Sir Geoffrey Stanley de Freitas (7 April 1913 - 10 August 1982) was a British politician and diplomat. For many years a Labour Member of Parliament, he also served as British High Commissioner in Accra, and later as President of the Council of Europe. April 7 is the 97th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (98th in leap years). ... 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Labour Party has, since the early twentieth century, been the principal left wing political party in the United Kingdom (see British politics). ... The skyline Location of Accra Labadi Beach Downtown Accra Accra, population 1,970,400 (2005), is the capital of Ghana. ...

Family and early career

Geoffrey de Freitas was the son of Sir Anthony and Lady Edith de Freitas.^[1]Sir Anthony was Chief Justice of St. Vincent while Geoffrey was little, and later of British Guiana,^[2]having held a variety of legal and administrative posts in the British West Indies. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an independent sovereign state of the Caribbean, part of the Commonwealth of Nations. ... British Guiana and its boundary lines, 1896 Flag of British Guiana British Guiana was the name of the British colony on the northern coast of South America, now the independent nation of Guyana. ... The British West Indies are those islands in the Caribbean that are or were British colonies. ...

After boarding school at Haileybury in England, de Freitas went to his father's old college: Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a successful student and athlete, and was president of the Cambridge Union for a term. Coat of arms of Haileybury College This article refers to the school in England. ... Full name Clare College Motto _ Named after Elizabeth de Clare Previous names University Hall (1326), Clare Hall (1338), Clare College (1856) Established 1326 Sister College Oriel College St Hughs College Master Prof. ... The Cambridge Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Cambridge Union, is one of the largest student societies at the University of Cambridge and one of the oldest in the world. ...

Two years at Yale followed, with a Mellon Fellowship in international law, and on the journey home he met his future wife, Helen Laird Bell, a Bryn Mawr graduate and daughter of a prominent Chicago lawyer and Democrat. Yale can refer to an educational institution: Yale University, one of the United States oldest universities. ... The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a foundation endowed with wealth accumulated by the late Andrew W. Mellon. ... Brynmawr (Bryn-mawr) is a market town in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent, traditional county of Brecknockshire, mid Wales. ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... The Democratic Party is one of two major political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party. ...

In 1938 they married, and lived in London where de Freitas was pursuing a career as a barrister, gaining political experience as a Labour councillor in Shoreditch, and co-leading a boys' club in Hoxton. During the war he became a Squadron Leader, but returned to politics in 1945. Shoreditch Town Hall Shoreditch is a district within the London Borough of Hackney. ... Hoxton Square. ...

Parliament and abroad

He beat the sitting Conservative MP for Nottingham in the 1945 election, and was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee. As Under-Secretary for Air he went to the United Nations Assembly at Lake Success in 1947. Some years later he would co-author a booklet on the subject of an Atlantic Assembly, ^[3] and he had a long-standing connection with the North Atlantic Assembly. Nottingham is a city (and county town of Nottinghamshire) in the East Midlands of England. ... A Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) is a junior role given to British Government MPs to act as the Parliamentary contact of senior Ministers. ... Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC (3 January 1883–8 October 1967) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951. ... United Nations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The NATO Parliamentary Assembly, or NATO-PA, formerly the North Atlantic Assembly, is an inter-parliamentary organization of legislators. ...

In the 1950 general election de Freitas became Member of Parliament for Lincoln. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and held a succession of front bench posts throughout the decade. For a while Betty Boothroyd was assistant to de Freitas and she remained a friend of the family. Geoffrey and Helen now had three sons and a daughter. Lincoln (pronounced //) is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England. ... The modern concept of Small Office and Home Office or SoHo , or Small or Home Office deals with the category of business which can be from 1 to 10 workers. ... In many parliaments and other similar assemblies, seating is typically arranged in banks or rows, with each political party or caucus grouped together. ... The Right Honourable Betty Boothroyd, Baroness Boothroyd, OM, PC (born 1931 in Dewsbury), is a widely respected British politician. ...

In 1961 De Freitas was appointed British High Commissioner to Ghana, and was knighted in October of that year.^[4] He was the first Labour appointment to an important role in one of the newly-independent former British colonies. In 1957 he had chaired a Hansard Society conference on parliamentary government in West Africa.^[5] After Accra, he was briefly in Nairobi, as British representative supporting an attempt to build a Federation of East Africa which would include Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya. The Hansard Society was formed in 1944 to promote parliamentary democracy. ... Nairobi is the capital city of Kenya. ... Flag of Tanganyika Tanganyika was an East African republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, named after Lake Tanganyika, which formed its western border. ...

In 1964 he was invited to stand for election to Kettering, a safe Labour seat, and returned to England. There was no front bench role for him with Harold Wilson as party leader, but de Freitas led the Labour delegation to the Council of Europe in 1965 and was President of the Council from 1966-1969. Map sources for Kettering at grid reference SP8778 Kettering is an East Midlands town in north Northamptonshire, England, situated on the River Ise, a tributary of the Nene with a population of approximately 85,000. ... James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was one of the most prominent and successful British politicians of the 20th Century. ... The Palace of Europe in Strasbourg European Flag: used by the Council of Europe and by the European Union The Council of Europe (French: Conseil de lEurope , German: Europarat /ˌɔɪ.ˈro. ...

In 1971 his reluctance to be nominated for election as Speaker of the House of Commons led to a reappraisal of the system. From 1975-1979 Sir Geoffrey was a delegate to the European Parliament. In the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, and is seen historically as the First Commoner of the Land. ... The European Parliament building in Strasbourg The inside of the building The European Parliament (formerly European Parliamentary Assembly) is the parliamentary body of the European Union (EU), directly elected by EU citizens once every five years. ...

He retired from politics in 1979 and died three years later, aged 69.

The autobiography he was writing with his wife, The slighter side of a long public life, was published in 1985.

External links

• [1] Picture of Sir Geoffrey de Freitas in 1966
• Council of Europe

Notes and sources

1. ^ Anthony Patrick de Freitas, born in Grenada in 1869, died 1940
   Edith de Freitas, born Edith Maud Short in Chantilly, Grenada, married 1899
2. ^ London Gazette 1927
3. ^ De Freitas and McLachlan, NATO is not enough : two approaches to an Atlantic Assembly (1956)
4. ^ London Gazette
5. ^ What are the problems of parliamentary government in West Africa?: the report of a conference held by the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, September 1957 under the chairmanship of Geoffrey de Freitas M.P (Hansard Society 1958)

• Obituary of Geoffrey de Freitas in The Times (13 August 1982)
• Who was Who
• Obituary of Helen de Freitas in The Independent (17 December 1998)