A GLASGOW councillor is gunning to become Scotland’s first MP to have arrived in the country as a refugee, according to leaked internal documents.
Roza Salih, who was elected as an SNP councillor for Greater Pollok last year, has passed vetting, a list of approved candidates obtained by The National shows.
Born in Iraq, Salih and her family fled the country in 2001 after her grandfather and uncle were killed.
Her father was a Peshmerga, a member of the army which fought against Saddam Hussein’s regime for Kurdish independence.
At 15, she co-founded the Glasgow Girls group, with other young refugees at Drumchapel High School, in the city’s north-west.
They waged a campaign against the Home Office to prevent the detention and deportation of one of their friends.
Salih ran unsuccessfully as the number one SNP candidate on their list for the Glasgow region in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections.
While the SNP picked up all the constituencies in the region, they did not win representation on the list vote.
Salih was elected to Glasgow City Council in 2022 and works in the office of Glasgow South West MP Chris Stephens (below).
Her passing vetting – the process by which parties investigate candidate’s backgrounds to ensure their suitability to becoming a politician – sets up potential selection battles in Glasgow.
Boundary changes mean longstanding MP Alison Thewliss’s (below) seat has been absorbed into neighbouring patches and Patrick Grady is not standing next year.
Thewliss and all other Glasgow MPs other than Grady passed vetting.
A number of other candidates attached to Glasgow SNP branches have passed vetting, including Kenneth Andrew in Glasgow Kelvin, Qasim Hanif in Southside Central, Greg Hepburn and Jennifer Layden in Glasgow Shettleston, Rhiannon Spear in Pollokshields East and Ben Walker in Glasgow Anniesland.
If elected, she would be among the first MPs to have arrived in Britain as a refugee.
Alf Dubbs, the Labour peer who was elected the MP for Battersea South in 1979, was born in Prague and fled the Nazis by coming to Britain on the Kindertransport scheme which helped Jewish refugees reach the UK.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking, was born to German Jews in Egypt, where they had fled to escape persecution by the Nazis. Her family immigrated to the UK in 1948.
