Becoming the leader of Oldham council is not a job for the faint hearted.
Previous incumbents have talked of death threats, campaigns of harassment and needing police protection amid a backdrop of conspiracy theories and misinformation.
And there’s the looming threat of being ousted, whether at the ballot box – which has claimed all three of the past leaders in as many years – or through a Labour internal party coup, which occurred five years ago.
Someone who knows exactly how much it takes to head up the borough is Arooj Shah. She took over from Sean Fielding following his election loss in 2021 to become the first female Muslim council leader in the north of England.
A little over two months after taking on the top role her car was fire-bombed outside her home in Oldham. She later told councillors she had been physically threatened, and faced ‘regular’ death threats.
At the next election she lost her seat in Chadderton South to the Conservatives, attributing her loss to an election campaign determined to ‘dehumanise’ her. “I can’t wait to go home this evening”, she said after the result was announced.
So it may well have raised eyebrows to see her name on the ballot paper for St Mary’s ward, the area of Oldham she grew up in, at this year’s all-out contest.
After coming first place with a huge 2,743 votes she won a seat back in the town hall with a guaranteed term of four years. However Ms Shah didn’t stop at just a return to the benches of the council chamber.
With the leadership position now vacant – Amanda Chadderton having become the latest Labour councillor to pay the price for leading the borough at the polls – she put herself forward again, and won in a two-horse internal race against Failsworth member Peter Davis.
But the big question on many people’s lips is – why would you want the job a second time around?
It’s a question Ms Shah’s family has even asked, having seen her sobbing following her election defeat. But after some ‘tough love’ from her mother about the wheel of fortune that is politics, Ms Shah says she quickly resolved to make a comeback.
“I love my town and I didn’t stop thinking about it, and I didn’t stop being passionate about the town when I lost my seat,” she says. “That was instilled in me and made me more determined to come back and do what I could to improve people’s lives.
“I’ve always been authentic and I’ve had conversations about really difficult things that I think other politicians may not have, and I’ve done that because my gut’s told me it’s the right thing to do.
“I think where women are in positions of leadership they will always get the personal stuff a lot more. I will always get the stuff about my appearance, how I dress, I will always get the stuff about my family, my family associations.
“Women get this far more than men do. I don’t expect or anticipate that that will lessen. I didn’t engage with it before but I feel far more resilient and stronger so that if I feel it’s unacceptable I will call it out.”
She adds: “People all the time say ‘politicians are not like us’ but when you get someone who is normal, who has normal life experience everyone says, ‘this can’t be right’. People need to decide what they want.”
‘Toxic’ is a word that is now frequently bandied around in reference to Oldham’s politics, with its revolving door of leaders, aggressive election campaigns and bubbling online resentment against the Labour-run council.
While Labour elsewhere made major gains at the Tories’ expense in this years’ local elections on May 4; in Oldham voters didn’t follow the national trends.
Labour instead saw their majority cut by three down to 32, with the Conservatives and independents making gains and in-roads into former stronghold wards. Now the formerly firmly red council teeters on the verge of no-overall-control.
“I would not call it toxic but there’s definitely something that’s not right or normal about the politics in Oldham,” Ms Shah says, when asked if she agrees with the description of the febrile atmosphere locally.
“Since Brexit and everything else you’ve seen that people have felt that, because the government has this divisive narrative, that it legitimises them to say the kind of things that they previously would have never said or acted in a way that they do now.
“I think that’s the problem that we have. We have a politics of division and hate and I think that I am going to do everything I can in my leadership so that I don’t leave any ground fertile enough for anybody to sow any seeds of hate anymore.
“People see a loss of services and that saddens them in such a way that they don’t know who to point the blame to, so it becomes pitting neighbours against neighbours.
“Now it’s this divisive thing about who’s getting it, what colour are they, where do they come from and what’s their heritage – I think all of that is division from the national narrative and I think that’s really unpleasant but incredibly scary too.”
On Labour’s election struggles she adds: “It feels to me that people are going to the ballot box to vote against us. And I think my biggest challenge and priority this year is to make sure that when they go to the ballot box next year they are going to vote for us.
“Clearly they don’t feel like we’re fighting for them at the minute.”
She has already set forward a number of priorities as a returning leader; expanding a street cleaning programme to include more tree and flower planting in public places and alleyways, finding a way to save a producing theatre in Oldham following the closure of the iconic Coliseum Theatre, the return of district community councils, and building on the economic review commissioned during her previous tenure.
“I think the last 13 years have been incredibly difficult for residents across Oldham for a variety of reasons but it’s hard when resources are diminishing, budgets are diminishing and you’re trying to instil pride in the place at the same time,” she says.
“There is a cost of living crisis, there are some people that are really struggling. There were houses I knocked on in St Mary’s ward during this last year and I was heartbroken when I left those houses.
“You’ve got people living in really poor housing, with poor insulation, poverty – in work poverty – every single member of the family working but still can’t afford to put the heating on, can’t afford food, having to rely on food banks or churches or mosques to give them food packages.
“So for me it’s been ultimately about coming back and giving them that TLC that they so much deserve.
“One of the most exciting things is being able to come back and watch all the things that I set in-train, whether that’s the town centre regeneration whether it’s the Tommyfield market moving or Eton coming to Oldham, I’m so excited to see that in fruition and happening.
“The town square is going to look incredible. I can’t wait for people to see it and have pride in their town centre again.”
Arguably the biggest issue that has, and continues to dog the council is the issue of child sexual exploitation (CSE), both past and present.
However, the review team found no evidence of a widespread cover-up of sexual exploitation.
Subsequent motions brought by opposition councillors calling for a government led independent inquiry, such as the one that recently concluded in Telford, were defeated with the Labour group voting against them.
A letter from the Liberal Democrat group to the government asking for a further public inquiry had been refused in a response from the Home Office.
On whether another inquiry would be the best way forward, Ms Shah says they will ‘have to see’.
“I think we should really consider victims and survivors of that first and foremost. And that means we approach these subjects in an honest open and transparent way but with respect,” she adds.
“And then also we’re doing an immense amount of work with Keeping Our Girls Safe and I would encourage any victim or somebody out there who has been through something as horrific as that to reach out and get the support that they need.
“We did a review, the findings of the review clearly stated that there was no cover up. What I don’t want to do is allow something that is so deeply traumatic still for so many people, so many girls, to be used as a political bat.”
Despite losing her council seat in May 2022, speculation over the arson attack on her car nearly two years ago – for which people were arrested but no charges have been brought – still continues on social media.
Ms Shah says Greater Manchester Police are continuing to investigate, and the case is with the Crown Prosecution Service.
But she adds: “In politics, with everything that I’ve been through, that must have been the most horrific and the most personal and difficult thing ever which didn’t only have an impact on me but had an impact on my family too.
“These comments that are made around it, I think people should be a bit more considerate because these things have a real impact on people’s lives, and it’s had one on mine.
“It’s affected my family too. It’s also a private investigation, I don’t feel the need to discuss it every two seconds because people think I owe it to them.
“I think even the people that put that misinformation out there know that that’s not true. But I think that with some of the situations in politics people aren’t interested in the truth.”
In terms of council business she hopes to see a continuation of her ‘politics not personalities’ pledge, which was signed by all party leader groups in the borough during her last leadership stint.
“What has been displayed on occasion in this last year in the council chamber is not who any of us got elected for,” Ms Shah adds. “And I think we owe our residents a whole load of respect to conduct ourselves in a way that is not embarrassing, that is not childlike and is very mature.
“Being elected as a councillor is a huge privilege for all of us regardless of what party we belong to what ideologies we have and we have to conduct ourselves in that professional way.
“I want to hear more about the issues that there are in people’s wards, not the divisive stuff that they’re using to sow more hatred among communities.”
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