Timothy Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley

Timothy Wentworth Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley (22 November 1928 – 8 April 2008) was a British politician and Anglican priest. He was politically active, successively, in the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party of England and Wales. A life peer from 1967, in 1999 he became the first member of either house of the British Parliament to represent the Green Party.

Early and private life Beaumont's father, Michael Beaumont, was a Conservative MP for Aylesbury, and his paternal grandfather, Hubert Beaumont, was the Liberal MP for Eastbourne from 1906 to 1910 and son of Wentworth Beaumont, 1st Baron Allendale. Beaumont's mother, Faith Pease, died when he was six; his maternal grandfather was the Liberal politician Jack Pease, 1st Baron Gainford. He graduated in 1952 with a fourth-class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree: as per tradition, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree.

He married Mary Rose Wauchope (a cousin of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon) in 1955, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

Church career After graduating from Oxford, he trained for holy orders at Westcott House, Cambridge, a liberal Anglo-Catholic theological college.

Political career After making a substantial donation to the Liberal Party, he became its joint honorary treasurer in 1962–1963. He was made a Liberal life peer as Baron Beaumont of Whitley, of Child's Hill in Greater London, in 1967. He was chair of the Liberal Party in 1967–1968 and then President in 1969–1970. In Parliament he was Liberal spokesman on education and the arts until 1986. He also served as leader of the Liberals in the Council of Europe. He was co-ordinator of the Green Alliance from 1978 to 1980.

He joined the Liberal Democrats, but, objecting to their support for free trade, he moved to the Green Party in 1999, and became the Green Party spokesman on agriculture. He stood for election to Lambeth Council for the Green Party in Clapham Common ward in 2006.

Beaumont was a Eurosceptic, and argued against proposals for Britain to join the single European currency. For many years he was a vice-president of the cross-party Campaign for an Independent Britain, which campaigned against British membership of the European Union.

In a memorable action, Beaumont put forth in May 1996 a bill to "draw up a plan to prohibit piped music and the showing of television programmes in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport; and to require the wearing of headphones by persons listening to music in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport."

Other achievements Beaumont was a patron of transgender equality campaign group Press for Change. He was chairman of the Albany Trust between 1969 and 1971, chairman of the Institute of Research into Mental and Multiple Handicap between 1971 and 1973, president of the British Federation of Film Societies between 1973 and 1979, and a member of the executive of Church Action on Poverty. He was chairman of "Exit" (as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, since 2005 Dignity in Dying, was known in the early 1980s) in 1980. He edited The Selective Ego, an abridged volume of the diaries of James Agate, published in 1976, and a Liberal Cookbook, published in 1972. He also wrote a food column for The Illustrated London News from 1976 to 1980, and wrote the book The End of the Yellowbrick Road, published in 1997.

Baron Beaumont of Whitley died at St Thomas' Hospital in London after being hospitalised for several weeks.

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