A Labour Party candidate was told he was not a true Muslim because he had a Western surname.
Heather Iqbal suffered a heavy defeat to Iqbal Mohamed in Dewsbury and Batley after a campaign described as “intimidating”.
Ms Iqbal said Mr Mohamed’s supporters chased her down the street and shouted at her as a “child killer” and an “agent of genocide”, while a loudspeaker blared the message that Labour was a Zionist party.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Ms Iqbal revealed that she had to stop taking her young son with her when he came knocking on doors because of the heated nature of the campaign.
He said Muslim Labour members in Dewsbury were under huge pressure to leave the party because of its stance on Gaza, and that their children were being bullied at school because they had a Labour parent.
His testimony offers a worrying insight into the sectarian politics that have surged in parts of Britain following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.
The news came as the Labour Party met for its annual conference. On Sunday, delegates had to push past a large and noisy group of pro-Palestinian activists to enter the venue.
‘Criticism of my name’
“I was constantly questioned about whether I was Muslim or not, and my name was constantly criticised, including at open society meetings organised by the independent MP,” Ms Iqbal said.
“Activists and some members of my family were chased down the street. During election week, I had a van following me and different activists.
“We would gather to knock on doors, the minibus would arrive 15 minutes later and shout ‘genocidal agent, child murderer’. Who can calmly investigate when this is happening behind you on the street?
“It’s really sad and it means you can’t set up your stall democratically because you feel like no matter where you are, someone is going to aggressively challenge you.
“It was like you had to look over your shoulder every day because the language was determined from the top.”
At the start of the campaign, he took his young son door-to-door. “But I was shouted at for being a child killer,” he said. “That was just at one door, but the real problem is that the language seeps down.
“I was yelled at and felt like I couldn’t include the baby in the campaign. This is not a situation where you put yourself and a child.”
Ms Iqbal said Mr Mohamed, who is in an independent alliance with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons, had never called on his activists to moderate their behaviour.
“If an independent MP is confident in his own views, there should be no need for his campaign to do things like this,” she said. “I was the only woman running and I felt it was completely insensitive for an independent MP not to make a point about this. [to his supporters].”
He added: “We were talking to the police almost every day because of what happened at the local elections. There were 40 or 50 men outside the key polling stations shouting at people. I was really scared in the week leading up to the general election.”
Large Muslim community
Dewsbury, a textile town in West Yorkshire with a proud history of pioneering radicalism, had a Labour MP for most of the last century. At the last boundary review it was merged with Batley, another Labour stronghold.
But in the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election, George Galloway nearly unseated Labour’s Kim Leadbeater by focusing on Muslim sentiment towards the Middle East – a harbinger of the troubles to come.
Since the 1960s Dewsbury has had a large Muslim community, concentrated in the Savile Town, Thornhill Lees and Ravensthorpe areas. Batley also has a similarly large Muslim population.
Pro-Gaza candidate Mohammed received 15,641 votes in the 2024 general elections, compared to the Labor Party’s 8,707 votes.
Ms Iqbal said many Labour members felt “silenced”.
“They felt they had to publicly leave the party because their children were being bullied at school or harassed when they went to the mosque,” he said. “And I think that’s really sad.
“Since the election I have seen a number of social media posts saying that any Labour supporter should be marginalised, ostracised, that they are traitors, hypocrites. They should not be given positions in charities or mosques.
“I would like Iqbal Mohamed to publicly condemn such social media posts and actively fight against them and make people feel that there can be a variety of political views and opposition, as in a healthy democracy.”
Ms Iqbal’s election representative, Jackie Ramsay, said the election team had been greatly reduced because Labour members felt they were being “forced” to leave. “When people were going to the mosque, people in the community were saying to them, ‘Why are you still in that genocidal party?'” she recalled.
Police intervention
Ms Ramsay said she had reported independent supporters to the police on three occasions. On one occasion, while a small group was canvassing in a Muslim area in Batley, an independent supporter came running up and “shouted at us in a very aggressive way that we were not welcome in that area”.
“He collected leaflets from some of the gates we had deployed. He said it was an independent area; if we didn’t come out, he would call people and get them to let us out.
“We were the genocidal party, we were responsible for the deaths of women and children. We supported the killing of babies, we were Zionists.” The police were called, but did not come.
Elsewhere in Batley, he said he was campaigning with members of Ms Iqbal’s family and some other Muslim activists who remained with the Labour Party.
“There was a man who told them they were not good Muslims,” Mrs Ramsay said. “If they were Muslims they needed to re-examine their faith because of the genocide.
“It’s a convenient mantra. The pollsters were very upset, obviously, because they were Muslims and they were being attacked for their beliefs.
“You don’t mind arguing with people at the door, but what bothers you is shouting in the street.”
Later, Labour activists distributing leaflets in the Ravensthorpe area of Dewsbury were followed by a car “circling the crescent with us, carrying a band shouting loudly that you will not vote Labour”.
“A few days later, a big white van with Iqbal Mohamed posters on both sides started following us. This was three days before voting day,” he said.
“Wherever we went, a minibus would come behind us and say that the Labour Party is a genocidal party, that we are independent, that you don’t want to vote for a Labour Party that supports the killing of women and children.
“There were three teams in Ravensthorpe one night and they did a circuit around each team. Heather was in one of the teams and they told her that they were going to tell people in the polling stations not to vote for her because she supported genocide.”
Local elections also affected
Ramsay stood as a councillor in May’s local elections but lost to an independent candidate in Dewsbury South, which includes the Muslim-majority Savile Town and the white-majority Thornhill.
A few months ago, he said, he was summoned by leaders of local mosques to interview council members about their views on the conflict in the Middle East.
But it soon became clear that nothing could undo the impact of Sir Keir Starmer’s disastrous interview on LBC in which he said Israel had the right to deny electricity and water to Gaza.
“The expectation was actually that we would resign from Labour and then they would support us as councillors,” Ms Ramsay said. “Obviously, I didn’t resign. It was pretty clear in the local election campaign that things were going against us.
“Labour members started leaving. There was an intimidation. People of Muslim faith were expected to leave the ‘party of genocide’ or the ‘party that supports infanticide’.”
Mrs Ramsay added: “Voting day was very difficult for us at the local elections. There were a lot of people with big independent badges outside the polling stations.
“I’ve seen this in Thornhill Lees and Savile Town where people were told which ballot box to vote in. You had to go through a bit of a rough patch [to get in].”
“I think there is a group of people who are exploiting the emotions that Gaza brings,” Ms. Iqbal said.
“They don’t just make people feel like they can’t vote Labour because of their religion. That feeling overrides how you might feel about your local services or public policies more generally.
“The independents have touched on something that people feel really sensitive about. I don’t think that means all Muslims think the same or vote the same.”
Mr Mohamed was approached for comment.