Labour candidate who lost to new pro-Gaza MP accuses his backers of intimidation

A Labour candidate defeated by a pro-Gaza independent in the general election has called for the new MP to formally disown supporters who she says 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 standing as an independent, called for her opponent to “take action and be explicit” in calling out supporters for their actions.

A spokesperson for the new MP said he condemned abuse and negative campaigning but would “firmly reject” the idea that any of this came directly from his team.

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

The general election, she said, was worse: “As well as the van with a megaphone shouting that I was a Zionist and genocide agent, we had activists being chased down 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 was over, Iqbal said, Labour supporters had been labelled “traitors and hypocrites” by backers of Mohamed, with efforts to stop them holding positions in mosques or charities.

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

“We have the receipts – the abusive videos, the voice notes, the lengthy WhatsApp posts. It is time to acknowledge what his campaign team put Labour activists through, and apologise.”

While campaigning in the West Yorkshire seat, the Labour candidate said, members of her team were followed by a van carrying the face of the independent candidate, with supporters shouting abuse about them.

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

A series of Labour councillors in Kirklees and elsewhere quit amid widespread anger about the death toll in Gaza by Israeli strikes after the 7 October massacre by Hamas, and what a number in the party argued was insufficient condemnation of Israel by Keir Starmer and his team.

Such was the anger that four pro-Gaza independents won Commons seats on 4 July, among them Mohamed, and Shockat Adam, who defeated Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South.

As well as disowning the actions, Iqbal said, the new MP should sign the pledge about civility in politics led by the Jo Cox Foundation.

“If he wants to heal the enormous and ugly divide he and independent supporters have created in Dewsbury and Batley, he must take action and be explicit,” Iqbal said. “Lukewarm words about how he doesn’t want anyone to be upset do nothing.”

The spokesperson for Mohamed said the van with the megaphone was not following Iqbal or her team, but that “their paths crossed when the unfortunate incident took place”.

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

“We firmly reject any suggestions that our campaign used negative tactics during the election. We also wish to make clear that any such behaviour, whether by purported supporters or those of the opposition, is not condoned.”

The MP had now signed the Jo Cox civility pledge, they said.

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

All new MPs have been given handheld panic alarms, which send a warning signal when triggered, the Guardian has been told. Previously, they were available to MPs who asked for them.