Overview
Felicia Nicolette C. Gavron (nee Coates)
is a British politician who served as Deputy Mayor of London to Ken Livingstone from 2000 to 2003 and 2004 to 2008. She was a member of the London Assembly from 2000 to 2021 and was the former Labour candidate for the 2004 Mayor of London elections.
Biography
Gavron was born in Worcester. She is the daughter of a German Jew who had fled Nazi Germany in 1936 as pressure on the Jewish community was mounting. In March 2008 she claimed that her mother was chosen to dance before Hitler in the opening ceremony of the 1936 Olympics, until the authorities discovered that she was Jewish.
She studied at Worcester Girls' Grammar School, followed by the study of the history of art at the Courtauld Institute in London. She then gained a job as a lecturer at the Camberwell School of Art in South London.
Political career
Gavron first became interested in politics in the 1970s when she campaigned against the widening of the Archway Road in London. In an interview with The Guardian she said, "It was in the days when everyone thought road widening was the answer, but the penny dropped for me that it was part of the problem."
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).