Francis Noel-Baker

Francis Edward Noel-Baker (7 January 1920 – 25 September 2009)[1] was a British Labour Party MP. His father was Labour MP and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Philip Noel-Baker.[2]

Francis Noel-Baker (1967)

Born in London,[3] Noel-Baker was educated at Westminster School and King's College, Cambridge and served with the Intelligence Corps in World War II.[4]

He was first elected to the House of Commons in the Labour landslide at the 1945 general election as Member of Parliament for Brentford and Chiswick. When elected, he was the youngest Labour MP. He lost his seat at the 1950 general election, but returned to Parliament at the 1955 election as MP for Swindon. He resigned his seat in March 1969, by taking the Chiltern Hundreds.

In 1971 he left the Labour Party in response to the party's opposition to British membership of the European Economic Community. He later joined the Social Democratic Party and later still the Conservative Party.

In 1948, Francis acted covertly for the British Government inside Francoist Spain. His report "Spanish Summary" with a foreword written by Lady Megan Lloyd George M.P. had a huge influence in shaming the British and other governments and worldwide organisations for allowing Francoist Spain to remain undefeated in Europe until the Spanish transition to democracy.

Though Francis duly lost his seat in the 1950 election, he won Swindon by a small majority in 1955 and increased it beyond the 10,000 mark over the two following elections. Vociferous in parliament, diligent in his constituency, and gradually taking charge at the family estate on the large Aegean island of Euboea, he managed – for a time at least – to reconcile socialism in Britain with feudalism, albeit enlightened and benign, in Greece.

Fluent in modern Greek, in 1956 he played a semi-official part in the Tory government's dealings with the Greek Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios and the Enosis independence movement in Cyprus. In fact, there were times when he gave the impression of being at Westminster, Swindon, Euboea and Cyprus simultaneously.

In 1959 his father won a Nobel peace prize, and when Harold Wilson became Labour prime minister in 1964, both Philip and Francis were led to expect jobs in the new administration. However, the telephone calls never came. Francis was bitterly disappointed at being overlooked.

In April 1967, the democratic west was shocked by a military coup in Greece. The regime established by "the colonels" was widely condemned, but not by Francis, who knew more about politics in Athens than most. He maintained that the colonels' rule represented reform from the prevalent political corruption, and a way forward for ordinary Greeks.

His undisguised support of the new regime made his political life in Britain increasingly precarious, indeed untenable, and in time affected his health. In 1968 he announced his intention not to contest the 1970 election, and retired from parliament the following year.

In the period that ensued, he spent an increasing proportion of his time in Greece, becoming active in a range of Cypriot, environmental and charitable activities. As a lordly host with his wife and family at his beloved Achmetaga, he displayed generosity, humour, and loyalty to friends in all walks of life.[5]

While he was an MP Noel-Baker advocated reforms to moderate the influence of outside interests in Parliament. In 1961 he published an article in Parliamentary Affairs warning that "the door, in fact, is wide open for a new form of political corruption, and there is an uneasy feeling in Parliament and outside that its extent could be much greater than the known or published facts reveal".[6]

Before his death in 2009 Noel-Baker was one of the few surviving members of the 1945 Parliament, the others being Michael Foot and John Freeman. He married in 1947 (dissolved 1956), Ann Saunders. In 1957 he married secondly Barbara Sonander, who died of skin cancer in 2004. Four sons and a daughter from his two marriages survive him, and a son predeceased him.[2]