Leicester South MP Shockat Adam says he and his children face racist abuse

Shockat Adam, the recently elected independent MP for Leicester South, has revealed that he and his family face regular racial abuse and verbal attacks.

Adam overturned a Labour majority of around 22,500 in last month’s general election and entered parliament on a pro-Palestinian platform.

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Middle East Eye, he said he started facing significant racial abuse during the general election campaign.

“People from my team were often racially abused when they knocked on doors or on polling day," he said, "including my son, who was standing outside a polling station and was greeted with the P-word.” 

Adam told MEE the abuse has continued after the election: “I have faced a torrent of abuse online and in real life, as have people in my family.”

This comes after Jon Ashworth, the former Labour MP unseated by Adam, said in multiple interviews that he faced abuse and intimidation during the campaign. 

Leicester South was a safe seat for the Labour Party for decades. Apart from a brief Liberal Democrat interlude in 2004 and 2005, the constituency had a Labour MP since 1987. 

Ashworth had been its MP since 2011, elected four times into the role. He was also a shadow cabinet minister. 

But on 4 July, election day, Adam - a local independent with no previous involvement in politics - ended decades of Labour representation in Leicester South.

He had campaigned on a range of local issues, but also on Israel, tapping into concerns many people had about the Labour Party’s early support for Israel’s siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

'The magic of democracy'

Although Ashworth has not explicitly accused Adam of intimidation, he claimed after the election that the campaign in general "was run by a minority of bullies, and loud mouths".

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"I have never known a campaign of such vitriol, such bullying, such intimidation built on the foul and obnoxious lie that I was responsible for genocide. That I had the blood of Gazan children on my hands."

Adam strongly hit back against Ashworth’s statements, telling MEE that “I would never intimidate or condone intimidation for anybody.”

He added: “When you have an MP [Ashworth] going into an area, surrounded by people that support him, who is then questioned robustly but without verbal abuse, without physical intimidation, on an issue that matters dearly to them - to present it as some form of vitriol and hatred, aggressiveness, abusiveness is an injustice, and unfair on the people he served for so many years.”

He said the election result should have been celebrated as “the magic of democracy”, and suggested Labour was claiming something had been “going on negatively” as an excuse to explain the party’s defeat.

Adam told MEE he enjoys helping his constituents and spending time with local communities in Leicester.

'I want to do what’s best for our country'

In parliament, Adam has cooperated on numerous issues with the four other independent pro-Palestinian MPs who were elected in July. Many have speculated that the group are considering forming a party - something Adam would not confirm or deny.

“It has been absolutely brilliant working together on issues that we all agree upon and hold a very similar view, and [the fact that] we feel together on those cases gives us a much louder and stronger voice.

'There’s people in government and across other parties that I, as an independent, am happy to work with'

– Shockat Adam MP

“If we see fit to form some form of alliance together as independents, then that’s something we would seriously consider for the future.”

But are the five independents aligned in their vision for the country?

“That’s what we are deciphering at the moment.”

He added that he is willing to work with MPs from across the political spectrum in pursuit of common goals. 

“There’s people in the government and across other parties that I, as an independent, am happy to work with, because I am not partisan.

“As an independent I want to do what’s best for our country and our constituents.”