How Israel’s war against Hamas poisoned the politics of one English town

The current and former MPs for Burnley have told the JC how the issue of Gaza has fed a toxic political environment in the constituency.

Former Tory MP Antony Higginbotham – who lost to Labour’s Oliver Ryan in the general election – said his rival “did experience quite a lot of intimidation” due to his stance on the conflict. Both MPs accused the Liberal Democrat candidate, Gordon Birtwistle, of leveraging local emotions about the Gaza war. “He and some of his campaigners drove the bandwagon and sought to capitalise on a time of conflict and crisis, weaponising religion and race for personal political gain, in a town which has had enough of that over the years,” Ryan said.

Oliver Ryan MP[Missing Credit]

Ryan previously told the BBC that he required Home Office security after a report by the Electoral Commission found that more than half of the candidates standing in last year’s general election faced abuse.

Although he does not mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in one video shared by Muslim news site 5Pillars, Ryan and volunteers on his campaign were aggressively confronted by someone who said they were “going around promoting their leader who supports the killing of children, babies, women”.

In the video, Ryan is then confronted and told “do you have no shame coming round here, when your leader and yourself (sic) support the mass killing, the murder, the slaughter of innocent men, women and children”.

The JC presented Ryan with a recording of a June meeting by local community group Burnley Brierfield Vote (BBV) in which Birtwistle was challenged over why he had not called Israel’s campaign in Gaza a “genocide”.

Birtwistle could be heard claiming that this was because “Jewish groups” had previously tried to get him kicked out of the Liberal Democrats.

“I will call it that in parliament when I have the protection,” he told the meeting. Reacting to the JC’s recording, Ryan said he was “shocked” and that Birtwistle and the Liberal Democrats had questions to answer.

“The Liberal Democrats ought to confirm whether what he said was true, and if not, why was he making a concerted effort to appear – to applause – as the candidate ‘Jewish groups’ were against?”

The Times has reported that BBV is run by “a group of local Muslim leaders including imams, businessmen and solicitors”.

Separately, and more broadly, the JC has been told that the contest was made more toxic by some election campaigning to Burnley’s Muslim community that highlighted that Ryan and Higginbotham were openly gay.

As an MP, Birtwistle was the sole Liberal Democrat to vote against gay marriage. “I have been against it right from the beginning because I believe that’s the view of the vast majority of people in Burnley,” he told the Lancashire Telegraph in 2013. Birtwistle was contacted for comment.