When Shockat Adam, the newly elected independent MP for Leicester South, addressed his supporters at the July election count, he brought his speech to an end with a dedication – not to the constituents of the East Midlands city he now represents, but to people more than 2,000 miles away.
“This is for the people of Gaza”, he said, holding a Palestinian keffiyeh aloft.
Before 7 October last year it would have been almost unthinkable. A relatively unknown independent had overturned a 22,000 majority held by Labour heavyweight Jonathan Ashworth in a traditionally red seat. But these are different times.
This week marks one year since Hamas militants and allied groups unleashed its heinous attack on southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
In the wake of the attacks, Israel declared war in Gaza – a territory the UN considers to be under Israeli occupation – and began a relentless year-long military campaign in the densely populated strip. More than 41,000 people have been killed so far, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The conflict unfolding across the Middle East has continued to dominate headlines, with daily images from the war-torn region broadcast across the globe. The knock-on effect has been far-reaching. In the UK, political life has been played out to the backdrop of protest.
Adam’s victory in the general election this year was just one of four shock defeats for Labour MPs, beaten by independents who stood predominantly on a pro-Palestine platform.
Adam said his success was due to a widening “chasm” between the political classes and their constituents. He drew attention to a YouGov poll in May that showed the majority of people in the UK supported a ceasefire in Gaza.
“We have seen our country rightfully respond to the war in Ukraine,” he said. “The same sympathy, concern and courtesy was not extended to the Palestinians.”
Following his defeat, Ashworth said he experienced an election campaign of “vitriol” and “bullying”, adding Adam was elected on “on the basis of a foul and obnoxious lie, that I was responsible for genocide”.
Ashworth is not the only mainstream politician to note a toxicity they claim has infected politics since 7 October. The former justice minister and Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green, Mike Freer, announced his decision to step down in February after receiving a “constant string” of death threats, abuse and intimidation.
Adam condemns intimidation and said he was also subject to abuse during the campaign. “We have to be respectful of our democratic processes, at all costs, but we must not conflate questioning with intimidation,” he said.
He attributes his election win not just to his pro-Palestinian views but also to a growing distrust of politicians. “People were wanting something different, they just have lost faith in the political system,” he said.
Labour admitted the party’s stance on Gaza had cost it seats in the national and local elections. In the latter, Labour suffered an almost 18% drop in votes in areas of England where more than a fifth of people identified as Muslim.
The ballot box was not the only way for those calling for an end to the violence in Gaza to apply pressure. This weekend will mark the 20th pro-Palestine national march that has taken place since October, with hundreds of thousands expected to line the streets of London to demand an end to the war.
Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and lead organiser of the march, said there has not been a mobilisation like this in British history since the suffragette movement.
“Marching is part of our response both to the genocide that has unfolded since October but, more broadly, our longer-term campaign addressing the dynamics of the oppression of the Palestinian people,” he said.
Whether the marches have managed to move the dial on UK government policy is up for debate, but their effect on the political discourse – and in particular the debate over freedom of speech and the right to protest – is undeniable.
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In November, former home secretary Suella Braverman described the demonstrations as “hate marches” and called on organisers to cancel their demonstration scheduled for Armistice Day.
In the same month, psychology teacher Marieha Hussain, outraged by the UK government’s position on the war and critical of Braverman’s earlier comments, held a placard depicting Rishi Sunak and Braverman as coconuts.
Unbeknown to Hussain at the time, a picture of her holding the placard had gone viral online, sparking fury by some who viewed the motif as a racial slur. Hussain was charged with a racially aggravated offence in May but was acquitted in a trial in September, in what some described as a victory for free speech.
The pro-Palestine marches have also been met with criticism from some Jewish groups, who say the protests make British Jews feel “unsafe”. In March, the government’s counter-terrorism tsar, Robin Simcox, said the protests were making London a “no-go zone” for British Jews. Jamal refutes the allegations and highlighted the consistent presence of a Jewish bloc at the marches.
Inevitably, the dissenting voice of young people found a platform in university demonstrations, which spread across campuses in the summer, part of a global student revolt that called for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.
Some universities conceded to the students’ demands. Goldsmiths, University of London agreed to launch humanitarian scholarships for Palestinian students, while Trinity College in Dublin said it would divest from Israeli firms.
However, the encampments sparked fear from some, with the Union of Jewish Students condemning the protests for creating a “hostile and toxic” atmosphere on campus. According to the president of the UJS, Sami Berkoff, such concern has persisted. She said the union had received more than 1,000 calls before the start of the current term from concerned parents and students regarding antisemitism on campus.
A charity that records hate incidents against Jews in the UK more broadly said it had logged more than 5,500 antisemitic incidents across the UK since 7 October – a 204% increase from the previous year. Dr Dave Rich, the Community Security Trust’s director of policy, said the spike in antisemitism has “spread faster than ever before”, with incidents “recorded online, in person and at the ongoing protests”.
The rise in antisemitism has also accompanied a rise in Islamophobia. The charity Tell Mama recorded 4,971 incidents of anti-Muslim hate since 7 October – the highest total in the past 14 years.
Tell Mama’s director, Iman Atta, said the hate incidents particularly targeted Muslim women. “This has been at both a street and online level, and British Muslims have been called ‘Hamas’, ‘Hezbollah’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘killers’,” she said.
Both sets of statistics, sobering in their own right, illustrate the nature of an issue that has driven a wedge between politicians, parties and people on the street. One year on, claim and counter-claim remains the language through which the war in Gaza is debated.
With tensions in the region continuing to escalate, it remains unclear for how much longer the conflict in the Middle East will continue to dominate and divide.