Marsha De Cordova

Marsha de Cordova is the Labour MP for Battersea and the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities. Born in Bristol in 1974 as one of six siblings, she studied Law at Southbank University. de Cordova began her career as an advocate and manager at the charity Action for Blind People. De Cordova herself has nystagmus a condition characterised by involuntary movements in the eyes, causing extreme short-sightedness. She then founded the charity South East London Vision in 2014 before moving on to work at the Thomas Pocklington Trust in 2015. She first entered politics at the 2014 local elections, where she was successfully elected as a councillor for the Larkhall ward on Lambeth Council. In the 2017 election, de Cordova was elected as the Labour member of parliament for Battersea, defeating the incumbent Conservative MP and then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Jane Ellison. Shortly after her election, de Cordova sat on the Work and Pensions Committee, before being appointed that year as shadow minister for disabled people, where she continues her advocacy for the disabled community. Though she came to prominence during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour Party, she is one of the few members of the Socialist Campaign Group who did not sign the SCG statement which approved of Corbyn’s reinstatement to the Labour party. She was re-elected in the 2019 general election with a majority of 5,668 and backed Keir Starmer in the 2020 Labour leadership race. A critic of the ‘structural issues around racism’ in the UK, in 2020, after the death of George Floyd, de Cordova called for Black History to be taught ‘truthfuly’ in the school curriculum, saying that Black Lives Matter is ‘more than a slogan’.