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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Review
Culture
Film & TV
Monsters
Race
4 min read

Sinners is standout thanks to Ryan Coogler and his ‘no stupid people’ rule

A cleverly choreographed culture clash between the living and the un-dead.

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who host's the 'God in Film’ podcast.

Two actors in 1930s clothes sit in an open car while the film director gestures towards them.
Delroy Lindo, Michael B. Jordan, and Ryan Coogler.
Warner Bros.

Coming off the back of Black Panther and Creed, Ryan Coogler fights off franchise fatigue with Sinners, a historical crime drama turned horror film that might be his most personal film yet. Set in 1932, Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers returning to their hometown in rural Mississippi to open a juke joint. But a trio of guests, both unwelcome and undead, crash their opening night. 

Any film set in the Jim Crow era South following a Black protagonist can set off warning bells for savvy audiences. The blatant racial oppression can often bring with it a fair share of trauma porn. But that’s not what Sinners is about. For a significant chunk of the run-time, the film is downright hopeful. Jordan’s dual role as the brothers Smoke and Stack presents them as dangerous and driven, but also compassionate, responsible and endlessly charismatic – the type of figures who could easily become folk heroes. There’s a scene where Jordan’s Smoke not only employs a young girl to watch his truck, but also teaches her how to negotiate, doing himself a worse deal in the process. Watching them recruit musicians, cooks and sign-painters for their juke joint from the under-appreciated and under-paid is a compelling exploration of Black enterprise. 

As night descends, and the juke joint opens for business, this peek into Black enterprise turns into a delightful celebration of Black joy. Chris Hewitt of Empire magazine referred to this film as a ‘stealth musical’ and it’s not hard to see why. Almost every main character gets a musical interlude of some sort. The standout by some distance is newcomer Miles Caton, who plays Sammie, the guitar-playing cousin of Smoke and Stack, who they recruit as the centrepiece of their entertainment for the night. Sammie is at the centre of a musical sequence that will have you leaning forward in your seat in amazement at what cinema is capable of. This film brings with it its own mythology, telling us that there are people whose music is so transcendent, they are capable of piercing the veil between the past, present and future. Sammie is one such person, and his talent attracts everyone for miles around, including ancient Irish vampire, Remmick, played by British star, Jack O’Connell.  

Perhaps what’s unusual for a vampire film is that, as an audience, we’re having such a good time at the juke joint, we can almost resent the imposition of the vampires forcing themselves into the narrative. The racial parallels of these monsters might not be as obvious as the ones you find in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but they are still there. Remmick, as the head vampire, gains the memories of each of his victims, and he wants Sammie’s abilities as a means to communicate through time with those he’s lost. (Yet another example of Ryan Coogler’s ‘no stupid people’ rule. Every character has a convincing reason for doing what they do, even the blood suckers.) The vampires here are drawn in by the music and can represent a white ruling class that wants to exploit Black music for its own purposes, in much the same way that culture vultures took music of black origin like the blues and rock, and popularised it with more palatable white artists like Elvis Presley.  

The sequence where the vampires themselves have a riotous, yet melodic dance in the dark, reminiscent of a rowdy worship session.

Perhaps another reason why vampires are such a popular monster to revisit in western culture is how they are a literalised inversion of Christianity. In the same way that Christians are promised an eternal life through the blood of Jesus Christ, vampires get immortality through drinking the blood of their victims. Even the rule where vampires can’t enter a private building without permission could be seen as warped version of the image of Jesus standing at the door of our hearts and knocking as shown in Revelation, the last book in the Bible. Vampires are a perverted vulgarisation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus and this, on an unconscious level as a society, might be why we find them so fascinating. The way the vampires use words like ‘fellowship’ to make their dark gift sound more appealing to those still inside the building suggests Coogler is conscious of this parallel. The sequence where the vampires themselves have a riotous, yet melodic dance in the dark, reminiscent of a rowdy worship session, further emphasises how music can bring people together.  

There are so many fascinating aspects to the film it’s impossible to mention them all, which might be deliberate on Coogler’s part, as he tells EBONY:  

“I wanted the movie to feel like a full meal, your appetizers, starters, entrees and desserts, I wanted all of it there.”  

While this does mean a sequel is unlikely, and some critics have complained of it being over-stuffed, it does mean that the film will richly reward repeat viewing.  

By now, Sinners will have no doubt secured its spot in many critics’ top films of the year. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners could so easily fall apart in the hands of a less skilled storyteller, but in the hands of one of the best directors of his generation, it absolutely sings.  

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