Police have again been called to intervene in the increasingly toxic election race in Bradford West, where George Galloway is hoping to retain the seat he won so spectacularly in a byelection in 2012.
Dr Aisha Gill, an academic from the University of Roehampton, claims she received anonymous threatening phone calls demanding she stop publicly supporting Naz Shah, Galloway’s Labour opponent. Shah herself has complained of being the subject of numerous intimidation tactics, including finding a dead crow with grass stuffed in its beak left on her doorstep.
On Wednesday the Metropolitan police confirmed they were investigating after Gill, a criminologist and expert in “honour”-based violence against women, said she received two sinister voicemails.
Both came from the same man, who she described as sounding like an Asian male, speaking broken English. In the first message, left on Friday night, the man said she would “face the consequences” if she did not withdraw support for Shah. In the second message, Gill claims the man mentioned Labour and said she needed to “stop what I was doing”.
Both calls came from withheld numbers, but detectives told her they may still be able to trace the calls, Gill said.
The experience left her shaken, she said, but determined to continue helping Shah’s campaign: “After experiencing this intimidation and harassment I felt a real sense of unease and invasion of space, but I will continue being vociferous in my support for Naz. Why should my voice be muzzled? I will not back down. I do not feel I’m doing anything untoward.”
She said she was simply trying to help Shah, a campaigner on mental health and women’s issues, whom she had known since Shah’s mother, Zoora, was imprisoned for poisoning to death her abusive partner in the 1990s. The pair campaigned outside the Home Office with the Southall Black Sisters for Zoora’s release and are now friends.
A spokesman for Galloway suggested history was repeating itself. “Well, this is getting eerily reminiscent of the Bethnal Green campaign,” said Ron McKay in an email, referring to the 2005 general election battle in east London, when Galloway defeated Labour’s Oona King, who had accused Galloway’s backers of anti-semitism. “Let us see if there is any evidence for this, as there was not then.”
He suggested Shah’s backstory was not all it seemed: “It would be good if those so keen to adopt and replay Naz Shah’s personal story, which she has trailed across the media in lieu of policies and politics, actually checked some facts. Just one small, untrue detail in her account which she has played on several times. She says she was ‘forced’ into marriage at 15. In fact she was 16 and a half. Shockingly young, but not illegal here or in Pakistan. And her mother flew out to join her to celebrate the marriage. Born in November 1973, married in May 1990. Even my bad maths thinks something is amiss.”
In response, Shah said she had her “nikah” or legal contract when she was just 15 and then went back to Pakistan when she was 16 for the “rukhsati”, the bigger wedding celebration.
Gill is not the first woman to claim to have been threatened during the Bradford West campaign. Last month Naveeda Ikram, who was on Labour’s shortlist with Shah, said she called police after being impersonated online by someone who wanted to falsely suggest she held racist, sectarian views.
Shortly after her selection earlier this month, Shah wrote a piece for the Asian news site Urban Echo which went viral, in which she said: “I had not reached home following my selection and I had at least two new fake twitter accounts set up in my name. Already my ‘character’ has been attacked and desecrated through social media and trolling. The smear campaign that has started has been some of the most vicious and disgusting I have seen. But it does not scare me, will not change me, and it in fact fuels my passion for change more.”
Shah said on Tuesday night: “Ever since I was selected I have been subject to intimidation and harassment. The other day someone left a dead crow on my door step. Its beak was stuffed with grass. A crow doesn’t just accidentally die like that on your doorstep, does it?”
