Sheffield's Yemenis inspired by Labour candidate from their community

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The northern English town of Sheffield was forged on steel, with much of that graft done by Yemeni workers who arrived in the 1950s.

Three generations on, the community is gearing up to vote in one of their own as a Labour MP for the city.

Lawyer Abtisam Mohamed is the party’s candidate at the general election for Sheffield Central, a constituency at the heart of the city. Should she win, Ms Mohamed will be the UK’s first MP of Yemeni descent.

Marginalised by language and class when they first came to work in Sheffield’s steel and smelting factories, British-Yemenis are now an active 10,000-strong community in the city.

But troubles plaguing the city such as poverty and lack of work opportunities mean trajectories like Ms Mohamed’s are still few and far between.

For Hend Al Yazeedi, a teacher and young mother in the constituency, Ms Mohamed was a sign of things changing for the better in the city and her community.

“She's an inspiration to the youth, but also the elders. We’re immensely proud of her, everybody looks up to her. I’m fully confident she will make a change. She does what she says,” she told The National.

Ms Al Yazeedi’s own father came to the UK in the 1960s as a steelworker from Yemen. “He was a very hard worker, determined to improve himself and build a better life for his family,” she said.

But today, she observed that young people from the community were leaving Sheffield in search of jobs elsewhere, in London or Manchester, and hoped a new government would work to address this.

“Most people travel out of Sheffield to gain experience and employability. There is a bit of frustration within the youth saying there isn’t a lot of opportunity to grow and develop,” she said.

“I have had family friends move to London or Manchester or elsewhere because of the prospects,” she said.

The lack of opportunities was echoed by Yazid Asker, an engineering student of Yemeni descent at Sheffield Hallam University, who will be looking for work after he graduates this year.

Yet seeing Ms Mohamed, a member of the Yemeni community, running as an MP made him feel more “optimistic” about his own prospects.

From Yafai to Sheffield

Ms Mohamed was born in Yemen and moved to the UK when she was a toddler, to join her father and grandfather who were already working in Sheffield.

Growing up, her parents made sure she learnt about her family's traditions and heritage, and though the children from the community may have gone to different schools, they regularly got together for weddings, weekly Arabic lessons and other events.

“They were trying as much as possible to speak to us in Arabic at home. There were some traditional events, weddings, we would wear deras, a traditional Yemeni dress, and jalabiyas at home,” she told The National in an interview earlier this year when she was a Labour councillor for Sheffield City.

Her family’s history in the steel factories drives her campaign, in which she calls for better community services and a “just” green transition of the city’s industries.

In an old photograph of herself as a toddler with her father, shared on social media, she remembers how the trade unions supplied clothes and toys for steelworkers during periods of strikes.

“For those like my dad, a steelworker, in carbon-intensive industries, we need a just transition and upskilling to shift away from fossil fuels,” she has said in her campaign statement.

“We must ensure our communities don’t lose out as we move towards net zero.”

City plagued by poverty and dwindling services

Sheffield Central is a safe Labour seat, but the challenges it faces are immense.

Though the city has seen some transformation in the last two decades with major banks opening bases and the regeneration of former industrial areas, it is among the poorest in the UK.

Around a third of children in the city are living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Chris Hardy, who runs the city’s largest network of foodbanks, S6, said the need was “relentless”, with more than 1,500 people collecting food parcels every week and other families seeking advice on paying bills and managing debt.

Every community in Sheffield was affected, he said. A mother who had been coming once a month two years ago was now collecting parcels weekly, he said.

“Poverty is about choice. That is the fundamental thing, choosing to buy your own food, choosing to put your lights and electricity on. When you've got nothing, then it's a choice that gets taken away from you,” he said.

In the packed warehouse with crates of canned food, basic household products and nappies, the stock would last only three weeks. These are distributed to the charity’s 13 community-run locations across the city.

Mr Hardy could not comment on specific parties during the general election period, he said, but said that cuts in government funding in recent years meant that services had deteriorated.

This included public transport, which was often too expensive for Sheffield’s poorest.

Ms Mohamed left school with four GCSEs, working for years in a call centre before returning to education, training first as a teacher, then a lawyer.

Her legal experience revealed a breadth of “unfair rules” that perpetuate inequality and poverty, and she believes a Labour government would help rewrite the laws to make them fairer.

Having set up Sheffield’s Race Equality Commission and supported the Black Lives Matter movement when she was a councillor, she promises to make the city fairer for ethnic minorities.

People who have known her, vouch for her. Dr Fatima Ali, a local GP living in the constituency, said she had met Ms Mohamed for legal advice when she brought her children to the UK from Libya, and will be voting for her at the election.

Among Dr Ali's concerns was the lack of after-school activities for her three children, aged from eight to 15. “There used to be daily activities, now they’re only weekly,” she said.

Ms Mohamed's campaign trail has taken in youth fitness centres, a concert for Gaza, and Victorian landmarks. She has the backing of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, and posters bearing her name can be seen from the windows of the more affluent residential areas of the constituency.

Mohsin Obeid, a retired police officer from Upperthorpe, said Ms Mohamed would need to work “hard” to make herself known to many of the residents in the area.

“It's going to be very difficult for her. She’s a Muslim woman, and a Yemeni,” he said, fearing that the crisis in Yemen conveyed a negative image of Yemenis abroad.

“In the area here, I’d say 98 per cent of the people are English. I’ve asked a few of my English friends in the area, they haven’t got a clue who she is. The previous MP was a proper English person and had real involvement in their community,” he said.

Mr Obeid said he was the first Yemeni policeman in Sheffield, where he went on to lead special investigations.

Scepticism about the Labour party from all sides of the political spectrum is another challenge.

Chris Birt, who runs a small steelwork and a tool supply company in the city, feared a Labour government would prioritise “big business” over local ones like his.

An engineer by training, Mr Birt dropped out of university after two days and went on to grow his grandfather’s small business into a holding company, which now has a turnover of more than £2 million.

But it was struggling with growing “red tape” and staff shortages. “The last four or five years have been so hard. You spend more time doing paperwork than you can producing in this country,” he said.

“It’s the challenge of competing with big business. Everything has become techy, everyone likes a nice clean office, nobody wants to get their hands dirty.

“We’re at a disadvantage to the rest of the world. Corporation tax has gone up, there’s no benefit to owning a business any more.”

Labour leader Keir Starmer has said his own father was a toolmaker, but this was not enough to shed Mr Birt’s view that the Labour party would support local businesses. “He’s made it as a solicitor. It’s the world of big business isn’t it?” he said.

Mr Birt employs 19 people at the steelworks – which he said left his company in limbo as the biggest medium-sized business can have up to 250 employees. “You're not big enough to compete with the big boys, but you're too big. They need to recategorise,” he said.

Pressure over Labour's stance on Gaza

Labour candidates have also faced pressure to resign in protest at the party’s stance on Gaza. Though Labour has shifted to a more critical tone, the refusal to call for an end to arms sales to Israel, or to immediately recognise Palestine remains a sore point.

Sheffield is twinned with the Palestinian city of Nablus, and was the first UK city to recognise Palestine in 2019.

Yet a campaign called the Muslim Vote, which seeks to undermine Labour at the next election, endorsed Green candidate Angela Argenzio instead of Ms Mohamed.

A Muslim Vote poster promoting Ms Argenzio had been posted at a mosque in the constituency, one resident said.

At Sheffield University’s student camp for Gaza, a protester told The National they would not be voting for Labour.

Otter, 24, is a theatre professional from the south-west of England who recently moved to Sheffield due to lower housing prices. She asked not to be photographed or named, owing to backlash and threats people at the encampment had received.

Members of Otter’s family had been Conservatives all their lives, but she was more likely to vote for the Green party. “I’ve been made aware of the Greens' campaign in Sheffield by people in the encampment,” she said.

They had not yet looked at the local candidates for Sheffield – and would be voting with the party in mind.

“I definitely won’t be voting Labour even if the candidates have Middle Eastern backgrounds and are supportive of [the Palestinian cause]. Local candidates can believe one thing, but they’re still working for the party and representing their views,” she said.

Yet many Arabic-speakers in the city urged Ms Mohamed not to be disheartened – insisting that local issues should come before foreign policy.

“Forget what’s happening in Palestine,” said Mr Obaid, the retired policeman. “Concentrate on improving the lives of people around here.”