BRADFORD West MP Naz Shah has spoken of her remarkable journey into politics after enduring a forced marriage and seeing her mother jailed for killing her abusive partner. 

Speaking to Cathy Newman, for Times Radio, the MP discussed her difficult start in life and recalled running from the back-to-back house she lived in to the neighbours to tell them “to stop my dad from hitting my mum”.

She said: “That’s the very first memory I have of being a kid. I was born in this constituency, raised in this constituency and now I serve it as the MP.”

When was six, her father eloped with a neighbour's daughter.

Ms Shah said: "All of a sudden, overnight, we were kicked out of the family home where we lived with my grandma," she said. 

“That’s where life really took a bad turn for mum. Here was a woman whose husband had left her, eloped with the neighbour’s daughter but she was chastised, she was marginalised, it was her fault for not being able to keep her husband.

“It was a horrible, horrible time.”

Then, at the age of 12, Ms Shah was sent to Pakistan and at the age of 15, entered a forced marriage with her first cousin. 

“I left school when I was 12, went to Pakistan, it wasn’t my mum who forced me into that, it was actually the rest of the family and the pressure.

“I didn’t recognise that I was forced into a marriage, that I was coerced into it through emotional blackmail until in my thirties.

“To me, it was just the done thing, you did that you got pressure from the family and you did what they wanted you to do.

“That was the done thing in my community at the time."

She reflected on the long-lasting impact of that relationship and how, in later life, she is still coming to terms with certain things. 

“Some things I’ll never try to open, it’s like a pandora’s box, the memories aren’t very good, so some you learn to compartmentalise into your head – it’s like a filing cabinet and you put it away," she said.

At the same time, her mother was trapped in an abusive relationship, eventually taking matters into her own hands with devastating consequences.

She said: “When she killed him eventually, she saw no way out, she attempted in her own ways to try and get out of that situation.

"It took us years to understand, to accept, for her to say 'this is why I did it and this is what happened'.

"She didn't talk about the abuse because of concept of izzat and shame and dishonour."

Her mother's experience ignited a campaigning spark in Ms Shah as she fought for justice with help from the Southall Black Sisters, an organisation which helps women experiencing violence and abuse. 

Speaking about finding letters from former Bradford West MPs Max Madden and Marsha Singh addressed to her mum when she was in prison, she said: “It was really, really fascinating, thinking ‘wow I’m sat here, I use the same letterhead now as the MP for Bradford West’.

"It really, really is amazing to be in that position.”

But it has, at times, been tumultuous when faced with biradari, or clan, politics; an election campaign againt former Respect leader George Galloway and then suspension from the Labour Party for sharing an anti-semitic Facebook post.

It has been a "steep learning curve" and Ms Shah was asked in the interview: “It was a pretty monumental mistake wasn’t it? Did you ask yourself in the aftermath whether you were anti-semitic?”

She replied: "I had to, it would be absolutely wrong of me not to.

“I knew in my heart that’s not what I was and who I was.

“What I’d done, I needed to understand it, and I was blessed enough to have the compassion from the Jewish community who actually explained it all to me and I understood it.

“It was absolutely the right thing to do – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t deserve to be an MP in any way shape or form.”

When asked for her biggest piece of advice, she said: “Don’t take no for an answer, write your own story, own your own narrative.

“I’m here against the odds. Use that support mechanism, I came across some amazing individuals who helped me up that ladder.

“I didn’t do it by myself. Yes it takes resilience, yes it takes personality, yes it takes a real, real want to get to where you want to, but there are people – people are amazing.

“For somebody who tells you, you can’t do it, there’ll be 10 who will encourage you do it.

“Everybody is fighting a battle, there’s battles that I wouldn’t be capable of fighting that others are.

“People have different strengths from different places, I just feel we need to own it and believe in yourself.

“It’s your god-given right to live your full potential and what makes you the best you can be.”