Naz Shah: Forced Marriage, Family Secrets and Her Mother’s Murder Conviction

17:37Naz Shah:I mean, it comes up a lot in these conversations, the idea that we only know one childhood. we only know the one we have so you don't know whether you're poor really you don't know whether you're um uh whether things that are being done to you are normal whether there's a sort of quiet presumption that everybody's childhood is the same and that everybody will be going through the same things that you're going through however but that wouldn't apply to you because you'd know that other children had toys and you'd know that other children had their dad at home and you'd know that other children were not being ostracized or told that they couldn't yeah but dad i was very

18:10James O'Brien:clear about god i was really clear about i wasn't allowed to do things you know like my other friends were um but the toys bit toys bit probably not so much to be fair um i knew my brother got got things my brother was you know again that whole thing of a boy you know my brother had a bike he had a computer bike he had a sega play thing yeah that was it right and he had you know when when my mom got locked up i remember selling the remaining gold i had just to try and keep up with his kind kind of new, the new games and things, right? Because I was trying to be mum and I was not very brilliant at it.

18:46James O'Brien:But it was, so Imi did get everything. Imi got the new clothes. Imi got, he was always well-dressed. He was always, because he was the boy. Wow. And it was, you know, when you look back at it, you see that and you see how he behaves even now. He likes his new clothes, you know, whereas me and my sister aren't as bothered about clothes. Whereas he does, he likes to, he's well-groomed. He's well-polished, you know. So he likes a nice car. He likes his nice house.

19:13Naz Shah:I find it fascinating and to me very obvious. But my goodness me, if more people understood it, then the world, the country especially, would be a much happier place. All the stuff you're describing would have been commonplace in 18th and 19th century in every corner of England. And certainly if you were to go back even further to Tudor times, Henry VIII chopping his wife's heads off and stuff like that. It's a human condition that you're describing. It's just in different chronological and generational stages, depending on whether you're from Bradford or Mirpool.

19:45James O'Brien:Yep, absolutely.

19:46Naz Shah:In the first instance.

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20:36Naz Shah:so your mother then becomes immediately very very vulnerable although you wouldn't know that at the time but she's she's lost and now abandoned previously she was lost but accompanied by your dad now she is i mean really alone yep very much in a without knowing the language it was um one of

20:58James O'Brien:and i talk about this in the book was when we got lost on a bus yes so we got lost on the That's a horrible story. It was a 636 or 637 that went up to Clayton. And we got on it. We got off on the corner of Legrims Lane. And I drive past that bus stop very often because it's in my constituency. And I remember her getting off and the bus driver having to come out of the bus and to calm her down and reassure her. So you literally had to turn right and right again. And Kirkham Road was there. That's all it was, was literally a few hundred yards. But she was absolutely beside herself. You know, one toddler, one pushchair, and a seven-year-old.

21:35Naz Shah:And this is why, I suppose, that the man that she would later kill was able to inveigle his way into her life. I mean, do you remember anything about that, or has it all been explained to you subsequently?

21:46James O'Brien:So I remember him from before I found out that my mum had killed him. That wasn't until later on, until she'd been in prison for a few years. No, I know all that.

21:54Naz Shah:What I mean is this is because she was so vulnerable, he could come into her life. I know now. Right. But you didn't know then.

22:00James O'Brien:time god no at the time he was uncle asham he bought fruit he bought so he was just a nice

22:05Naz Shah:local man who was looking out for a vulnerable woman absolutely that's what i i saw it as he

22:10James O'Brien:was you know me and my brother both had tb we were living in horrible places he came around with a bag of fruit and he was nice uncle asham i didn't know i mean now when you look at it you have a 23 year old with three kids vulnerable destitute and you're swanning around you know what's going on it'd raise eyebrows automatically it'd raise eyebrows but not a child's but no but

22:32Naz Shah:not that time no and and the poverty that you'd endured before uncle as i'm turned up on the scene was was pretty textbook wasn't it i mean outside toilets rats damp all of the oh yeah i remember

22:43James O'Brien:being in a room and if you imagine this room you've got a door there and that that door's the inside coming into the room there's a door to the left which is a kitchen and the bath was in the kitchen so there was a bathtub there and a gas cooker and a couple of uh couple of um cupboards and once we opened the door we're all sat there and a rat jumped off the shelf and ran across the bath and to me it was that big it wasn't this big it was that big you know and i remember the rat just running across and we never ever i don't even ever remember going upstairs in that house because we just could not afford to heat it you know so we just lived in that room in that kitchen and we slept in there.

23:19James O'Brien:We didn't go upstairs. We didn't go upstairs and sleep in an upstairs bedroom until Legrooms Lane. And even then, we had a small bedroom, not much bigger than the size of this room, which had two double beds in it. And me and my sister shared one and my brother and mum of a shared one. And there was just a bit of space to walk around in because that's what we heated. We heated, but we did heat that. We had two room, which was, you know, which was a step up really because you could sleep in a bedroom on proper beds and you had a downstairs living room and kitchen but you still never went into the front room the front room was only if guests came and you had to put the heater on but you didn't use that and you didn't use the other bedrooms they were just where you stored your clothes and things but that's not where you slept

24:00Naz Shah:um and this is where the there's a lot of dichotomy isn't there in your life even with the words like we've done the different meanings of visit and we've done the different meanings of muslim as well that the way that you know it can be used as a label when we're talking about very bad stuff but a proper Muslim, a good Muslim, is something to revere and admire and, in your case, aspire to be and emulate. Dichotomy everywhere. And now your mother enters into a life of extraordinary dichotomy where she is being abused by the man that you call uncle. She's pimped out by him, effectively. And yet she's also looking after you and Immy and Foz.

24:47Naz Shah:She's somehow managing to lead to I can't I mean I'm gonna get emotional just imagining it and I've only met you for the first time today And I've never met I've never met your mom, but that Extraordinary strain of keeping the two Universes separate is almost inconceivable to me.

25:05James O'Brien:I think it's even even now It's it's not something I can get my head around It's a there are some things. I'll never be able to swear You know, there's some things I'll never get my head around. All I can look at is when I go home, it's like the day that I went home and I got selected as an MP and I hugged my mum. Those moments you realise sometimes that pain comes through. You know, and that's emotional. That's really, it's a joyous, a very, very joyous moment because I'd just been selected. But it was also just a bitter, sweet experience of all of a sudden, the thing that my mum craved the most is that and all of a sudden I've been selected to be a candidate.

25:47James O'Brien:I hadn't even bought an election yet. But the fact that I was selected to be a candidate to stand, that was a kind of coming home. Do you know? I think I do.

25:56Naz Shah:I think I do. And it just, because she's been raised in rural Pakistan, never really to question the system and what matters. And so all you could give her, the most valuable thing you could give her, having by this stage in your life having a fairly clear idea of what she had been through you could give her back her honour

26:21James O'Brien:that's it, that's the bottom line honour it's do you know we had a girl who was murdered in 2016 Samia Shahid and she was taken to Pakistan, she was raped and brutally murdered and this was only in 2016 and it's always honor it comes back to the same thing for honor and somebody said to me well you know men bask in honor and women bear the burden of shame it was baroness who actually said that to me and i remember thinking you know at that time when i came to look at the title of the book it's just is that is it it was either call it is that or honored you know the concept of is it is so ingrained it's so it's like somebody um a good friend of mine she runs a literature festival in Bradford Symer she wrote a piece and she said culture is like culture is what the sea is to the fish that swim in it they swim in it but they don't know what it is that is exactly what culture is for a human being you're immersed in it and it's how you and our culture and my culture was all about is it and it remains about is it and it remains and I think in the last 20 years I think it's shifting now especially with the younger generation it's massively shifting it's about being their measuring yardstick is how good a person you are from an Islamic perspective rather than a community perspective that's the difference, that's the shift that's taken place and I really really welcome that.

27:52James O'Brien:And you played a part in it

27:53Naz Shah:particularly as we'll get onto shortly when you take on the Baradi culture and the the way that things had to be done because they'd always been done oh god yeah but um it is because your mother is enduring without you or your brother or your sister knowing she is enduring hell that she wants to get you away so we're now you're 12 now and you are sent to um pakistan still utterly unaware that that mum was being abused by uncle azan back in bradford she just needs to get you out of there, partly because you're reaching an age at which he might have taken an interest in you.

28:31James O'Brien:So apparently he indicated that he was interested, the grass is greener now with your daughter. Those are the words I'll never forget when I heard about what happened. And then so off I was to Pakistan. It was, you know, Pakistan was conservative. I was rebellious, right? I wanted the fringe. I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear. I went to watch a movie. I went to watch Rocky IV, I think it was, with Joanna Lockwood. I'll never forget. So I went to the pictures, right? So I was already breaking the barriers. And then all of a sudden, I was in Pakistan. And in Pakistan, luckily, I'm fluent in the language, right, in the village language.

29:05James O'Brien:So my mum taught us that. But going there, and first, it was like, oh, my God, this is an adventure. It's like living on a farm, right? You've got goats, you've got chickens, buffalo, donkey, dog, everything, right? And I had fun. I didn't realise that that was going to turn into two and a half years. I had no idea. that I was going to become a girl who looked like the hired help because I'd play out in the sun. So I'd get this beautiful tan, right? To me, it's like I'm playing out in the sun. But in Asian culture, South Asian culture, which is still predominant today, is the fairer skinned you are, the lighter you are, the prettier you are, and the more desired you are.

29:44James O'Brien:So I was like, you know, tanned as tanned, playing out in the sun, not caring about anything else. and then I became the kind of and how I was taught and my features weren't thin and pretty and petite and it was that whole thing and those things carry with you throughout your life where I was literally labelled well you're the ugly kid you're the ugly child so I literally by my peers around me I remember my cousin when they were talking about the marriages she would get because she was pretty, she'd get a nicer husband, she was more valuable, if you like, going for a better word. There was all of these kind of cultural things that you know were going on and you were being judged by.

30:31James O'Brien:And that stayed with me for a long time, a very, very long time.

30:35Naz Shah:When did it, I mean, because it must have happened slowly. You didn't wake up one morning and think, oh, this isn't a holiday after all. But how did it dawn upon you that this was very different from what you'd originally expected?

30:47James O'Brien:the whole trip not not you know my grandmother um god bless us all you know she's um she's a very hard-nosed woman she was a widow when she married my dad my granddad my granddad i was the apple of my granddad's eye he loved me um he was he was i miss him so much he was amazing and but he my grandmother was very very hard-nosed as was my auntie my mom's sister right and there how they raise you and control you isn't how we do that with our children it's through sarcasm it's through emotional blackmail it's through you've got to watch some of those memes right on tiktok and on instagram where this is we call them this is mean back home uh they see people say this is how my mum controls me so oh this is what my mum says to me so if i say to my mother i haven't washed the dishes oh you just want to murder me you just want me to go to an early grave don't you it's that kind of stuff right so everything is exaggerated and you don't and it's like mother don't leap it it's not that deep i'm just not washing the dishes right so there's lots of memes now but that's what it was like it was literally if you did something wrong your parental control wasn't sitting you down saying come on guys you needed this was your end of the bargain you should have done this it's not that it is literally oh my god this will be the death of me you'd have a drama.

32:11James O'Brien:So emotional sledgehammers all the time.

32:13Naz Shah:No room for no scalpels no little tools just like boom straight the biggest weapon straight on the table.

32:19James O'Brien:So that's what the conditioning was in Pakistan. It was you do this and if you don't and then if you said I want to go back to England it was like oh well you don't like us. It was sarcastic. It was like oh so we're not good enough for you. You want privilege. We're not you know you don't like the village life. We are beneath you. It was that kind of sarcasm and that emotional sledgehammer that you just shut up. It shuts you up. You ain't challenging that. You can't win, can you?

32:46Naz Shah:No, you can't. You can't argue your way out of it because you do want to go back to England, but it doesn't mean that you think that they're winning. Oh, forget it. I'll stay.

32:53James O'Brien:Exactly. Just shut up, Naz. Just shut up. Don't challenge me. You ain't going to win this one.

33:02Naz Shah:Just back up a bit. What were you like at primary school? Did you enjoy school? Oh, I loved school.

33:06James O'Brien:I was an ASTAR student. I was teacher's pet. There's no surprises there.

33:10Naz Shah:But all that was taken away from you, effectively.

33:14James O'Brien:I never went to year four. I left school at 12, and it was my final year at middle school. We had a different system then. It was a middle school. And then I never went back. And then when I did come back when I was 15, my mum put me straight into a nappy packing factory. Didn't send me back to school then either.

33:32Naz Shah:And when you came back, you weren't on your own?

33:37James O'Brien:Nope, I'd had my niqar. So I'd had my niqar on, I think it was Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I'd just turned 15 in November. And then within days I was back in the UK. That was the condition, unless you, if you don't have your niqar. And it wasn't an engagement. So they could have just done a basic engagement, which would have been easier to break. But a niqar is literally an Islamic marriage. It is, that is it. if you wanted to break that, you'd have to get to an Islamic divorce. And then, so I had that done, and then I came back to the UK.

34:07Naz Shah:Well, I don't want to gloss over this, because, I mean, it's huge. You're a 15-year-old girl, you're still a child, really, but you are being treated simultaneously like a child and a woman, and your family have chosen a husband for you from within the ranks of the family.

34:24James O'Brien:Yep.

34:25Naz Shah:It was so at odds with the girl that had just been to see Rocky IV with Joanna,

34:30James O'Brien:yeah it was it was very much at odds it wasn't my it wasn't i remember going out and i was i'd gone out with the dog we'd got we'd gone out for the dog walking and i was playing with the boys because that's like i said my cousins in the uk and my uncles were all all boys there weren't many girls so i used to play with the boys i was a tomboy and i was the eldest grandchild so i get i got trekked you know by the by the other people around me differently and when i went to pakistan and i went out with this dog and i remember walking the dog and coming back and my cousin tyra she She pulled me to one side and she went, you can't do this anymore.

35:02James O'Brien:And I said, why not? She went, because you're going to marry him. And that was it. It was just like, you know, the shutters came down. Like all of a sudden my childhood went. My childhood went when I was literally about 13 years old. It wasn't even, I didn't even get to 15. 15 was a marriage happened, but I think I was 13, 14 when that conversation was had with me. That you cannot play anymore. You are going to be married to him. Like the idea of, you know, my daughter is 21. My son is 18. the idea of 13, 14, you'd say to them, you know, you've got to think about, you've got to be married. It's just, my childhood went that day.

35:38James O'Brien:It just wasn't, it wasn't, you know, I never had the, and I talk about it in my book, I went to one of my friend's houses in Tinsley and she had Boy George and Culture Club and it was Wham days and she had, and I was fascinated that she even was allowed to have a poster in her bedroom. You know, I never had a poster in my bedroom. I didn't have all of those. You know, I loved George Michael, it was probably my teenage crush right and then it was like but I didn't have a picture of him I didn't have you know I didn't have any of them I think actually one was probably the first cassette I ever bought was one of them one of their singles got to think back to that anyway but yeah so it was

36:15Naz Shah:very very far far cry from what I was used to and there's more dichotomy here isn't there because you're now girl and woman you're you're school girl age albeit that you were put to work in a nappy factory and also wife i mean you've used the phrase emotional blackmail to describe the uh the process through which your your family kind of put you in this position but it's it's probably more accurate simply to say you couldn't see any other path to go down at that point no you

36:43James O'Brien:couldn't because so here was my mother so we go back to the concept of is it all over again yeah So my mother went to her brothers, said, buy me a house, you know, look after me. My brothers said, her brothers said, give up the kids. She hadn't even had Foz at this time. At this point, she was still heavily pregnant. Give up the kids, we'll look after you. Well, there isn't going to be, there's no mother who's going to give up her kids for the sake of her brothers looking after her. So she turned that down. She went to her family to buy the house. They didn't buy the house. She ended up buying it on Azam's name.

37:14James O'Brien:and then she was in this trap where you know the first time he took her he the first time she went to that house so she's got this noose around her neck which is the house and she wants to give her kids the security so she's lost two brothers for her children because she wanted to keep her children and then she's got a third brother whose son i was to marry and the emotion the way that my cousin said it to me she said your mothers you will you will separate them in their graves you will separate their graves if you do not do this if you do not have this in car now that for a 15 year old imagine saying you will be responsible your mother's already given up two brothers she's got three brothers she's already given up two to look after you lot so she's made that sacrifice she's got one left you if you if you don't do this she'll lose a third one too that's that's more than emotional blackmail that is like the pressure of that that you're the you're going to be the reason that your mother has her brother her last remaining brother and she's already lost two already because of you because your mother chose you it's like you owe her a debt and you've got to pay that debt by getting by being married at 15.

38:25Naz Shah:Which means that when he turned out to be violent the decision to leave is even harder than it would be if he was just violent because you've also got the context of of of what you've just described you've also got the context of breach

38:41James O'Brien:when i finally left muzzer i'd found out he was he was um playing away right so it wasn't so it was really weird right so all of this is that all of the rest of it it was what i needed was him to him to be in the wrong even then i couldn't leave you know like in a normal relationship if you're not so lee and i we we're not together we co-parent we've got three kids we're best friends but we can't be we're not we're not good married yeah and we accept that and it's fine and it's nice and it's you know and he was round at mine last night cooking for the kids and whatever you right that's a normal existence but in in in in that in that you know i i made a choice we made a choice that we were no longer okay to be married that was okay but in this instance i needed a reason and it had to be his fault the idea that you had to have a reason that wasn't yours that was him forcing you on it so you couldn't actually decide well this isn't working for me so I'm going to get out of it that wasn't the reason I left the reason was I had to find a reason no matter how much I wanted to leave it had to be his fault to maintain that sense of my honor so it wasn't my fault you know and a lot of women do that and I hear it even today well how can I leave how can I you know so it still had to be his fault I still had to maintain that is it so you're back

40:06Naz Shah:in Bradford 1992 or thereabouts what I mean what when you got off the plane what what were you thinking what were you planned should I be honest the first

40:16James O'Brien:thing I wanted to do it was a thing that I wanted a pair of jeans I swear I swear to God I wanted a pair of jeans I went to the case catalogue shop with my mum literally the next day and I bought myself a pair of jeans I wanted it was like it was like that rebellious streak that you might have kept me there for two and a half years but you're not taking my it I went and bought a pair of jeans I'll never forget them jeans they were baggy jeans roll up at the bottom and I went and got the pair of jeans I was like no you're not you can keep me wherever you want it's like that thing you can take the girl out of Bradford you can't take Bradford out of the girl it was one of them you cannot take my freedom and choices away so you

40:54Naz Shah:were you were holding on to who you are and who you knew you were regardless of how much enormous effort had been put into trying to turn you into something else yeah two and a half years of it

41:04James O'Brien:to mold me into the good girl and it didn't work but apart from the genes what were you thinking about the future about the role you would fulfill in in life would you do what i mean did you try you try to go back into education i did i did so i really there's that's still a desire of mine at some point to go back to education. Oh, we're still young. Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking, do you know what, I could still do this. Yeah. But I really wanted to go to college. I really wanted to go to university. So when I first left Muzzard, so I left him eventually, but when I first left Muzzard, before my mum got locked up, I actually ran away from home effectively.

41:40James O'Brien:So I went to a friend of mine who was away studying in Watford, and I went and stayed with her for a couple of days in her student house, and then I got a room, and then I got a room, and I thought, right, I've got to September. This was about January, February. And I thought, until September, I'll work, save some money, and at September, I'll go back to college, and I'll go and get my GCSEs and get my A-levels and then go to university. That was a grand plan then, and obviously that went out the window because 11th of April, Asim died, and that was a whole new life. Was that linked to your return?

42:17Naz Shah:I mean, why did your mum reach the end of her tether then?

42:22James O'Brien:Do you know what? I'm not sure. I think it was a combination of things. You know, it's like the straw that breaks a camel's back. And it was the house, because I was 18 by this point. And I'd just turned 18 in November. And I think the whole idea was that once your daughter was 18, you'd get the house back. And clearly, by then, he was not giving up on the house, even though she'd paid for it. She'd made every mortgage payment. She'd paid the deposit for it. She was a beneficial owner. Yeah, but because it was in his name. so I think that might have been the tipping point but I've never actually been I've never thought about it I'm going to look at that I think it will have been from the court case and everything I knew that his abuse wouldn't stop it was relentless I think the other thing that was very very key was that my sister was now 11 years old and she was coming to that age of potential puberty and he'd indicated well you've got her away from Pakistan but the other one is growing up you know so i think that was one of the reasons as well so i think it was a

43:25Naz Shah:combination of things yeah it makes sense you had no clue about any of this at the time no not at the time i didn't god no and and it is and i mean we should probably insert a little bit of context um with regard to what what had happened to your mom so he went to prison for a while and

43:40James O'Brien:men would still come around to yeah he literally he i hate using that word but it's like he literally pimped her from prison for favours on the inside.

43:50Naz Shah:Because if she didn't do what he wanted her to do, you'd have gone hungry.

43:56James O'Brien:We would have lost the house. We would have lost the roof over your head. Yeah, the house was literally. So you've got a woman who's been moved from pillar to post with her kids in those black bin liners. And finally, we've got a house where we use a bathroom, we use a bedroom. You know, we've got some normality. That was the noose around her neck. that was the weight with which he oppressed her that was his leverage over her and he used that leverage and then my sister was 11 and she was growing up and he'd said that you know the other one you took her away at 12 now there's the other one growing up so yeah and it i mean i i coming

44:35Naz Shah:back to that thing but it's to your mum's credit that you knew nothing it's it may seem like an odd thing to say but it's to your because your mum was protecting you from him and from the knowledge of what he was doing to her so I think you well I know you did it you dined together to you he's still affable there's some there's some sort of moral somersaults that you've had to do as a younger woman because you know he's got his own wife and family elsewhere and you know that he's sort of there's something going on with your mum and you're obviously very uncomfortable about the men coming to the house and going upstairs with your mother but you you you still sort of think that he's an essentially benign presence at your dinner table until until that night until

45:21James O'Brien:until even then i grieved for him james when he died i genuinely grieved for him i was you know i when they when i was arrested because my mum and i were both arrested because i'd made the meat curry the night that he when he ate at our house you know it you know to me he was uncle asham i i actually agreed for him so i didn't know i didn't know until 1995 until pragna went to see my mum pieced it all together worked out what happened because to pragna to me i was so my this is a miscarriage of justice this is you know there's no way my mother could hurt anybody because to me my mother couldn't hurt anybody yeah you know she's she's um she couldn't hurt a fly could my mum so how could she take a life and a life of that person who's helpful to us you know who's in our lives it just didn't it didn't it didn't square up it's you know once we were told it was really clear the forensics were really clear everything was really clear actually the poison that had been consumed in our house so she was banged to rights but when she told the story she told it to pragna patel and she told it because pragna was very clear and this is what I often say to people when you go and had my mother been arrested by a white woman even maybe they'd have had a different understanding you know because it's clear to you she's killed but why is it is there another way of looking at this is it a manipulative woman for a house or is it look at a history is it a destitute woman and there's something else going on nobody inquired nobody looked at all of that and the first person who did was Pragna Patel and the minute she looked at it it all unraveled and then it made sense how she my mother behaved how she rocked in front of a fire how she used to you know curse that she hasn't got enough money to you know poison the herself and the kids and she was destitute and she was poor and she was you know and trying to bring money together and always work in different jobs then it made sense but to be honest before that you were just living it and even when i was living it two and a half years i was in Pakistan when I came back I was in full-time work I was working all hours and just because it was peace rate packing nappies then when I was working at linen hire I was getting and then Mazhar came over I was doing as much overtime as I could so if I could get a 12-hour shift I'd do a 12-hour shift and then you're at home you're eating together we didn't have conversations like you and your children or me my children will have we didn't sit down say how was your day it was none of that it wasn't it just wasn't what I do today it's not my it's not the experience of my kids you came home you had obligations you had to cook you had to clean and you went to bed because you had to get get back up and that was it it wasn't it was an existence it wasn't a

48:00Naz Shah:fulfilling life it's just the way it was so did and it was pagna that told you what your mom told

48:06James O'Brien:her pagna told me and my sister take me there take me to that room so she went to um she sat us down and she went, look, I've got something to tell you. You know, your mum did actually kill Asim and the reason she killed him. So to us it was quite numbing and it was quite shocking, more so because I was older at this point and Fuzia was, I think she was 16, 17 at this time when she told us. And it then kind of like, it made sense. It was like clarity because all of these, because we knew, you know, there was this, I was absolutely 100 % she hasn't done this, she hasn't done this, she hasn't done this.

48:46James O'Brien:It's a miscarriage of justice, a miscarriage of justice. But then nothing was going our way. Nothing was showing me that it was what could have been apart from, you know, you had these odd people who'd say to you because you were going to prison every five days a week meeting all these people saying maybe somebody's done some black magic and all of these conversations, cultural stuff comes into it. You know, your mum didn't actually do it. Maybe it was a gin that put it in there. and I was like, well, how do you explain that to a flipping British court? You know, there was some kind of gin and the gin put poison in his...

49:17James O'Brien:Do you know what I mean? You come up with absurd kind of ideas and what could have been anything. Yes, what was the obvious? Sometimes I wonder, even my lawyers, they never actually prepared me to say she'd be found guilty. They knew damn well the forensics were clear. They never sat me down and said, Naz, your mother's going down. Your mother's actually committed this crime. They were like, no, no, it's all right, Naz, she's innocent. we're going to fight this, we're going to fight this and I just feel maybe when I look back maybe I should have been told well actually this is the evidence, this is a probability, this is there is something else going on here or maybe I was in denial that my mother, the picture that they painted of her which was this manipulative woman for the sake of the house has killed a man this good character maybe it was my denial because you still, even at the age of 52 I'm still processing some of that stuff because how much do you process in life?

50:12James O'Brien:I got to 30, started processing my forced marriage. Get to 40s, I'm processing more. And you've got your own kids at the same time. And your children have a way of, you know, experiences that you have with your children have a way of hitting you like a ton of bricks because you kind of like go back to thinking, oh my God, this makes sense now. You know, it's like the catharticism of living life, I suppose, and reflecting and coming to conclusion. So this is what was going on. You know?

50:43Naz Shah:When did you first talk to your mum about what had happened to her?

50:47James O'Brien:We didn't really talk about what happened to her. All we talked about was the campaign. So it was like, right, we know the facts now.

50:54Naz Shah:And she knew you knew. So we don't need to talk about that.

50:56James O'Brien:Yes, we don't need to talk about that. We don't talk about the sexual abuse. We don't talk about any of that stuff. We just talk about the campaign. And the campaign is this is what you did to you and it was wrong. the only time we talked to her was when the only time we begged her and we literally it was and I talk about it in the book was saying to my mum because she still didn't want to come out she didn't want to lodge an appeal on the basis of what her abuse was

51:21Naz Shah:again we should just explain she's serving a 20 year minimum term for murder now the campaign which the Southall Black Sisters were heavily involved in

51:32James O'Brien:we've not launched it yet

51:33Naz Shah:No, but when it did come, it is to essentially bring in coercive control or battered woman syndrome or the mitigation that should have been heard in court. Absolutely, absolutely.

51:46James O'Brien:So that she was driven to kill. She diminished responsibility. She wasn't fit in her head because of the abuse that she'd had over years. And when we were doing that, when we wanted to do the campaign, my mum wouldn't give permission. So here's Pragna Patel with all of this information, telling us this is what's happened. This is the grounds for appeal. We can lodge an appeal. And mum's like, nope, I don't want to campaign. I don't want to lodge an appeal. I don't want to do this. And it's like, woman, you're going to be doing 20 years. We're serving this sentence with you. We, 18, 13 and 11, we're serving this with you.

52:22James O'Brien:We have lost everything. You know, we've gone back to the black bin liners. We want you home. we've you know for the first while she was on remand i didn't think about the house and how to manage the house because i thought she was going to come back and take care of it you know i genuinely thought she was going to come back and it's all been it's all misunderstanding and she's going to come back so i never had to learn the skills of how to manage a house how to you know that wasn't until after she'd got sentenced and even after she'd got sentenced i didn't know my head from my ass from my elbow frankly how to manage money do all the rest of it right so then you had to learn new skill set of how do you manage a teenager how do you get my sister back all of these things so you never ever the only thing was said to my mum and all three of us sat down and said to her is we are serving this sentence with you you know it was like speaking frankly which is it are you trying to protect mum whose is it are you trying to protect which is it the brothers who abandoned you the family who didn't give a flying F you know didn't care sweet F.A.

53:22James O'Brien:about you your kids are literally we spent you know we've got a home now we've got a bit of structure we're getting there but you're talking this was she'd only been six years in at this point you've got 14 years you know how old are we going to be by the time you come home we need you home we need you and it was at that point it was like okay we convinced her but it was like shaking her you know it was literally figuratively having grabbing her head and giving it a shake saying which flipping is it you're trying to protect. This is where Izzet has got you. The concept of Izzet chasing Izzet, Izzet, Izzet has got you to this place.

54:01James O'Brien:You wanted Izzet because you wanted a house, because you wanted your kids to have security. But half of that was driven because you wanted to tell your brothers, oh, how well you're doing, because you've been able to create your Izzet with your own house. Because it was about status. It's about bricks and mortar. It's about, you know, you have a nicer house, it brings you status. It was all the concept of Izzet. Ultimately, ultimately, so it's like that double-edged sword where you've ended up where you've ended up how did she tell you that she was going to appeal she didn't really tell us she kind of like nodded along and cried and

54:33Naz Shah:she went okay could you see it was it feel it in the room that she's she's broken now her resolve

54:38James O'Brien:has broken yeah you could we were in prison there was all three of us were there and we had i remember us holding her hands i think him he was holding her hands and in that you kind of like get to a

54:54Naz Shah:position where you've given all your best yeah do you know i mean you've given all your best and

54:59James O'Brien:it's like what we're doing this for all we want is mum home we don't want anything else you know we just want you to be home we're not bothered about a house we're not bothered about anything else we just want our mother home and it's at those there's these moments in your life where you just think god we've got a breakthrough and it's like it kills you at the same time but it gives you hope you know so i suppose that moment of just going that turned a new chapter in our life because all of a sudden we didn't have 20 years we had a bit of hope

55:33let's just jump forward to when she came home then oh god yeah we were at legroom's not

55:40James O'Brien:legroom's lane god daisy hill lane i'd bought a house i was doing well i'd had a so i started off a career as a carer then I went into the disabled advocacy for disabled women and their carers we then went on to I got the I had a knack for you know when I'd look at people's jobs and I think I could do that job I then took that job I did the same with Galloway right and I did the same with the my funder who funded my position from the NHS I then took his job because I thought I could do your job and so three years as a disabled I've still got the pamphlets where I was used as the advert to try and recruit people into health and social care with my advocacy.

56:18James O'Brien:And I won, you know, shortlisted for national NHS awards and what have you. So I had a brilliant time and I had been on leadership development. I'd gone into the NHS. I was commissioning a budget. By the time I'm, you know, my mum, by the time I'd kind of like got to my second child, third child, I was like commissioning a budget of over five million. So I was like, I had a good job. I had a nice detached house. I had Lee. I had a daughter who was two, you know, I had my niece and we were all doing all right. We'd kind of like, so this is the irony of Izit, isn't it? It's to give my mum her Izit back.

56:50James O'Brien:We stayed on the straight and narrow. It was like, you know, my brother would mess up and play up, right? Because he was truanting and all of that. And he started smoking and started smoking weed and all the rest of it. It's like, Imeh, you screw up, right? I am not coming to do any, I'm not going to help you. I'm not going to be there. you owe my mother after everything she's lost for us to give us is that to let the only is that she's going to have when she comes out that prison is us so it made it it was emotional blackmail to make my brother thrive to make my sister thrive to make me achieve you know so that's the irony of it all i suppose it comes back to that dichotomy you're talking about but we did we all had houses we all owned our own homes we were all married we all had we were all settled So by the time, 14 years, we'd come full circle.

57:39James O'Brien:And then she came home. We didn't get through the hallway. The hallway was about the length of this room and we didn't get through to the living room. We just broke. There was a lot of, there's a black bin liners and then there's all of us crying and bawling together. And we do a lot of that bawling together. We still do the bawling together. You know, we still do, there are moments in our lives where, you know, you sit there and something happens and it overwhelms you. and we all look at each other and we're just bursting at tears the adults it's like it's me my mum my brother and sister when we're in a room together you know and things happen you still do that but yeah you'll never and never i think it's become part of our flipping conditioning now um

58:20Naz Shah:we're nearly done and i want to leave plenty of reasons for people to to read the book so you know there's hard though it may be to believe there's lots that we haven't covered um and it is the the the like the circle the the finishing of the circle because becoming a parliamentarian becoming an mp and fighting in the course of that campaign against galloway in 2015 fighting a lot of the things that we've been talking about it's almost as if he and the people around him became the embodiment of what had put a foot on your throat and your mother's throat when you were younger that the cultural pressures and the cultural and the traditions and the unquestioning nature of deference and patriarchy and all of those things all of those voices telling you what you couldn't do in life that you have to marry him or you have to do this or you have to stay quiet or telling your mum that you have to do these awful things that battle if i was writing a film script of your life now that battle would be that election in 2015 would be in a way the last battle.

59:30James O'Brien:No, 2017 was the last one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember the Salmi Yaqub stuff? Of course, yeah. That was even worse. So I think, you know, I often think there's been a few bad elections in the country. One of them was Sadiq Khan's was horrendous for Zach Goldsmith one. That was good to politics. And then there was... This was just for people who don't know

59:49Naz Shah:because it's funny how these things get forgotten and not reported. But Zach Goldsmith deployed hideously Islamophobic tropes in pursuit, I think, of the Hindu vote in London. Yeah, it was horrific.

59:59James O'Brien:His election was horrific. But Galloway's was gutta politics and then Sao Ma Yaqub. So Galloway used, I remember, so I was in, so even if I, so I was out partying. Everybody knew I was a party animal. So I loved my dancing. And I was out with my, my uncles would be in the same nightclubs, right? But I didn't drink alcohol. I always had a kind of Red Bull. I was on about five Red Bulls a night sometime. I wouldn't do that today, but hey-ho. And then I'd be like, and there were pictures of me in it and it wasn't even in a club it was a it was in a hotel and there was a bar behind and there was they made memes saying bounce below bounce which is you want your daughters to be like her because she goes out dancing and then in 2000 and his supporters put this crap out there do you want this girl you know this single parent and mother's this some of, you know, from this, you know, my backstory, using it, trying to use it against me.

1:00:55James O'Brien:Then in 2017, I mean, the guy has apologized since to me personally and I've accepted it, but there was, Salma Yaqub was sat there with a community hall full of men, full of men. There was very few women there and the guy actually used the words verbatim, translated, when we buy a dog, we check its pedigree. And this is an elected member of parliament that we're electing. That was talking about my single parenthood status, my mother's single parenthood status, my mother's prison sentence, my divorce, my mother's divorce, all of those things that a socialist for equality should be banging on about.

1:01:37James O'Brien:This was a man talking about all of that and denigrating me in front of a flipping community hall. You know, Galloway pulled out my nikah namah. Literally, he pulled it out and said, She is lying. She never had a forced marriage as if parents being there to stop a forced marriage. And she is lying. Somebody posed as my dead father to go and get a copy of that from Pakistan. That's how disgusting those election campaigns were. And now, even as near as 2023, when I was reselected to be the parliamentary candidate, I was held by one ward. five wards wherever the Bradri had got their membership voted against me I lost two of them by one and you'd think you know because I've got a 60 % Muslim constituency I've got really I've done so much on Muslim issues Islamic issues etc the wider population is brilliant but there's a handful of people that still endorse that politics of Bradri and we don't deal with it we don't deal with it as a Labour Party we don't deal with it as a society I think we still have it, James.

1:02:47James O'Brien:People buy up membership, low party membership. They turn out to vote, select their candidates. The deals are done. It's not based on mediocrity. It's not based on competence. It's about which family you belong to. And it's about as long as you belong to that family. And that family, the Kingpin family, endorses it. And it still happens.

1:03:06Naz Shah:And we're back to the 18th and 19th century in other cultures. but in other parts of our culture.

1:03:12James O'Brien:Absolutely, absolutely.

1:03:12Naz Shah:There's nothing uniquely Pakistani about it or ethnic minority about it. It's a human condition that goes in cycles. We're almost done. There's something that really struck me, and it struck me, again, talking to you about the story that I've read. And it's your enormous capacity for love. So apart from the people that did you and yours obvious harm, the people who put you into difficult situations or engaged in a little bit of emotional blackmail or quite a lot of emotional blackmail you've got nothing but love for most of them you talked about how much you miss your granddad you talk about your grandma being a wonderful even as they were presiding over the yeah the contract of marriage to your cousin so you you you bring an almost compassion to people who didn't manage to break out of the cycles that you've broken out of possibly didn't even realize that they wanted to no because that was their conditioning

1:04:13James O'Brien:so you've got to put yourself it's like the perspective isn't it there there's always always it's what my leadership tells me is that you look at a situation you look at it from a different perspective if they don't understand that perspective you have to extend them compassion because what it gives you is gratitude whichever way you look at it because it makes you grateful that you don't have that. So when you have, when you're angry towards another person, and this is where spirituality and Islam comes into me and it helps me make sense of the world and not have expectations. So what it's saying is, if somebody has been bad to me, God hasn't blessed them with the compassion that he's given you.

1:04:54James O'Brien:So if he's blessed you with a compassion, then you extend it and you pray for that person. If they've passed, fine, they've passed, like my grandmother has, you know, like my dad has. I feel numb towards my dad. I don't have anything towards my dad. Whereas, you know, with my grandma, I still miss things about her, right? And there's people who have died who I really miss. But you just have that. It's a nicer thing to carry because if you carry pain and you carry hatred, it eats you. It doesn't eat them. They don't even know, you know? So it's like, how do you empty? How do you fulfill your heart with goodness?

1:05:31James O'Brien:Because come on, look at the job that I do do you amount of crap in the world you wake up every morning thinking what's the next thing that Trump has been tweeted about and what chaos is that going to cause you've got people in Kashmir where my parents come from that are occupied, you've got Palestine going on, you've got all of these troubles you've got all this kind of hatred, you've got Nigel Farage in flipping parliament you've got Tommy Robinson you've got all of these hate figures all they're trying to do is just divide, divide, divide. And all we need to do is seek the goodness and the goodness and the goodness because it will outweigh it.

1:06:10James O'Brien:I don't care what anybody says. It comes in cycles, doesn't it? That's my part I've got to play. That I'm really clear about. I am, you know, I said I'm not politically ambitious, but I'll tell you what, globally, I am ambitious. My ambition knows no limit to change. And that you can only do with compassion. You can't do it with hatred. You can't do it with anger because if you hold on to that, you're never going to get out of bed in the morning. And this lot that I've got to work with, you know, being in that chamber, listening to that BS, you know, of Nick Timothy, stood across there talking about Islamist grooming gangs.

1:06:45James O'Brien:It's like, hello, mate, we're outraged equally. These are our, you know, it's like I said, my story is a British story. Would I have had the opportunities if I was somewhere else from growing up in a village to becoming a member of parliament? No, I wouldn't. I'm more patriotic than you will ever be because I want the best from my country the best from my country does not come from this kind of hatred and bullshit what it comes from is compassion what it comes from is caring for what you can do and make a change, that's where I'm at so I am globally ambitious on that scale that's where I find it from so you will never ever no, I ain't got time for that crap I've just got time for goodness begets goodness how else does a girl like me make it to your studio from flipping a village in Pakistan without an education.

1:07:31James O'Brien:Do you know what I mean? It doesn't come. It's because the universe works for goodness. You know, that's a natural state of the universe and we need to just lean into it more. And I don't care how airy-fairy that sounds, it's got me to where I've got to today.

1:07:44Naz Shah:Doesn't sound airy-fairy to me. Honoured by Naz Shah is available in all bookshops and I really cannot recommend it highly enough. Naz Shah, thank you.

1:07:55James O'Brien:Thank you so much.

1:08:04Naz Shah:This has been a Global Player original production.