How Awami League helped Tulip win UK elections
“Had it not been for your help, I would never have been able to stand here as a British MP,” said Tulip to cheering UK Awami League members at a rally in 2015
![Screenshot from Tulip Siddiq’s website [on left], content which has now been deleted/Netra News](https://tbsnews.net/sites/default/files/styles/big_3/public/images/2025/01/10/tulip-al.jpg)
Tulip Siddiq, a city minister in the UK and niece of ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, used to work for the Awami League (AL).
"I work for the Awami League as part of its UK and EU lobbying unit and election strategy team," read a now-deleted section of her website, which was later obtained by Netra News.
According to another entry on the website on 27 February 2009, Tulip appeared in an interview with BBC World as an AL spokesperson.
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However, her helping the UK AL was not one-sided.
In 2015, Tulip, daughter of Hasina's sister Sheikh Rehana, appeared at an Awami League rally in the UK soon after being elected to parliament for the first time. Hasina also attended the rally, giving her niece a congratulatory kiss on the forehead.
"Had it not been for your help, I would never have been able to stand here as a British MP," said Tulip to cheering UK Awami League members.
Channel 4 News used footage of the speech in one of its video reports titled "Tulip Siddiq: Questions over links with Bangladeshi ruling party."
The Telegraph, in an article published on 8 January, said, "Members of the political party led by Tulip Siddiq's ousted dictator aunt campaigned for Sir Keir Starmer."
It said activists representing the UK wing of the Awami League also attended a "fundraising" dinner for the prime minister while he was in the shadow cabinet.
However, after becoming an MP in 2015, Tulip argued that she no longer had any connection with the Awami League and even claimed that she does not "talk politics" with her family, according to a 2021 Netra News column written by investigative journalist David Bergman.
"That claim was shown to be highly questionable when Channel Four News uncovered two videos where the Labour MP spoke at Awami League political rallies in the UK, one of which was in the presence of her aunt, the prime minister of Bangladesh, also the head of the Awami League," wrote Bergman.
He wrote, "Apart from exposing Siddiq's inaccurate attempts to conceal or downplay her continuing connections with the Awami League, these videos are highly relevant in setting the background for the systemic support Siddiq received from the UK AL in the most recent national election in December 2019."
Even during her victory speech in the 2017 elections, Tulip specifically thanked the senior UK Awami League leader Anwaruzzman Chowdhury, referring to him as "Anwar Mama."
"Her gratitude to Anwaruzzman, the UK AL's joint secretary, was significant as he was reported at the time to have been in charge of organising the UK AL's support for Siddiq in both these two earlier elections," wrote Bergman.
UK AL campaigns for Tulip
The Netra News column also mentioned a meeting of some leaders of the UK AL in a restaurant on 5 November 2019, a day before the formal start of the UK national election campaign.
"The oldest daughter of Sheikh Rehana, who is the younger sister of the [then] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is fighting for re-election from the Labour Party for the third time in the upcoming British Parliamentary election," wrote Shahjahan Ahmed Shaja, a UK AL activist, in Bengali on his Facebook profile after the meeting.
"As before, to make her victorious, brother Sultan Sharif, the respected president of the UK Awami League, will provide direction, and our well-wishing friends gathered in this scheduled meeting will be under the leadership of OSM Misbah, the secretary of industry and commerce, who will provide the strategy for action at ground level! Inshallah, we will be victorious!" he added.
UK AL activists and leaders started their campaign work for Tulip the next day in the basement of a rundown supermarket in Kilburn, which turned out to be a newly rented election campaign office.
A photo of the first day of the campaign was posted on the Facebook profile of one Shah Shamim Ahmed. Netra News identified the people in the picture as UK AL leaders including Syed Shazidur Rahman Faruk (general secretary); Anwaruzzaman Chowdhury (joint general secretary); Misbah Sadath (industry and commerce secretary;) Fakhrul Islam Modhu (Youth League president), Shah Shamim Ahmed (office secretary), and Jamal Khan (Youth League, assistant general secretary).
"For each of the next 45 days, dozens of UK AL activists, the vast majority of them without any connection with Tulip's Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, congregated at this office where Tulip's election campaign team gave them leaflets and election posters to be distributed at specific places throughout the constituency," read Bergman's Netra News column.
