Mothin Ali: Leeds councillor and new Green Party deputy leader racially abused while on family holiday in UK
A Leeds councillor who was recently elected the co-deputy leader of the Green Party has shared details of how he and his family were racially abused and attacked while on a UK seaside holiday.
Councillor Mothin Ali was voted in as the Green Party’s new deputy leader alongside Rachel Millward last Tuesday (September 2), with Zack Polanski being voted in overwhelmingly as the new leader of the party.
Coun Ali, who only became a member of Leeds City Council last May, said it was a “huge honour” to be elected to the role and added: “The work starts now.”
He went on to say that “politics in this country is at a precipice”, pointing to the “rise of the far-right”, and said that he was willing to “take the fight” to Labour and Reform.
After the election the Gipton and Harehills councillor spoke about how he was racially abused while on a family holiday in Norfolk just a week prior.
He told the Guardian that he was on the beach with his mother, wife and children when a group started throwing bottles at them and shouting ‘Get out of our country’ and ‘P*** b******s’.
Coun Ali said that when the abuse started, he gathered his family together and they walked away but the group followed them. It then “got even more abusive” and, he said, “one or two of them pulled their trousers down at my children”.
Coun Ali, who moved to Leeds in 2000, described the incident as a reflection of how the political environment in recent years had shifted, with some people feeling empowered to be abusive.
He told the Guardian: “Reform UK offers simple ‘solutions’ to extremely complex problems – blame immigrants, blame black and brown people, blame Muslims,” he said.
“The language is incredibly inflammatory. It’s language that is designed to stir up hate.”
He said that he hoped the new-look Green Party would add a strong alternative, saying highlighting how the party was now run by a “gay Jewish man, a straight practising Muslim with a big beard and from a northern working-class background, and a middle-class woman who’s a feminist”.
He said: “Between us, we can reach across country, class, race, religion and geography. It sends a message that Britain’s a melting pot of all kinds of people. We just created a microcosm of the macro.”
Coun Ali has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza since he became a councillor and was also seen intervening to stop the disruption that broke out in Harehills last summer.