1. Robert Graham Marshall-Andrews KC was born on 10 April 1944 and is a British barrister, author, and retired politician, who was the Labour Member of Parliament for Medway from 1997 to 2010.
22 Facts About Bob Marshall-Andrews
1. 2.
Bob Marshall-Andrews defected from his former party at the 2017 general election and endorsed the Liberal Democrats.
3.
Bob Marshall-Andrews attended Mill Hill School before attending Bristol University where he read Law and was a resident of Wills Hall.
4.
Bob Marshall-Andrews has prosecuted and defended most forms of serious crime and serious criminals, and specialises in commercial fraud.
5.
Bob Marshall-Andrews is a member of the Criminal Bar Association and has been called to the Hong Kong Bar where he has been retained to prosecute serious cases.
6.
Bob Marshall-Andrews was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Bristol in 2015.
7.
Bob Marshall-Andrews joined the Labour Party in 1971 and contested the constituency of Richmond, Surrey in October 1974.
8.
Bob Marshall-Andrews was asked to stand for the Medway Constituency in 1992 which he lost to the incumbent Conservative, Dame Peggy Fenner.
9.
Bob Marshall-Andrews is a member of the Association of Labour Lawyers, Greenpeace and the Woodland Trust.
10.
Bob Marshall-Andrews was perceived as being on the libertarian-left wing of the Labour Party, and was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, but unlike other members of this group was not a trade-unionist by background.
11.
Bob Marshall-Andrews was successfully re-elected in 2001, and tackled the immigration issue directly.
12.
Bob Marshall-Andrews rebelled against the government on multiple occasions, mainly on issues relating to civil liberty.
13.
Bob Marshall-Andrews was in the vanguard of opposition to the Iraq War.
14.
Bob Marshall-Andrews subsequently insisted that he had actually shouted "faccio", an Italian word meaning a menial assistant, from which the public school slang 'fag' is thought to derive.
15.
On 31 October 2006, Bob Marshall-Andrews was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party's call for an inquiry into the Iraq War.
16.
On 15 June 2008, with former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn, Bob Marshall-Andrews again rebelled in his support for Conservative MP David Davis' campaign to step down as an MP and force a by-election in his constituency over the bill for a maximum 42-day detention without charge for arrested suspects.
17.
In December 2008, Bob Marshall-Andrews became the first Labour MP to publicly call for the resignation of Speaker Michael Martin over the arrest of Damian Green.
18.
Bob Marshall-Andrews has written several novels, including The Palace of Wisdom and A Man Without Guilt.
19.
Bob Marshall-Andrews has written articles in the national newspapers and periodicals.
20.
Bob Marshall-Andrews is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK.
21.
Bob Marshall-Andrews is Founder and Trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Trust, currently operating in Mkomazi National Park, Tanzania.
22.
On 20 April 2017, the day after parliament voted for an early general election, Bob Marshall-Andrews defected to the Liberal Democrats, calling his former party a "basket-case" and citing its position on Brexit and the failure of his former party to stand down in the 2016 Richmond Park by-election in favour of the Liberal Democrats as reasons for his defection.