Labor candidate who lost to new pro-Gaza MP accuses supporters of intimidation | The work

A Labor candidate defeated by a pro-Gaza independent in the general election has called on the new MP to formally disown supporters he says have waged a campaign of “intimidation, abuse and harassment” against her.

Heather Iqbal, who came second in the Dewsbury and Batley constituency to Iqbal Mohamed, who was an independent, called on her opponent to “take action and be explicit” in calling out supporters for their actions.

A spokesman for the new MP said he condemned the abuse and negative campaigning but would “strongly reject” the idea that it all came directly from his team.

Iqbal told The Guardian that before the general election, during local elections in May, groups of people stood outside polling stations in Dewsbury and Batley shouting at voters: “You’re not Muslim if you vote Labour”.

The general election, she said, was worse: “In addition to the van with a megaphone shouting that I am a Zionist and an agent of genocide, I had activists stalked on the street, malicious online content about my white husband and my first name.

“There didn’t seem to be many boundaries when it came to being a supporter of his campaign.”

Even after the campaign ended, Iqbal said, Labor supporters were labeled “traitors and hypocrites” by Mohamed’s supporters, with efforts to prevent them from holding positions in mosques or charities.

“What Iqbal Mohammed does next in this regard will tell us everything we need to know about the MP he will be,” Iqbal said. “Denial and distancing simply won’t work, especially since there is a lot of evidence of abuse by some of the campaign team he tagged in his Facebook posts.

“We have the receipts – the abusive videos, the voice memos, the long WhatsApp posts. It’s time we recognized what his campaign team put Labor activists through and apologized.”

While campaigning in the West Yorkshire seat, the Labor candidate said, members of her team were followed by a van bearing the independent candidate’s face, with supporters shouting abuse at them.

Video footage recorded at the time by Iqbal’s team and seen by The Guardian does not show the van, but shows a megaphone-amplified voice following them, urging voters to “boycott the Zionists, boycott the Labor party”. It adds: “Don’t vote for Zionists, don’t vote for warmongers.”

A number of Labor councilors in Kirklees and elsewhere have resigned amid widespread anger over the death toll in Gaza from Israeli strikes following the October 7 massacre by Hamas, and what some in the party claimed had was an insufficient condemnation of Israel by Keir Starmer and his team.

Such was the furor that four pro-Gaza independents won seats in the Commons on July 4, including Mohamed and Shockat Adam, who beat Labor’s Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South.

As well as disavowing the actions, Iqbal said, the new MP should sign the Civility in Politics Pledge run by the Jo Cox Foundation.

“If he wants to heal the huge and ugly divide he and independent supporters have created in Dewsbury and Batley, he needs to take action and be explicit,” Iqbal said. “Kind words about how he doesn’t want anyone to be upset don’t do anything.”

Mohamed’s spokesman said the megaphone van was not following Iqbal or her team, but that “their paths crossed when the unfortunate incident occurred”.

They added: “Our campaign has been made aware of an isolated incident which took place a few days before the vote, involving a verbal altercation. The police were called to investigate and we believe no further action was taken.

“We strongly reject any suggestion that our campaign used negative tactics during the election. We also want to make it clear that any such behavior, whether by alleged supporters or opposition, is not tolerated.”

Parliament has now signed up to the Jo Cox Civility Pledge, they said.

The anger over Gaza was part of a wider general election atmosphere in which levels of intimidation and threats against MPs and candidates reached what Commons spokesperson Lindsay Hoyle said earlier this month had reached unprecedented.

All new MPs have been given portable panic alarms, which send out a warning signal when triggered, the Guardian was told. Previously, they were available to parliamentarians who requested them.