The politician was 18 when she and her mum were hauled off to a police station for the killing of the man she’d considered an uncle.What happened next would shape her future.She talks Labour’s woes, making mistakes, and why it’s finally time to share her own traumatic storyRead an extract from Naz Shah’s memoirNaz Shah found it thrilling when she was arrested on suspicion of murder.“I’ll be honest with you, I had fun.It was the most excitement I’d ever had in my flipping life.

I’d never been to a police station before.I was 18 and wet behind the ears.I was this really sheltered kid who’d been arrested.And I was like, they’ve got it wrong, so in my head it was all going to be over soon,” the MP for Bradford West says.“They took my clothes and gave me this white suit to wear, and I was saying, ‘Ooh, I look foxy in this, don’t I? Can you imagine taking me on a date in this?’ I was having a right laugh with the police officers.

Honestly, I was so naive,”Shah’s beloved “Uncle” Azam had died unexpectedly in April 1992,An autopsy revealed that he had been poisoned with arsenic,Shah and her mother, Zoora, who spoke little English, had cooked the previous night’s supper,They were arrested and taken to different police stations.

Shah was released.Zoora admitted that she had made the dessert that contained the arsenic.After a month-long trial, she was convicted of Azam’s murder in December 1993 and sentenced to 20 years in jail.The excitement Shah had felt at the police station didn’t last long.She tried to kill herself twice following her mother’s conviction.

But she is one of life’s great survivors,Despite leaving school at 12, being forced into an arranged marriage at 15, and having to bring up her two younger siblings after her mother was jailed, she became a celebrated campaigner, held down high-powered jobs and has been a member of parliament for 11 years,“It’s an interesting life I’ve had,” she says,Over the next couple of hours, I discover Shah has a fine line in understatement,She was six when her wife-beating, heroin-dealing father traded in her mother for a younger model, and the shame it brought on the family led indirectly to her mother’s conviction.

Shah’s story has always been central to her relationship with the community.Before running against George Galloway in Bradford West in 2015, she published a blog about her family’s history: if she didn’t own her story, it was ripe for exploitation.But then she was telling it as a campaigner who had fought for her mother.Now she’s telling it in a profoundly personal way, as someone who lived through those horrors and was shaped by them.Her memoir is called Honoured because she is honoured to be an MP, to have survived it all, and at its heart is the Islamic concept of izzat, Arabic for honour.

But the book is as much about its bleak antithesis – dishonour,In her culture, a family without izzat is worthless,The day her father walked out, they lost it – and her mother’s attempt to regain it had terrible repercussions,We’re at her Bradford home, a lovely stone cottage,There’s a fire roaring, her cat Ruby is juggling a couple of sticks and Shah is making us a cup of tea.

I’ve arrived early and she’s not quite ready.“Give me a few minutes.D’you want some fruit? Should I put the telly on for you? Make yourself at home.” I sit marvelling at Ruby’s dexterity and at how Shah turned her life around.Soon she’s back, fully made up, pack of fags in hand.

“D’you mind if I smoke? When the kids are here, I can’t smoke in the house.” Shah has three children with her second husband, from whom she is now separated.He lives close by and they have a good relationship.I ask how she’s feeling about the book.“I bumped into Sadiq Khan the other day,” she says.

The London mayor and former Labour MP is a friend, and she gave him a proof to read.“Sadiq said, ‘That was traumatic’ and put his hand on his chest.I said, ‘Nah, you’re good!’ And he said, ‘No, Naz, it was traumatic reading that.’” What did she say then? “I went, yeah.” She might have as much front as the Pennines, but nobody understands what she and her family went through better than her.

Shah, 52, started the book in 2017 – then put it aside for six years: “I had healing to do, and writing it brought up a lot of issues.” Two years ago she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.In the end, she says, she had to write it to get everything out of her system and show people you can get through the hardest of times.“It’s not a misery memoir,” she says pugnaciously.“I’m sat here in my own home with the fire on.

To have a fire on and not think about the token you’ve got to buy to put your electricity on and leave a light on, these are things you can’t take for granted.To have got to where I’ve got to, it’s in strength, not weakness.” Shah is short and slight, but she’s made of tough stuff.“My fight started in the womb.I mean, because I was born a girl, my father didn’t pick me up till he had a son.

” Shah’s father was so disappointed, he wouldn’t look at her for the first year of her life.Zoora immediately got pregnant again and gave birth to a boy who died within hours.Shah’s maternal uncle told her father this was God’s way of telling him he should treasure her.So he did.For a while.

He would lift her on to the TV, twirling her around to Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring,She adored him,Back then her father was a regular businessman, doing well for himself,They were the only family in the street with a colour telly and video recorder,Then one day, when she was five, she saw him drag her mother by her hair and assault her.

“I ran up two sets of stairs to the neighbours and was banging on their door to come and stop him.” It wasn’t the only time she witnessed his violence towards her mother.But she told herself this was an aberration, that he was a good man, and continued to love him.Then he walked away, leaving the family destitute.By now, Shah had a sister, Foz, and brother, Imy.

There had been rumours her father was having an affair with a neighbour,It wasn’t true: he was having a relationship with her 16-year-old daughter, whom he went on to marry,And that’s when izzat came into play,Shah was told she was dishonoured because her father had left home,Zoora, still only 24 and working part-time as a cleaner, was determined to restore izzat to the family and thought she could do this by selling her wedding jewellery to put a deposit down on a £10,000 house.

But without a full-time job, she couldn’t get a mortgage.This is when Uncle Azam came into the story.He was neither a real uncle nor a real friend.But he appeared to be both.“He brought fruit over for us, so he seemed like a knight in shining armour.

But he was exploiting a vulnerable young woman,” Another understatement,Azam, who was married, told Zoora he would register the house in his name, she would make payments via him, and when she had paid off the mortgage he would transfer the property to her,But it didn’t work out that way,The first time he took Zoora to her new home, he raped her.

And so it continued.When he went to prison for heroin dealing, his criminal associates started to come to the house with provisions for the family.Zoora took them upstairs out of sight while the children did their homework.When she came back down, she looked distraught.Sometimes she was bruised.

At 12, Shah was sent to live with relatives in Pakistan.“I thought I was going for a holiday.I didn’t come back for two and a half years, and I never saw the inside of a school again.They didn’t let me come back till I had my nikah done [a marriage contract in Islamic law].” The relatives told her Zoora had approved the marriage, even though she hadn’t.

At 16, Shah’s husband joined her in Bradford.He was immature, abusive and controlling.Six months later, she walked out on him.The teenager briefly took back control of her life.And then Azam died.

In her eyes, he was still a good man.But when her mother was remanded in jail, rumours grew that she had killed Azam because he had been abusing Shah.This left her even more devastated.She knew she hadn’t been abused by him, and was convinced her mother, who pleaded not guilty, hadn’t killed him.Shah felt humiliated and lost.

She took an overdose, and had her stomach pumped.“We’d just been arrested and were on the front page of a local rag, and it was overwhelming and I wanted out.” She pauses.“Looking back, I think that was probably a cry for help.”She was 20 when her mother was finally tried.

Shah sat through every day of the month-long trial, and can still see the verdict being delivered in Technicolor.“Her right hand was on her mouth, as if she was trying not to scream, and the other was grasping the rail in front of her.Her eyes were locked on mine.It’s like she was trying to hold me tight.And that kills me, even today