Naz Shah talks to Harriet Wistrich

Labour MP Naz Shah talks about her extraordinarily difficult childhood and reveals how growing up against almost impossible odds lit the fire that still drives her today.

Shah was used to the sight of her father beating her mother and was only six when he left the family for a teenage neighbour. At 12 she was sent to Pakistan to protect her from her mother’s new abuser and then forced into an arranged marriage at 15. Her mother was jailed for murdering the man who had subjected her to physical and sexual torture. Shah says she found purpose in a 12-year fight for justice for her mother. The campaign alongside Southall Black Sisters eventually saw her mother’s life sentence overturned.

Shah is Labour MP for Bradford West, a seat she won back for Labour from George Galloway in one of the most memorable campaigns of the 2015 General Election. Here she talks to to feminist lawyer Harriet Wistrich, author of Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System designed by Men.