Edmund Marshall

Early life

Marshall was educated at Humberstone Foundation School (also known as Clee Grammar School for Boys for Boys and became the comprehensive Matthew Humberstone School in September 1973) on Clee Road in Old Clee, Cleethorpes, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took double first class honours in mathematics and was awarded a University Junior Mathematical Prize in 1961. He gained a PhD from the University of Liverpool in 1965. He became a mathematics university lecturer and a Methodist local preacher. He served as Vice-president of the Methodist Conference in 1992.

Parliamentary career

Marshall was a Liberal Party councillor on Wallasey Borough Council 1963-65 and parliamentary candidate for Louth in 1964 and 1966, but joined the Labour Party in 1967.

In a 1971 by-election, Marshall was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Goole. From 1976-9, he served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, and as Chair of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry. He left Parliament in 1983, when the Goole constituency was abolished in boundary changes.

After Parliament

In 1985 Marshall transferred to the Social Democratic Party and subsequently became a member of the Liberal Democrats. He fought Bridlington for the SDP in 1987, coming second. He rejoined the Labour Party in 2015. In 2015 he became a Trustee of the Parliamentary Outreach Trust.

From 1997 to 2007 he advised the Church of England Bishop of Wakefield on ecumenical matters, and from 2000 to 2015 was a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.

Marshall is the author of two published books: Parliament and the Public (Macmillan 1982) and Business and Society (Routledge 1993).

From 1984-2000, he was a lecturer in Management Science at the University of Bradford School of Management.

Personal life

In 1969 he married Margaret Pamela Antill in Enfield. They have a daughter (born 1975).