issue that we don't
talk about violence against women, we don't talk about abuse
like we should do. And it should not be a taboo
subject. Why don't people speak up?
That's why they don't speak up. What do we need to do?
We need to take it to people to whether it be in communities,
whether it be institutions, raise awareness, raise awareness
until you're red in the face to make sure it doesn't happen
again. A lot, I think, of what you
highlight about the community you grew up in also gets flipped
the other way as a way of attacking immigrant communities.
You know, people say, well, look, they keep themselves to
themselves. They follow their own values.
They're not our values. And, you know, in a way, you
are, you are sort of revealing that there is some truth to
that. How do you think, you know,
communities like the one in Bradford should live in the
future? You know, there is this tension
between well, they should all integrate.
They should be like us. They should live according to
our rules. And and then the sort of the,
the multicultural vision of Britain, which is you've got to
let people be who they are and follow their own traditions.
What, what do you think is the resolvable tension there?
What are our values? What are our values are our
values that somebody who's raised in Buckingham Palace is
now, you know, stripped of his titles because he was
exploiting, you know, or, or whatever that was going on.
There are our values to be like somebody like, you know, Peter
Mandelson, you know, but which values are we talking about?
Values for me are human values and they are a across cultures
Christian. They are across absolutely every
culture, every religion, every not, you know, non religion.
So my, my last election agent was a humanist, right.
I've had people I've worked with people who do not believe, who
believe in a God, who believe in their Hindus, Sikhs, that Jews
and you know, from different cultures, different communities
and the values that they bring to the table from more every,
everything that they bring that there is, there is patriarch in
every single society. There is patriarchy and misogyny
in every single space. So if we're talking about those
values, two women a week are murdered in England every single
week. And for the first time, women
are killing themselves as the number has increased of women
who commit suicide because of domestic violence.
Which values are we talking about?
Values. There is very skewed ways of
thinking in every single community.
But as, as a society, we have to work together, take the best of
the values and shape society. There's beautiful values in my
community that are looking after our elderly, you know, that are
being there, you know, and I, I had major surgery in September
and I was at home for a few weeks.
Every one of my neighbors bought me over food, bought me over
broths and chicken broths and yuknis.
And, you know, it was brilliant, it was beautiful.
Those are community values. You know, community values are
when, you know, when I was campaigning for my mum, when I
was having petitions signed for Jack Straw, people would come up
to me and say, no, we can't sign this, but you have our support.
In 2019, I had an event for Islamic Relief, a fundraiser for
a campaign called on her. This is the largest Muslim
charity in the world leading a campaign literally called Honour
Her. The Chief Constable of West
Yorkshire, Sir Robbins, he spoke at it.
And every business in my constituency, the 25 of a top
Muslim Pakistani businesses sponsored a table with their
name on proudly. That's where the community has
come from and that is where it is today.
Have we got more to do? Of course we do.
But we have as a society we have.
I have as Britain, even if I wasn't happened to be Muslim,
even if I didn't have to happen to have Pakistani heritage, we
as a society have things to shift when it comes to women,
when it comes to patriarchy, when it comes to misogyny, when
it comes to child abuse. Do you see where I'm coming
from? It also brings us to the
question of why you didn't run a mile from from where you came
from. You know, there are people who
would say, after everything that happened in terms of the men in
her life, how could she possibly have found a happy marriage
partner who she wanted to be? But how could she have ever
trusted a man again? Why would she have ever wanted
to be around a culture that allowed this to happen, You
know, the center away that forced her into a marriage all
of those times? You know, why didn't she just
run away and do her own thing? And yet not only did you run
away, you are the MP for that community now.
Yeah. Absolutely, because there's
something about belonging, there's something about your
people, there's something about there's a beauty in every
culture and you hold on to that. But and, and that, that, that
dishonour and that rejection that came from the community you
work with that community, you embrace that community.
You show them the better version of them.
You show them, you know, you hold the mirror up, you take
you, you have those brave conversations because for every
bad experience I've had, the amount of men in my community
who thanked me for this book. And that's how we change
society. That is why my passion is
community development, because you know, the businessmen who
supported my campaign for honour her the bit, the women who show
up for me, you know, the campaigns that I've had election
campaigns who say yes, because that isn't a reflection of all
my community. And that's what I want to share
with the world. I want to share with the world
for the for yes, there's bad, but there's not a community that
doesn't have bad, but there is beauty in belonging.
There is beauty in my culture. There is beauty in our in our
clothing, in our food. We're Curry capital of the UK.
We've got, you know, where, where Bradford is, the House of
the Brunt, you know, the birth place of the Bronte.
There is so much to celebrate and yet we get bogged down with,
OK, this is what we need to change.
Yes, but what is it about society that we need to
celebrate? Look, look, I'm very, very
clear. I have, I am, you know, so
patriotic to Britain. Had I been in Pakistan, do you
think I'd been made it to an MP? I wouldn't, no chance.
I wouldn't have ever had these opportunities.
So how do we celebrate the best of Britain?
How, how do I, how do I give back to my country and my
community? Because for all its faults, that
community made me. Bradford made me.
Bradford hugs me, supports me, holds me.
You know it it. With any community comes a good
the bad, the ugly and the absolute marvellous.
Why not celebrate it? The other issue I want to talk
to you about is, is the whole question around anti-Semitism
attacks on the Jewish community that are very current and, and
the role of, you know, of, of imams and community astutes
there as well. Because in, in the, in the wake
of the Golders Green attack, we're seeing a sort of a, you
know, a renewed call for condemnation from Muslim
communities, from imams, you know, seeking out what's being
said about Jews and about Israel.
What's your view on on all of that as well?
So the recent attacks in Golders Green be on ambulances being,
being the people that have been stabbed.
First of all, my my prayers with victims, families and the
community and I, and I'm praying for the community because when a
community is under attack, it attacks us all.
And I'm very, very clear about that.
And it's really, really important.
And I think that one of the Jewish people that I spoke to
said to me not enough is being said about saying, and this was
a direct conversation I had is when you're talking in when
you're talking for pro Palestine, just to say the Jews
are not responsible. You know, this collective
responsibility idea to to tackle it head on is to say British
Jews are not responsible for the behaviour of Netanyahu.
And that I think is and where they're they are not, they do
not have that responsibility. And it's just like Muslims do
not have responsibility. What what that when attacks
happen on from an Islamophobic perspective, I think we need to
do more. I think there's, you know, there
was a cobra meeting. I think the Prime Minister was
right to have that cobra meeting.
I think communities, Israel and Palestine is one of those things
that always flares up community tensions, But that's even more.
We need to be braver and come together to to have more
conversations. And it's not, it's more than
words, it's about. So the Prime Minister called
for, I know the government called for an, an inquiry, a
call for evidence just the day that that attack happened in
Golders Green and that happened in the morning or the afternoon.
It's obviously the call for the evidence went out in the
morning. The attack happened in the
afternoon. So I don't think there's a
shortage of, you know, from the government perspective to deal
with this. I don't think there's, I don't
think that there's a shortage of intention from them.
But do you do you think it is right?
The I I interviewed the government's independent review
of terrorism. He he said we, you know, we need
to talk about the fact that there isn't enough condemnation
from Muslim communities of these sorts of attacks.
And the suspicion is that sermons that that criticize
Israel and the the war in Gaza may be contributing in some way
to hate. You know that that's that's the
view of, you know, a group of people who are saying, do you
believe there is anything in that?
Well, I think look, but I think there has been reports of people
of mosques that where their people have spewed anti-Semitism
and rightfully they should be done frantic Semitism.
They should be absolutely held to account for it.
It is illegal. It is not OK and it's not OK to
be in any community. That's absolutely right to do.
And I have got you know, you know, your your viewers watching
everybody. It's it's a common knowledge
that I was suspended. Frantic Semitism.
I wanted to talk to. You about that in a.
Moment, but yeah. And so I understand because
I've, I've understood it because I did it out of ignorance and
I'm very, very clear about that. And, but there isn't, I, I don't
think so. The idea that the whole of a
Muslim community is, is anti, you know, is, is not condemning
enough. We, we, we condemn, I can
promise you, be at the MCB, be at the local mosque, be at
every, you know, various condemnation.
What needs to happen is that we need to build bridges between
communities. We need to strengthen those
conversations. I'm absolutely very, very clear
about that. Where it happens, we need to
stamp it. Out Do you think this demand for
condemnation is right? You know, does condemnation
achieve anything? Well, it does because if you're
condemning and you're very, very clear about, you know, this is,
this is not OK. It comes back to the early
conversation, organising what people think is that you're,
yeah, you're you're actually influencing, aren't you?
So when you're saying, you know, when there's an attack on 2 Jews
in Golders Green, that's an attack on all of us.
That is an attack on Great Britain.
It's not. It's not just those two people.
It's just not. And we need to be able to say
that. Why shouldn't we be saying that?
So let's talk about your own case.
You were suspended under Jeremy Corbyn for anti-Semitism because
of some social media posts that you had liked or retweeted
before you were an MP. That's what I'm saying.
But they were anti-Semitic posts, or they were.
They were within tropes, you know?
Why? Why?
Why did you tweet them and what is it that you learnt was wrong
about them? So I tweeted them during the
2014 Gaza war and that's what I did and I tweeted them.
And what was wrong about them was again, it was that
collective I responsibility of the, I think the words of the
Jews are rallying. That was the words.
And then there was the idea and not understanding the what
transportation there. One of the tweets was about
transporting Israel to America and it was Finkenstein, Norman
Finkenstein meme. It was a humorous meme that he
from his perspective, but I didn't understand the underlying
meaning of that. I didn't understand how that
would hurt a community. So 1.
So you. Thought you were agreeing with
the idea. It was, no, it was a, it was a
meme and it was a, it was a, it was a funny meme.
I mean, it wasn't a meme that was, yes, let's do this.
It was a, it was a, it was done whichever way it was done at the
time. In 2014 when when in 2016, in
March 2016, when I was suspended for anti-Semitism.
And I remember the e-mail in the morning on Monday.
I was very, very clear that I need to, I need to step back
from my position. I resigned as PPS from John
Mcdonnell's PPS and then the first person I met was Mark
Gardner, who now heads up the Community safety trust CST and
he explained it to me. He literally sat me down in
Portland house and he said to me, he said, this is where this
is what anti-Semitism is. And I didn't because to me
Christian, I'll be straightly I my first official engagement as
an MP was to my local synagogue. My the synagogue roost needs
repairing and I'm really proud of the Muslim community that
repaired it and raised the funds for it.
In the heart of Manningham did. You even know what a trope was.
No, I didn't. I I.
You were basically uneducated is the thing, weren't you?
So. Actually, I was literally
ignorant. I was absolutely ignorant to it.
So I'd been in, I had a really good conversation with the late
Rudi Lever and I'd been into a synagogue and I understood
anti-Semitism to be a hatred of people.
And I'm like, well, I don't hate you, that's for sure.
So how is this anti-Semitic? So I had to understand that a
week before I'd been a cedar with Rabbi Janner, Laura Janet
Clausner's house. And I'd been, you know, so to me
it was like, well, I don't hate Jews.
So what, what is this? What have I done?
And then when Mark, bless him, came and I bumped into him a
couple of weeks ago, he said to me, he said, this is what it is
now. And then I was like, OK, the
penny dropped. This is what it is.
Then I understood because I understood Islamophobia.
And then I thought, OK, this is the other side of that.
And once I understood it, I went to speak to Jews in a, in a
synagogue at Leeds and had a conversation with them and there
wasn't, I wasn't going to do the whole, Oh my God, you know, I, I
got this wrong. And in terms of I, I had to be
honest about why I got it wrong. I had to be honest that it was
out of ignorance because there is ignorance out there because
we don't understand that you know people.
If I if I didn't understand, then I suspect other.
People it was a different approach as well because, you
know, other people who've been accused of anti-Semitism in
similar circumstances, either either kind of sort of say it
was a mistake and I didn't really mean to do it or, or they
sort of defend their, their view as saying, well, I'm, I'm anti
Netanyahu, I'm anti what the Israeli government is doing.
You know, this is not anti-Semitism.
You, you, you, you haven't tried to sort of defend it in that
way. You just said yeah, you got it
wrong. I got it wrong.
Why would I want How could you defend something if you've got
it wrong and you've got it out of ignomance?
You can't. There is there is no, that
doesn't stop me being pro Palestinian.
That doesn't stop me being anti Netanyahu.
It doesn't stop me. This isn't I'm not that's there.
What is here is I is my word to hurt a community.
I'm sorry, but I have to take responsibility for that.
The The other conversation that's going on in the wake of
these attacks though is coming back to the idea of whether pro
Palestinian protests should be banned because of anti-Semitism
that takes place within them. What is your view of that?
So the anti-Semitism, so we have a right to protest and I do.
I will always defend that right to protest for anybody, be it
Palestine, be it activism for climate change, whatever that is
right. But what I was also say is there
is no room for anti-Semitism anywhere.
Absolutely not. So I do you.
Accept there is on those marches.
There there were there were me. There was posters that were put
up that were horrific and the police rightfully arrest people
and the police rightfully throw the force, throw the book at
them. And that can't happen and it
shouldn't happen, you know, and that's so if you're but that
equally does not mean to say people should not be protesting.
People feel, you know, I nearly lost my election.
I've won by 707 votes because people were angry with the
Labour Party's response and I was angry with the Labour
Party's response. You know, I resigned my position
for the ceasefire on Gaza on the 17th of November.
You know, I was equally upset with my party for their
position, you know, so my party eventually got to the right
position, but it wasn't at the time.
And I had to make a choice that was a red line for me, you know.
So it's not that I don't have my red lines.
It's not that I would, you know, I can protest using Parliament
and using questions and asking questions and that's where I
would. But if I wasn't, would I be?
I'd protest and of course I'd protest What, you know, I am
protesting. I am protesting against what is
happening in Palestine. I am protesting.
I, I, you know, I can't, I can't divorce myself.
And my emotional response to when I see children on my
screen. And you know, I remember the
first time when I learned about Palestine, it was it was
literally a guy holding up his child with his with the upper
half of his body saying to the world, help me, you know, how
can I, I cannot, I can't. And equally, equally you, there
is no way you can't condemn what happened on October the 7th.
You can't, you can't then look at people who have lost their
loved ones. That's not peace.
You can't be a bit pregnant. You've got to be pregnant or
you're not pregnant. You know, you can't be part
pregnant. You can't then say think OK what
is happening here is wrong, but what happened here wasn't wrong.
I mean, it has ultimately affected your career, hasn't it?
Your political career, your your, your view on Gaza.
I, I don't know, I think it's, it's shaped my career.
It's definitely shaped my career from where I'm standing, but I
don't think it's affected me, if anything, when.
You resigned from the government.
Yeah, I resigned from the government, but that yes, or in
that in that context. In that sense, you know what I
mean is, you know, you're more than 10 years into a political
career, you should be a minister by now.
That so I'm a trade envoy. So I'm very, very clear that I
am representing my British business outside and advocating
for it in Indonesia and the ASEAN, which is a huge block of
10 countries. So I'm not, I don't think it's
and there are other reasons why I couldn't do what, you know, be
that minister or have an office. But there are other reasons I
really can't go into right now. Right.
It's an amazing journey really. I mean to think of, you know, a
six year old poor girl in in Bradford, abandoned by her dad,
sent to Pakistan and now parliamentarian without a formal
education. Is is your story a hopeful one
about what can be achieved or, or is it are you the exception
that proves the rule around how people really get on in life?
I think this is it's all of those things.
I'm exception to a rule to be where I am, but we need to make
that change and that's because of MyHeritage, my ethnicity, my
gender, etcetera. So that's one thing, but I think
ultimately this is not my book, is not a misery memoir.
I am one of the most blessed people you will ever meet.
I am sat here in a studio in central London having this
conversation with you. How does a girl like me get to
be in a place like this, right, if it's not for the blessing?
I found my anchor, my resilience in my faith.
I use my faith to fight the patriarchy.
You know, I, I am very, very blessed.
It is a story of hope. It is not a story of misery.
It is not a misery memoir. It is if that 12 year old can
today be sat here doing what she does, then if she can do it,
anybody can do it. It is literally saying to
somebody, that's what I want every every young person who
picks up or reads this is like, well, if she can do it, I can do
it. So for me it's hope all the way.
Nasha, thank you very much indeed for sharing your way to
change the world. Thank you.
Until next time, bye bye.