Interview
Assisted dying
Culture
Politics
S&U interviews
5 min read

Marsha de Cordova: the personal experiences driving her passionate politics

“What disabled people need is assistance to live, not to die.”

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

 

A woman wearing a red jacket stands formally beside an office stair case.

When Marsha de Cordova talks about most issues relating to her work as the Member of Parliament for Battersea, in south London, she sticks to the standard position of her Labour party. Meeting at her constituency office by the busy Clapham Junction railway station, she dutifully defends her party’s government, elected last July. She points to ministers’ work to reform planning and improve renters’ rights as evidence they are making progress. 

But when conversation turns to the Assisted Dying Bill currently going through parliament, her tone becomes unmistakeably more urgent and her passion more obviously personal. 

The strong feelings mark de Cordova out as one of a group of Labour MPs who have been spurred by personal experience and, in many cases, religious conviction to oppose the Assisted Dying Bill introduced by a colleague, Spen Valley MP Kim Leadbeater. While the legislation is a private member’s bill without official government support, it has been widely seen as reflecting the views of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 

De Cordova, who is Black, expresses similarly trenchant views about the government’s rhetoric on immigration. She is also a strong supporter of rapprochement with the European Union. 

However, her views on assisted dying – informed partly by being a committed Christian – are particularly forcefully expressed. She answers tersely, “No, I’m not”, when asked if she is happy about the political capital the new government has expended on the Assisted Dying Bill. She adds that she voted against it at second reading, the first parliamentary vote on a bill. She intends to oppose it again at third reading, before it passes to the House of Lords. 

“We didn’t need to expend so much capital on it,” de Cordova says. “The aim now has to be to ensure the bill doesn’t pass third reading.” 

Many of the Labour MPs who have opposed the legislation have cited religious objections. In the Cabinet, they include health secretary Wes Streeting and foreign secretary David Lammy, both Christians, and justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, a Muslim. 

De Cordova also links her opposition to her disability. De Cordova is registered blind because of nystagmus, in which the eyes repeatedly move involuntarily, disrupting vision. There have been fears assisted people could come under greater pressure than others to seek assisted death. 

“As a disabled woman, I’m incredibly concerned,” de Cordova says. “What disabled people need is assistance to live, not to die. That should be our government’s priority.” 

“My faith is an integral part of who I am. It really is part of my values, my beliefs, my politics.” 

The assisted dying fight has garnered unusual levels of publicity for the Battersea MP, who entered parliament seven years ago when barely expecting to do so. De Cordova, now 49, was serving as a Lambeth borough councillor when the 2017 snap general election was called and decided to seek the Labour nomination for Battersea, then held by the Conservatives. 

The seat was one of several Conservative seats in pro-Remain areas that fell to Labour’s surprisingly strong showing in the election in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum. 

“No one really thought I could win here,” de Cordova says. “Obviously, Brexit I would say played a role in that I’m a strong Remainer.” 

De Cordova increased her majority in 2019 and last year’s general election. She sees strong continuities between serving as an MP and her previous role in the charity sector. She had been working when elected as the engagement and advocacy director for the Thomas Pocklington Trust, which supports blind and partially sighted people. 

“I didn’t grow up wanting to be a politician,” de Cordova says, of her upbringing in Bristol. “I’ve always had the desire to be making a difference. All of my work before becoming a politician centred around that – being that voice for the voiceless.” 

She links her work to her faith. She became a Christian in her late 20s and now attends Holy Trinity Clapham. The church is famous as the spiritual home of William Wilberforce and the “Clapham Sect” of early 19th century campaigners against the slave trade and other social evils. 

Her faith has led to her appointment as second church estates commissioner – the liaison between parliament and England’s established church, who answers questions in the Commons on behalf of the church. 

“My faith is an integral part of who I am,” de Cordova says. “It really is part of my values, my beliefs, my politics.” 

It becomes clear speaking to her that her objections to the policies of the government – and the Assisted Dying Bill, which many of her party colleagues support – are clustered around areas involving challenges to fundamental rights. 

She objects to the Assisted Dying Bill because she sees it as part of a steady erosion of disabled people’s rights. 

“The issue will have a hugely, hugely disproportionate impact on disabled people,” she says. “That, for me, is a no-no.” 

Provision for disabled people was “hollowed out” under the last Conservative government, she says. 

“That, for me, will always be the issue,” de Cordova says. “I want to campaign and fight for full equality for us.” 

She also views immigration issues through the prism of immigrants’ rights. 

Asked if she wishes the government took a less hostile tone on the issue, she replies: “From my perspective, when I think about immigration, I tend to think about it in a compassionate way.” 

She calls for the establishment of “safe routes” to ensure people fleeing persecution can claim asylum from outside the UK, without making dangerous Channel crossings. The government has shown no signs of introducing such rights. 

“Let’s think about immigration in a positive way,” de Cordova says, adding that her grandparents were immigrants to the UK from the Caribbean. “The Tories and the right have always tried to portray it as a negative. It’s not always a negative.” 

For de Cordova, the unglamorous role of church estates commissioner forms part of that pattern of advocating for the voiceless. 

The job entails dealing with every aspect of MPs’ questions about church life, including the status of historic buildings and other less obviously morally important questions. 

However, de Cordova, who was appointed a month before publication of the Makin Report on the church’s handling of abuse by John Smyth, is clear the church has urgent problems to resolve. 

The Makin Report has to be a “turning point”, she says. 

“I understand steps are being taken to address the challenges,” de Cordova says. “They need to set out over time how they’ll ensure such abuse never happens again.” 

The campaigning approach is part of de Cordova’s wider philosophy. She says she has faced many challenges as a result of her disability and tried to overcome them. 

“I want to ensure that I can break down the barriers for people coming after me, so that people don’t have to face those same experiences,” she says. 

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Article
Culture
Film & TV
4 min read

Why we rewatch The Lord of The Rings each year

Great quotes, powerful themes, stir memories.

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Two hobbits gaze at something.
New Line Cinema.

Every January for the past 15 years, my wife and I have re-watched The Lord of The Rings trilogy. Not the extended version, but, still, it’s a lot of hours to have committed to re-watching every year.  

So, why do we do it?  

Well, principally I suppose it’s simply because we believe the films to be excellent - arguably the best ever screen adaptation of a work of fiction - but I also think it's because the story has so much to teach us about real life.  

After watching them so many times, I can now quote most of the script, yet I still struggle to pick my favourite bits; there are just too many. 

From Samwise Gamgee’s speech about the greatest stories - those that “meant something” - being ones where “the chief characters had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going, because they were holding on to something … that there’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for”. 

To Gandalf’s encouragement to Peregrine Took, when the hobbit senses that he is about to meet his maker, of what follows after we die: that death is not the end, it’s “just another path; one that we all must take”, and how “the grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver and glass, and then you see it … white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise”. 

“That's not so bad,” Pippin replies, and of course, he’s right. 

Aside from the great quotes - and, trust me, there are many more I could mention - there’s also the way in which the breadth of human emotions and frailties are so perfectly depicted, such as our susceptibility to temptation, and how it can sometimes make us act in a manner that, as Frodo says of Boromir when he tries to rob him of the ring, is not like ourself.  

It is also encouraging to see how both the powerful and the meek - Gandalf and Samwise - are equally prone to temptation’s pull. 

The depth of friendships enjoyed by the hobbits is also a joy to behold, shining a light on that rarest gift of close friendship, while the films are kept mercifully free of anything smutty; on the contrary, they feel perfectly pure. 

And there is even the compulsory happy ending, with good triumphing over evil and the dragons being thrown down by the eagles in an apocalyptic scene worthy of the Book of Revelation. 

The author, J.R.R. Tolkien was a Catholic who served in both world wars, so it is hardly surprising that religious imagery can be found throughout, as well as glimpses into the ghastliest realities of war. 

One of the religious themes is the power of the weak to shame the strong, with the little hobbits - described as “the most unlikely creature imaginable” to have discovered the ring after it abandoned Gollum - ultimately being hailed as the saviours of Middle Earth and told by the new King of Gondor that they need “bow to no-one”. 

As Gandalf puts it, “even the smallest person can change the course of the future”. 

Meanwhile, everyone - even the trees, wonderfully portrayed as walking, talking “Ents” - have a part to play, with Merry lambasting them for initially deciding not to fight by saying: “But you’re part of this world, aren’t you?”  

As he says to his friend Pippin, should the fires of Isengard spread, “there won’t be any Shire” for them to return to. 

But the moment that really gets me, every time I watch it, comes at the very end, when - *spoiler alert* - Frodo speaks of feeling unable to return to normal life after such a big adventure. 

As someone who has had a few adventures of my own in the past - albeit none quite so fraught with danger - I can relate strongly to that sensation of coming home again and being overwhelmed by the feeling that nothing has changed, while at the same time believing that within myself, so much has.  

I often think back to the time my dear parents picked my wife and I up from the airport, a decade ago now, after we’d just flown back from Alaska having hitchhiked there from Argentina, and they spent the car journey updating us on the lives of my cousins. Not that I didn't want to hear their news; only that, at that moment, it felt as though there might be something else worth discussing. 

I think of that moment every time I watch the films’ denouement, and resonate with Frodo’s words when he says the Shire has been saved, but not for him; that some wounds from the past “run too deep” for the “threads of an old life” to be picked up again. 

But beyond the fantastic quotes and all 'The Lord of the Rings' has to teach us about life, the three films are also all simply a fantastic watch, which, if you haven't already, I would urge you to make the time for, and if you have, I would encourage you to do so again, even if you don't do it every year. 

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