Where Are They Now? Mohammad Sarwar
(Illustrations | Tracy Worrall)
4 min read
Mohammad Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Govan 1997-2005, and Glasgow Central 2005-10
When Mohammad Sarwar ran to be a Member of Parliament in the 1997 general election, his friends questioned the decision.
“Britain is not ready for a Muslim MP; Scottish people will not vote for you,” some warned. Others believed Labour had a real chance of winning the election, and thought Sarwar should give another candidate the chance to secure a seat.
Sarwar patiently reminded them that he had previously won as a Labour councillor for Pollokshields East, a seat that had been held by the Conservative Party for 28 years. “If the Scottish people can vote me for the council, surely they will vote for me as a Member of Parliament,” he reasoned. When Sarwar was elected MP for Glasgow Govan in 1997, he became the first Muslim MP in the United Kingdom and the first Asian MP to represent a Scottish constituency.
Sarwar moved to the UK from Pakistan in 1976. He quickly went from stacking shelves in a supermarket to owning his own shop and eventually directing a grocery wholesale business making close to £90m in turnover a year. In 1984 he joined the Labour Party, and was elected as a Glasgow district councillor in 1992, then a Glasgow city councillor in 1995. His son Anas Sarwar is currently leader of the Scottish Labour Party.
Sarwar believes he has helped shape a modern electoral system that rewards merit and deems ethnicity irrelevant. “There was a time when I had to fight people in government to become a candidate for a Member of Parliament. Now, my son is leading the Scottish Labour Party,” he says proudly.
There were people from the British National Party putting slogans on the wall saying that all Muslims and Pakistanis must be thrown out of the country.
While Sarwar praises the British public for being, “increasingly willing to embrace people from all backgrounds, religions and other countries,” he found it challenging to deal with the slew of racist abuse directed at Muslims and Pakistanis in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11 in 2001 and 7/7 four years later.
“It was a very difficult time. Mosques were being attacked in Scotland. There were people from the British National Party putting slogans on the wall saying that all Muslims and Pakistanis must be thrown out of the country. I was receiving death threats,” he says.
It was not the first time Sarwar had experienced racial unrest in his constituency. In 2004, Kriss Donald, a 15-year-old boy, was murdered by a group of British men of Pakistani origin.
While the BNP “exploited the killing by trying to cause trouble in Glasgow,” Sarwar was determined to bring all communities together by promoting respect, dignity and calm – “we did not want to inflame the situation further,” he says.
One of his proudest moments in Parliament was bringing Donald’s killers back from Pakistan to face justice.
In 2007, Sarwar announced he would not be running for re-election in 2010, and his son Anas succeeded him as MP for Glasgow Central, which he had been representing since 2005. In 2013, he returned to Pakistan to focus on his Sarwar Foundation, which operates hospitals, schools and business development centres in Punjab.
He felt unable to refuse the role of governor of Punjab which was offered to him on his return to Pakistan. “I gained a lot of experience from my time as a councillor and MP, so I wanted to share this knowledge in my home country as governor, guiding them in education, health, child poverty and climate change issues,” he says.
Does he miss anything about Scotland? “Of course, my friends, my family, and the Labour Party. The only thing I don’t miss is the weather!”
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