Respect's Salma Yaqoob: 'Why I quit'

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Salma Yaqoob, in her first interview, explains why she left the party, what comes next – and her thoughts on George Galloway
Aida Edemariam
The Guardian
Friday 21 September 2012

... Yaqoob, 41, is, in person, even slighter than she seems on television – she has long, thin arms and a face miraculously unlined by a decade spent raising three boys, working as a councillor in Birmingham (she resigned for reasons of ill-health last year), running a part-time psychotherapy practice – oh, and leading a new political party. She has just had a new kitchen fitted, and the backyard of her home in the Moseley area of Birmingham is piled with cardboard boxes. The ceilings are high, and the rooms full of light. On the kitchen table sits a straw basket of chapatis she has been baking.

"I've always admired George's anti-imperialist stances and I don't regret, for a second, standing side by side on those issues. But for me, to have to make a choice between that and standing up for the rights of women was a false choice. I thought it was a blurring of something that didn't need to be blurred. It's not that complicated – you can hold two ideas at the same time." Of course, "we're all human, we can't always make perfectly worded and crafted sentences – I really hoped a clarification would sort that out." She published a statement setting out her own position, but then, as she describes it, things escalated. Although she says Galloway never got directly in contact – and still hasn't – she felt she was being personally maligned; that "under the guise of different names there were personal attacks".

The irony is, of course, that so much of Galloway's victory in Bradford West was ascribed to women, and particularly women from traditional backgrounds who had in the past been expected to vote the way their husbands or fathers or brothers voted – the baradari system that generally delivered block votes to Labour – "that's why it's been deeply disappointing, because I do feel that those women have been let down. <Comments like that> open the door to women being treated in a certain way. You are just dismissed, your views are not taken seriously, and a certain reactionary attitude is encouraged rather than challenged." ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/sep/22/salma-yaqoob-respect-george-galloway

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1. Respect leader quit over abuse after George Galloway comments

Salma Yaqoob tells Guardian many assumed she shared same sentiments as MP about allegations against Julian Assange
Amelia Hill
The Guardian
Friday 21 September 2012



Salma Yaqoob resigned as leader of the Respect party in part because of personal abuse she suffered after George Galloway's comment concerning Julian Assange, she has told the Guardian in her first interview since she left the party.

Galloway, who became Respect's sole MP when he was elected in March to represent Bradford West, said some of the allegations brought against Assange by two Swedish women did not constitute rape "as most people understand it". He was simply guilty of "bad sexual etiquette".

Yaqoob, a former councillor in Birmingham and a part-time psychotherapist, revealed that she was assumed to share Galloway's sentiments. "Under the guise of different names there were personal attacks," she said. Yaqoob said that she published a statement setting out her own position, but that the damage was done.

Galloway has not been in direct contact with Yaqoob since her resignation on 11 September but she said the MP's comments let down the women of Bradford, whose votes helped him gain the seat from Labour, particularly women from traditional backgrounds who had in the past been expected to vote the way their husbands or fathers or brothers voted ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/22/respect-salma-yaqoob-george-galloway