Francis Noel-Baker

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

Early life Born in London, Noel-Baker was educated at Westminster School and King's College, Cambridge, where he won an exhibition to study history. He was the founding chairman of the Cambridge University Labour Club, which had broken away from the Cambridge University Socialist Club because of the latter's support for pacifism and the Soviet Union.

During the war he served in the Intelligence Corps, and was mentioned in despatches while serving in the Middle East.

In 1959 his father won a Nobel Peace Prize, and when Harold Wilson became Labour prime minister in 1964, both father and son were led to expect jobs in the new administration. However, the telephone calls never came. Noel-Baker was "bitterly disappointed at being overlooked." Nonetheless, his residence there was not without its dangers: having angered many locals by publicly supporting the military junta, numerous attempts were made throughout the 1970s by the post-dictatorship Greek government to seize his land and have him evicted. Only when Noel-Baker found the title deeds to his estate hidden in his father's air-raid shelter, with signatures supplied by both the Greek and Turkish authorities, did the harassment cease.

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 Ann Saunders in 1947 (dissolved 1955). In 1957 he married secondly Barbara (or Barbro) Sonander, who died of skin cancer in 2004. Four sons and a daughter from his two marriages survive him, and a son predeceased him.